Common Newbie Pitfalls

[happygirl65]

I bought a pond plant at the lfs right out of the tank with the aquatic plants they were not marked or sperated, and it started to die by the next day in my tank....it was not supposed to be completely submerged.

You don't HAVE to remove the stuff, it's just better if you do, eventually as the plant grows it will restrict it, easier to do it now than to uproot the whole thing and cut it away in peices later on.

[BeavisMom62]

Originally Posted by waynephinney

Or fish that will become too large for the tank without having any plans to get a bigger tank down the road.

Hi, newbie here, just surfing around and commenting here and there. Your post and a couple of the others taken together were something I learned early. I was looking to stock a new tank and went to a local big box store (I guess we can't name names). I had a 13 gal tank and absolutely fell in love with black finned sharks. Asked the clerk if and how many I could put in my tank. They told me six. Well, to be on the safe side, since they also told me I could put four goldies in a 13 gal tank, hubby and I opted for four sharks instead of six. Brought them home and only THEN did I decide to do research. Glad I did. Found out they need 70 gals or more! Although I would love to have a large tank in the future, I had no immediate plans for one. Would be cruel to keep such large fish in a little tank with the hopes that maybe, someday I'd have a larger tank. Thankfully we were able to return them. But not without a lot of heartache. I really fell in love with them and wanted to keep them. It was also heart breaking to realize that someone else would come along after me, be given the same wrong information, buy the sharks, maybe not do the research and keep them in such cramped quarters only to die a horrible or at least an early death.

So, yes the moral of the story is: Don't believe what the clerks tell you, do your research FIRST and as you said, don't buy fish that will grow large without a plan to have a larger tank down the road.

[lado078]

Been a newbie myself my experience isnt much but
1=gather infomation and study up on fish you have seen
2=be patience
3=add slowly and carefully.

[wolffish]

Ugg tell me about this is my first time haveing a tank and i feel like a complete failer. Some of the challanges im faceing are:
-Not cycleing the water long enough and then looking the next morning just to find half your fish dead.
-Over feeding fish and killing them.
-Not haveing a reliable store to get all your fish from. Unfortinetly i do not have one of theis reliable stores and i have major problems with buying sick fish and haveing to constantly bring them back to the store.
I probobly have a lot more to list but i cant think of any more right now.