This post will be on a ten gallon freshwater fish tank.

Be sure that you read cycling your fish tank after reading this. Click here to read “cycling your tank.”

First lets discuss the equipment your going to need.

First the fish tank, Glass or plexiglass.

Your Substrate, rocks, sand, pea gravel, river rock many different variations to choose from.

A filter, for this size tank a small power filter will be fine.

A heater that is rated for ten gallons.

Thermometer

Light strip, or light hood in most cases for a ten gallon. And if you use a light strip you will need a glass canopy.

So glass canopy (sometimes).

Five gallon bucket or jug of some kind. I use a water jug, like a Culligan one.

A water dechlorinizer. This is very important.

And some kind of sieve. Spaghetti strainer will work great.

There are a few things that you will need after you have the tank setup and running, those things will be mentioned at the end of this reading.

Now that you have decided to setup a tank let me be the first to congratulate you on joining the wonderful world of fish care. For all your fish care questions be sure to come back to markspetfish.com and check out all the subjects we cover by looking through our many different categories.

Once you have your tank at home make sure that you wash the tank with warm water, don’t use any type of soap. You can never fully rid the tank of soap and the chemicals in soap will kill the fish, you can however use vinegar, just make sure that you rinse the tank afterwards.

Now that you have the tank clean and all the essentials listed, the first thing that you want to think of is the tank location. You don’t want to have the tank sitting in direct sunlight for this may cause algae problems and screw with the heating. For more information on algae problems click here. No matter where you put the tank you must make sure that the tank is resting on a sturdy stand of some sort. You must realize that a gallon of water weighs around 8 pounds, plus the weight of your substrate and decorations. A ten gallon filled fish tank can weigh 80 pounds or more so just make sure that the stand is strong enough.

After you have the tank in it’s location it’s time to think about the substrate you using.
Once you have the tank in it’s location you want to grab your sieve, spaghetti stainer, and your rocks. Take the rocks and pour some into the sieve and give the rocks a good rinsing. No cleaning solution is needed in this step because your not trying to disinfect the rocks, your just trying to clean off the dust and debris that may have settled on, or clung to the rocks during packaging and shipping. You will know that the rocks are clean once the water that is coming out the bottom of the sieve is running clear. Now that you have the rocks clean you simply place them into your tank. Just try to evenly distribute the rocks throughout the bottom of the tank.

Once you have the rocks in you tank, it’s time to put the water in.

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Now you just can’t add tap water. Our water contains small traces of chemicals harmful to fish. What you will do is take that water dechlorinizer and take your bucket of some kind and treat the water. What you will do is fill the bucket up with water, know how many gallons your bucket is so that your not wasting your dechlorinizer. Then read the instructions on you dechlorinizer and add the amount instructed to the amount of water it’s capable of treating. I recommend using Aquasafe for your water dechlorinizer.

After you have treated your water it’s time to add the water to your fish tank. If you don’t want to mess up the substrate by pouring the water on it, you can place a dish of some kind on the bottom and pour the water into the dish and the water will gently over flow the dish and fill the tank. Don’t fill the fish tank up all the way, leave about 1 inch from the water line to the hood lip of the tank. This is so that when you add decorations to the fish tank that you don’t over flow the tank. So just have some water left over to top off the tank, which is usually thought of as just under the hood lip (about ¼ inch).

Now that the water is in the fish tank your going to want to add your heater and thermometer. Set the temperature on the heater to what the requirements of your fish is. If you don’t have a temperature gage on you heater then turn the dial half way up and monitor the tanks temperature on you thermometer and dial you heater in that way. I would recommend that even if you do have a temperature gage on you heater that you regularly check your thermometer for your tanks temperature.

While your water is acclimating to the right temperature go a head and put your filter on the back of your tank. Once you have your filter on the tank make sure that you add the filter media. But before you add the media make sure that you rinse it thoroughly. Weather you buy assembled filter media or filter media kits, you will need to rinse the carbon once you have the filter media put together. Once the water is clean when your rinsing the filter media you can add it to your power filter on the back of your tank. You may read that you should rinse it with treated water, I have never done that since it’s a waste of money and I have never had a problem. After you rinsed the media add it to your filter and turn your filter on. If you don’t have a self priming filter you will need to add water to it, it will then begin to suck up water. It may take a second to get going to just watch it and wait, it shouldn’t take more then a minute to get going.

The next thing to do after you get the filter up and running is to setup your lights. If you have a light strip you will first need to put your glass-canopy on, then put the light strip on top. Or if you have a light hood then all you need to do is set it on top of the tank and your good. I recommend plugging your light into a timer, this will help save on energy costs and will make sure that your tanks lighting is consistent.

Congratulations, you know have you tank fully setup, but it’s not time to add fish just yet. This is the worst part for me because I’m like a kid on Christmas waiting to open my presents. You need to wait about a week and a half to two weeks before adding fish. You need to let your tank cycle (click here to learn about cycling). Once this cycling has finished it will be fine to add fish. Make sure that you have picked fish that are suitable for your tank size, what I mean is ones that won’t out grow it, some fish get to be 10-13” long.

Now after you have your tank fully cycled and fish added and all that good stuff there are other essential things that you will need to help keep it up and running and looking nice and clean.

A gravel vacuum a.k.a aquarium vacuum.

An algae scrapper

Filters a.k.a filter media

If you don’t have live plants you may need an air pump.

If you have a lot of fish in your tank make sure that you either have live plants or an air pump. This way your fish won’t suffer from oxygen deficiency. You can tell if this is a problem your having if your fish are constantly swimming around the surface, and have rapid gill movement.

If you have more questions on setting up your tank be sure to leave a comment.

Checkout Mark’s pet fish the forum by clicking here

This is quoted from Mark’s Pet Fish Forum

Checkout Mark’s pet fish the forum by clicking here

Letting your tank cycle is essential when first setting up a fish tank.

When a fish produces waste, and when there is left over food that rots, there are toxic chemicals released into the water. If these chemicals build up to a high enough concentration they can kill your fish. When you cycle your tank you are actually just letting the tank build up colonies of beneficial bacteria. What the beneficial bacteria does is it will take these toxic chemicals and actually feed on them and transform them into neutral chemicals.

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First you must understand that when you first setup a tank it is bacteria free, but as soon as you add your water there are two group of beneficial bacteria added, for those who care, their names are Nitosomonas and Nitrobacter. These are aerobic types of bacteria and are found in well oxygenated areas of the tank, mainly the filter. What they do is take oxygen and bind it to ammonia (fish waste) and transform it into nitrites (NO2-) and then transform it into nitrates (NO3-). In the end this bacteria is taking harmful chemicals and making them neutral, which is a good thing.

If you are doing this with plants then that is even better. The plants will absorb much of the toxic chemicals and filter the water for you. Some people who have successful planted tanks don’t even use filters. They just do normal water changes and let the plants take care of the filtering. But even if you plan on having plants you can still have a filter, it’s just that if you have enough plants you won’t need one.

Now to actually cycle the tank.

First I practice what’s called “fishless cycling,” I don’t much care for fish cycling so I won’t describe that method here, but I will make a separate post for that all together.
The main goal when fishless cycling is to add “bad bacteria” to the tank so that the “beneficial bacteria” can eat and get ready for the fish waste, and rotting food, without harming any fish in this process. Here is how you would do this.

What you do is you will add food to the fully setup tank as if there were fish in it. You will then do normal water changes. So basically act as if fish are in there. You will do this for about a week and a half, to two weeks. This will give the beneficial bacteria time to cultivate, that doesn’t mean that you can add a ton of fish right away after this waiting period is up. You will want to add the smallest of the fishes that you want first. So if your getting guppies and tetras and say a Betta here is how you would want to add them.

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First add the tetras, let them be in the tank for about 2-3 days, letting the beneficial bacteria grow to a large enough population to compensate for the waste produced by them.
Second, add the guppies. Wait about 2-3 days again. The same thing will being going on with the beneficial bacteria.
And finally add the Betta. The beneficial bacteria will be able to handle the waste load and rotting food of all these fish, and it will insure that your fish don’t die from bad tank conditions.

But there is a common problem people have if you decide to skip adding that fish slowly and add them all at once. It’s called “New Tank Syndrome.” What happens is people will add too many fish, overloading the beneficial bacteria. The beneficial bacteria is still growing, and some people say, “well why isn’t it destroying the toxic chemicals?” It may still be growing but the population still isn’t great enough to combat the ammonia, which usually results in the fish’s death.

If you do decide to add all the fish at once, you have to be on top of the water changes then. You will need to make more frequent water changes for about the first month. When you do water changes you are manually removing the ammonia and so it’s still possible to add all the fish, but I don’t recommend it It’s just more work that you have to do, and less time to enjoy watching the fish.

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