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#1 Guest_HuntFish_*

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Posted 03 July 2013 - 11:01 AM

Hello Everyone! I'm new here. I have been wanting to start my own home aquarium. I was hoping you guys could help kick start this with me. What and where could I get the supplies that I need for the project. I was thinking 250 gallon tank with minnows, bluegill, crayfish, and some macro-inverts but I'm scared these species will not coexist. If at all possible I would love to put a species of bass in there also. What kind of vegetation should I use? How many of each fish species do you guys recommend? Thank guys!!

#2 Michael Wolfe

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Posted 03 July 2013 - 11:31 AM

Welcome to the Forum! Well that would be a big tank to start with. But hey, if you got it fill it up.

I would suggest that you read through a bunch of the past discussions here, you will learn a lot and will get some answers to many of the questions you have posed. Everyone has their favorite approach and with different tank sizes you can make different things work. But read as much as you can before you jump into anything.

I will tell you that it would be very unusual for you to have any sort of long term success with minnow or crayfish in a tank that had any bass in there. Eventually everything goes into the bass mouth.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

#3 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 03 July 2013 - 03:06 PM

Please read post #2 of this topic for strategies to deal with ammonia: http://forum.nanfa.o...in-55-gal-tank/

I have a little 'introduction to fishkeeping' reading list I like to give people just starting out.
http://www.fishkeepi...ing-article.htm
http://theaquariumwi...ical_Filtration
Diana Walstad's book Ecology of the Planted Aquarium
http://www.aquaticpl...nge-system.html
http://forum.nanfa.o...ing-for-125gal/
youtube.com/watch?v=65yVr7DiDls (Uarujoey's overflow design)
http://www.bioconlabs.com/abtqs.html

If you tell me what region you live in I'll tell you about your native aquatic plants.

Edited by EricaLyons, 03 July 2013 - 03:11 PM.


#4 Guest_davidjh2_*

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Posted 03 July 2013 - 03:14 PM

Welcome to the forum and best of luck with your tank. From personal experience I can tell you that having bass in your tank means anything that can go in it's mouth will go in it's mouth. Now if you setup a 2nd tank just to breed crayfish and a couple of minnow species then you can replace your losses. I love the idea of keeping bass, crappies, catfish and pickerel but I like the little guys I catch just as much so aside from the occasional sunfish I stick to the smaller species myself.

#5 Guest_gzeiger_*

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Posted 03 July 2013 - 07:56 PM

I don't think 250 gallons is big enough for a bass. They are great fish to keep and I intend to have one again one day, but I think you'd want 1000+ gallons. I also echo the above - they will not coexist with anything. Bluegill and other sunfish have similar behaviors and will be just as fun. Sunfish are also very hard on crayfish though. You could get a couple big ones, and they will be ok given adequate hiding places, but they won't have a bunch of babies.

Few macroinvertebrates will survive with fish of any kind, and those that do you're unlikely to see much. I like my snails, and they do ok with bluegills, but you're not going to see any insects you put in there.

Where are you from? For me the hobby is as much about turning rocks as keeping the aquarium, but if you're one of the people who is going to buy your fish rather than catch them then the possibilities are endless.

#6 Guest_HuntFish_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 02:49 PM

Thanks guys for posting on this topic! If you have anymore thoughts or suggestions feel free to post. I was actually wondering how hard is it keep mature crappie and blue gill (after being caught by fishing) alive? Is it easier to hold younger fish of those species? I am thinking about keeping the aquarium in my basement. There is little light and the temperature will stay constant most of the year. How will these conditions affect the fish in my aquarium?

#7 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 03:01 PM

Is it easier to hold younger fish of those species?

They transition better from one water to another. Older animals are less adaptable to change. Change in water parameters, change in setting, change in food source. Juvenile fish are more likely to adapt to all of the above.

For example I was shipped two adult fish last week. I put them into a tank that was having a little bit of an ammonia problem (I just got back from vacation). There are fully three dozen healthy juveniles and fry in the tank, six healthy adults, and now the two adults shipped to me are missing. I've lost forty adult fish in the past two weeks. Grr vacation. Somehow the young ones managed to survive, and the nitrogen hardiest adults. But I knew once I got those two fish in the mail and saw they were fully grown adults that there might be some problems. Always try to ship the fish version of teenagers, almost fully grown but not quite. They adapt best. The same applies to bringing them home. You want them at an age where they can hold some food in their stomach, so not the youngest of fry, but definitely nowhere near full grown.

It helps when adapting them to food, too. When I was trying to get my Elassoma gilberti to eat flake foods(no it did not work), the only ones who even attempted to eat it were the not fully grown juveniles. The adults were like, "No. I refuse to eat that." Wah wah waaah.

I am thinking about keeping the aquarium in my basement. There is little light and the temperature will stay constant most of the year. How will these conditions affect the fish in my aquarium?

Ooooh, a basement tank would be perfect for simulating winter temperatures and getting native fish (especially darters) into spawning condition. Are you sure you don't want this to be a darter setup? That would be perfect for them.

About the lighting thing: over-tank lighting is cheap. Your local hardware store and ebay have ballasts and bulbs for much less cost than your local pet store. For example I have four foot long tanks, so I use a four foot long T8 ballast from Walmart and two four foot long Daylight Deluxe T8 bulbs ($10 for both) from Home Depot. Change out your bulbs once a year; fluorescent light color decays over time.

Edited by EricaLyons, 10 July 2013 - 03:42 PM.


#8 Guest_HuntFish_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 03:10 PM

Ok good deal! I have a silly question... How do you start a new topic post? I can't find it anywhere on the forum. And Darters would be cool but I'm looking for more larger game species for this tank. Thanks for the input though!

#9 Guest_HuntFish_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 03:18 PM

Also, what do you feed game fish in a home aquarium?

#10 Guest_HuntFish_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 03:20 PM

Also, what kind of water am I supposed to put in the tank? I have city water, so how would I remove the treating chemicals such as chlorine from the water

#11 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 03:26 PM

Also, what kind of water am I supposed to put in the tank? I have city water, so how would I remove the treating chemicals such as chlorine from the water

DeChlor by Weco is the least expensive option. I use a 4 oz bottle of DeChlor for several years. Here is an example vendor, although there are many.
http://www.petmounta...ct/11442-105515
A lot of pet store products also remove chlorine, but usually for more money. It's all about how much they're diluting the active ingredient that remove chlorine, sodium thiosulfate. It removes chloramine, too.

Personally, chlorine removal is the only treatment I do to my tap water. If I wasn't always such a poor planner I could dechlorinate for free by bubbling air through the new tank water for about 24-48 hours, but to me it's worth it to be able to not plan out water changes and be able to put tap water in the tank immediately using a chemical dechlorinator.

Edited by EricaLyons, 10 July 2013 - 03:36 PM.


#12 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 10 July 2013 - 03:34 PM

Also, what do you feed game fish in a home aquarium?

What size tank do you have? Do you have it already or is it still in the planning stages? The tank size decides which species you can keep. For example, black crappie get over a foot long. Longear sunfish are slightly smaller, and orangespotted sunfish are smaller still (four inches long ish). There are tiny versions of big fish that are physically similar, like a pickerel instead of a pike.

I'm just curious if you've thought of building your own tank. For example this video by uarujoey demonstrates how to build a 237 gallon aquarium and stand for $375.


Tell us about your tank and then we can talk species of fish and what to feed them.

Edited by EricaLyons, 10 July 2013 - 03:43 PM.


#13 Guest_vaniya_*

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Posted 22 July 2013 - 12:32 AM

very nice post like this forum

#14 Guest_Subrosa_*

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Posted 22 July 2013 - 09:44 AM

A few notes of water treatment. Sodium thiosulphate is indeed the active ingredient in some water treatment products, and if your source water contains simple chlorine it's definitely all you need. It's also used in the development of photographs, where it's known simply as "hypo". It's much cheaper to buy in solid form from a camera shop than anywhere else. A tsp per oz of water makes a solution that you need use only a drop of per gal to neutralize chlorine. It does not however fully neutralize chloramines. Chloramines are essentially a chlorine molecule bonded to an ammonia molecule. Thiosulphate will break the bond, and will neutralize the resultant free chlorine, but does nothing for the leftover ammonia. My tapwater tests out at about .25 ppm ammonia after neutralization with thiosulphate. On my established tanks the ammonia level is 0 within a couple hours of even a 50% change. But occasionally water companies will increase the amount of chloramine to clear the pipes, and doing a large change with just hypochlorite at such a time could prove problematic.



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