Things you wish you had known when you started...

[DrKennethNoisewater]

my story might be the worst.....

my lfs owner had a whole gaggle of clown knives in a 20g. bare. no gravel, no nothing. i went in and told him i had a ten gallon and liked those fish, asked him about cycling and he said "oh the water here is fish quality after about 3 hours of running the [brand new] filter [he sold me]. we have really high quality water." so i went home, poured the water in the tank, ran the filter with just a sponge insert for a few hours, than went back and bought my favorite clown knife.

needless to say, he died overnight. i still feel so terrible and it must have been a terrible death for a beautiful fish.

my advice to anyone new is don't do that. if you are on here reading this post prior to getting a tank set up and getting fish than you are off to a hell of a good start. some good advice would also be dont trust anyone at a fish store, and if you like the fish, come home and research it like crazy, than go back and get it if its really for you. never impulse buy, EVER, when it comes to something alive.

[Reaperpilot2014]

They'll do anything for money sometimes. I wish there were a better way to make sure FS employees are knowledgable, but as long as they care more about profit than fish, I suppose that will never happen. That' why I love resources like this forum.

[jjj5311]

ha i wish i had known everything mentioned already and more, but most of all i wish i had known about the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4 you can put into it lol

ITS AN ADDICTION

[Christie_ZXR]

What a brilliant thread! Looking forward to seeing it develop

Those squeezy syphons are definitely what I wish I'd known about. Simple, but brilliant gadgets! I started out with a strange contraption made from a knitting needle and some hose...
Just a tip on that by the way, I learnt the hard way that hosepipes have to be thoroughly flushed if they're getting used in a tank, because they have a horrible plasticy pong otherwise!

[Iliveinazoo]

1. It is always tempting when starting out to accumulate new fish quickly without much thought to compatibility. There are relatively few species that can live peacefully in a community aquarium and what will live fine with some species won't live fine with others. I made this mistake and inadvertently ended up with multiple tank syndrome.

2. Shoalers also need a shoal (6+) and many species will become timid and stressed if kept as singletons, they will go the opposite way and bully their conspecifics if kept in two's or three's. I made this mistake when purchasing a pair of Scats, one bullied the other continuosly until I added 3 more (I know I said 6 at the start and this actually makes 5 but I do believe that 6+ is best for a shoal) and they then turned into the most beautiful, peaceful fish I've owned.

3. The fish in the LFS tanks grow and some will grow into monsters. Always look at the maximum size before buying a fish. I unfortunately had to give my scats to someone else because I didn't have the tank to house them properly at full size

If I'd of known the three things above before getting started it would have saved a whole load of unnecessary stress on both the creatures that I've owned and on myself!

[RTR]

Salespeople are paid to make sales. It is the name of the game. They are nor paid to be teachers and certainly not to discourage sales.

Caveat emptor!

[Pazuzu]

I treat buying fish and live food like buying a car, I do not fight my gut. You may think that you will be fine if you buy the one healthy looking fish in the tank full of sick and dead ones. However we KNOW that is a recipe for disaster. I cannot tell you how many times I have left my local Petsmart empty handed because I went for ghost shrimp, but they were in a tank full of sick fish.

Oh, and choose pet-sitters wisely. I left a co-worker (i worked at Petsmart at the time) in charge of my brackish 29 gallon while I was on vacation, thinking that because he had extensive experience keeping fish and reptiles he would be a good fit. I lost a GSP, 2 Bumblebee Gobies, and a fat, healthy Dragon Goby. The tank was grossly overfed, and the salinity was drastically different than when I left. Turns out he tried to make up for 6 days of overfeeding and negligence by doing a big water change on the last day, but he didn't bother use my hygrometer to test the S.G of the new water. Experience is not an indicator of responsibility.

[Pufftastic]

I started in aquaria by keeping fancy goldfish in 1990, when the only info available came from LFS employees and owners, and really bad books. I shudder when I think back on all the goldfish I killed over the years out of ignorance.

I think the internet has been one of the greatest tools ever for fishkeepers. Yes, there is a ton of really bad information out there posted by dumb but well-meaning folks, but there's also great info, and I am now successfully keeping fish alive for years, instead of months. Goldfish are easy: 20 gallons for the first fancy, 10 for each thereafter, more if they're full-sized, huge weekly water changes, bigtime filtration, varied diet heavy on vegetation. I was guilty of overcrowding AND overfeeding before I learned better. I wish the internet had been available all those years ago.

I researched the heck out of puffers before getting any. Luckily The Puffer Forum was the first place I landed when I started reading.

[sevenyearnight]

I didn't really know anything about how the nitrogen cycle worked, only that I knew it took longer than the fish-empty 24-48 hours they STILL tell people at Petsmart. I was pretty clueless about all of that, TPF very specifically filled in all the blanks.

[RTR]

LOL! I've always liked goldfish also, but I was more conservative than you. Small fancies got 30-40 gallons each, alone. Big ones got 75 or more. A breeder taught me to be conservative.