My first aquarium in years..

[meg227]

Hello, recently I've been thinking about getting fish again. I bought a 20 gal tank but I'm not quite sure what kinds of fish or plants I should get.

Animals
Bee Shrimp
Ghost Shrimp
Guppies
maybe a betta?

Plants
plastic! LOL
I would much rather have live plants, but I don't want to have to deal with a snail overpopulation like last time.

Substrate
I would love to get sand in my aquarium, do I need a sponge filter? And how would I go about cleaning it?

Any suggestions would be beneficial. I want to get mainly blue-ish or green-ish fish to match the room its going in haha

 

[librarygirl]

Hello, recently I've been thinking about getting fish again. I bought a 20 gal tank but I'm not quite sure what kinds of fish or plants I should get.

Animals
Bee Shrimp
Ghost Shrimp
Guppies
maybe a betta?

Plants
plastic! LOL
I would much rather have live plants, but I don't want to have to deal with a snail overpopulation like last time.

Substrate
I would love to get sand in my aquarium, do I need a sponge filter? And how would I go about cleaning it?

Any suggestions would be beneficial. I want to get mainly blue-ish or green-ish fish to match the room its going in haha

Welcome to AA!!

The first thing you'll want to do is cycle your tank before you get fish. Here's a link to a great guide that will help you: http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forum...guide-and-faq-to-fishless-cycling-148283.html

You could do sand for substrate, pool filter sand or play sand would work and be cheaper, just rinse rinse rinse it before it goes into the tank. I don't think you need a sponge filter, per se, but you'll need filtration and more is usually better than less. Do you have a filter now and if so which one? I have a 20 gal running an AquaClear 20 HOB and an internal Fluval U2. If you got a large AquaClear that might be sufficient and they are really good filters.

Good luck and feel free to ask any other questions that come up along the way!

 

[meg227]

It came with a Top Fin 30 filter. Will that work?

 

[bruinsbro1997]

Make sure to check out the link librarygirl showed you!

As for guppies and bettas I would not try it, they are too similar looking and it is possible the betta will mistake them for other rival males and attack them.