Mistakes made with your first tank

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danidori

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
3
Location
Missouri
Hey guys so I have my first fish tank and like anyone you always make mistakes when trying to get into something new. I had put two danios and some guppies together and I had to get rid of my danios because they were stressing out the other fish. It was very sad but I definitely learned a lesson there. Anyone else make any mistakes with their first tank? [emoji30]
 
When I first got into the hobby as an adult I did research before setting up my first tank on the internet. However at that time cycling was a fairly newer thing, so I didn't know about that. I had also grown up with well water so learned the hard way about treating the water with some tadpoles :(

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When I first got into the hobby as an adult I did research before setting up my first tank on the internet. However at that time cycling was a fairly newer thing, so I didn't know about that. I had also grown up with well water so learned the hard way about treating the water with some tadpoles :(

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Lost me on well water and tad poles lol
 
I was setting up ceramic bowl like things as decor and hiding places for my fish. I came home one day to discover one of the bowls had fallen over and trapped a fish. Sadly the fish didn't survived, but I now know to be more careful/avoid some decor items.
 
Lost me on well water and tad poles lol

Well water is when you get your water from your own property, so it's untreated, unlike water that goes through a water treatment plant. I was used to clean freshwater that I could add fish directly into without having to get rid of chlorine or anything first. I accidently killed the tadpoles (baby frogs/toads) by adding them to straight tapwater, not realizing that there was chlorine in it.

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Adding too many fish at once. The water got super cloudy and took a few large water changes to clear up. I'm also pretty sure I didn't cycle it fully. All fish survived though.
 
Back when I first started I was doing my weekly double check of the heater for safety and accidentally left it at max because my attention got diverted. I basically cooked the fish overnight. I felt so horrible about it for a long time and everyone kept cracking jokes.
 
My first tank was a 10g9possibly 20g) c. 1980. I was young, and made a lot of mistakes. I probably killed a dozen fish my first year, until I figured a few things out. By the time I joined the military c. 1985, I had 3 or 4 tanks up and running, but was still doing everything wrong by today's standards (air pump filters only, no heaters, wrong mix of fish, infrequent maintenance schedule, over-stocking, etc, etc), and it's only through dumb luck that I didn't murder all my fish. After a 10 year hiatus for the military, college, and kids, I started again in the mid 90s, and boy, had things changed. And they keep changing, even today. And, I still make mistakes, but luckily I haven't had any mass destruction of fish in several years.
 
My first mistake was first I overcrowded the tank had very aggressive fish with non aggressive fish and over fed them [emoji23]
 
When I was a little kid I had two common goldfish in a 1.5 gallon bowl, the poor things. I won them at a fair at age 5. Somehow they survived long enough to be given to an aunt with a pond, where they grew big before being eaten by a mountain lion, who I'm sure was very pleased.
I still see live goldfish as prizes at fairs, and it makes me want to run around handing out accurate care sheets.
 
Anyone remember the days when the stores told you to clean the tank/bowl once a week and rinse all the gravel?

Yeah I did that

And accidentally poured gravel on the goldfish and didn't find out till morning. The other one only lived a couple of months.....it was a "Betta tank" which I had gotten because it was bigger than the goldfish bowls[emoji33]

I can only imagine ammonia levels in that thing....

I wouldn't keep fish till years later, ..... I figured I wasn't capable
 
My mistake was I did not do nearly enough research before I started. So I made a TON of mistakes. Some of those were I had no idea that tanks needed to cycle, so I had to do a fish-in cycle and lost a lot of fish. I also overstocked, and got fish that were a little too big for my tank that I had to return. I also did not quarantine the fish so I had ich and flukes problems everywhere.

My advice is save your money and read up on how to cycle, how to look for healthy fish, and how to quarantine fish before putting in your tank. Also learn which fish get along with whom, and if any fish need to be in groups of 6 or more.
 
Nearly 40 years ago... letting an idiot kid in holding a baseball. LOL. Lost the hole tank.

Next tank, not planning for the number of fry that Mollies can have.
 
...treating with meds what needed plenty of good clean water and vice versa when I first started in teens
 
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