Three simple rules before you even think about what you want.

1. Establish your budget $500 or $5,000
2. Establish the space available including floor strength
3. Buy the largest sized aquarium you can afford

My own rule of thumb for any aquarium is 70 gallons. In various literature I’ve read over years that seems to be the starting point give or take 10 gallons. From experience larger tanks have yielded better over all results.

Bigger (more water volume) is always better.

A few things you need to understand.

Aquariums are work. Water is heavy.

If you don’t maintain your aquarium properly it will look like hell.

The reason I recommend the “larger the better” is that a greater volume of water reduces the rate and degree of of fluctuation of water chemistry and temperature.

Bear in mind that fish live in environments with millions of gallons of water that is fairly stable and what variations exist are natural and related to seasonal weather patterns that tend to be consistent over time.

Fish do not usually adapt well to rapid fluctuations of any kind unless they lived in an environment where such fluctuations were normal.

Some fish therefore are less susceptible than others.

Saltwater fish are particularly sensitive to rapid changes  - given that they live in huge bodies of water (the ocean) that do not fluctuate in chemistry or temperature except extremely gradually.

So as you can see my emphasis is on size and my recommendation is the larger the better within your budgetary and space constraints.

Once you have chosen the size of the tank – the next step will be to choose the tank inhabitants and decor.

I will discuss that in another article.

The options are endless.

There are as many choices you can make as their are humans on earth!

So how then can we decide?

There are three top level choices to start with.

Natural, artificial and hybrid.

With natural you google the types of fish you have and look at pictures of the fish in their natural environment. (click images)

The same goes for artificial.

Hybrid is up to you where you would select a mixed combination of elements to decorate your aquarium.

The choices are many and self evident as far as size is concerned. Color is a matter of taste or if you go the natural route you duplicate the pictures you have seen of the biotope.

Biotope is a fancy word for natural habitat. It could be a stream or a coral reef.

One way to get ideas is to visit an aquarium shop  - the better shops have nicely decorated tanks as well as some if not all of the decorations you will need.

Don’t use wood or rocks picked up in nature. Spend a few dollars on aquarium ready substrate instead.

Keep in mind the following:

Sand or gravel is a pain in the ass. Detritus (fish shit) accumulates under the surface. This can be good or bad  - you’ll need to read up on biological filtration to understand why.

One thing I want to mention is that there are numerous excellent books on decorating an aquarium and a library of 2 or 3 books is a worthwhile investment.

Since this is your first aquarium I assume it is freshwater. In fact I recommend freshwater for starters. But if not the same reference materials are available for saltwater tanks as well.

I recommend going natural in appearance and although you can do live plants go artificial first time around – you won’t know the difference and live plants require a lot more expertise.

There is a LOT more I could write  - but the most important thing you could do is read a lot. The internet can get very confusing when you solicit opinions and ask questions. For every helpful aquarium owner there will be a different answer to the same question

Good luck.

Basically the literature covers the basic ingredients for success .. although I caution you to read many, many books & magazines … this research is important with Discus as well as any other fish available to the hobby …… regardless of price!

Emulating their natural environment is rule number one … in some cases such as Discus, the fish are less tolerant and the margin of error is slim or nil ….

Discus HAVE lived for more than 17 years in captivity … think about that …..

PH, water quality, temperature, lighting and physical layout …. it’s not rocket science ….

Many fish die because the aquarium keeper loses interest, gets lazy, wasn’t ready to properly care for the aquarium, or went on vacation

The most important ingredient for breeding fish is nutrition … in many cases knowing something about “spawning triggers” such as changes in climate … rainfall, temperature, sunlight(periods of light), PH etc will increase the chance something happens …..

The rules I preach for all aquariums apply to all fish … one is water volume … since the more water volume the more stable the physical and chemical environment …. stability is important unless instigating a change in conditions as a spawning trigger ….. of course knowing a LOT about the fish you are working with is essential ….

Breeding fish like anything else in life is easy or difficult depending on how much effort you put into knowing what you are doing …… READ!

Breeding is without question the most enjoyable aspect of the aquarium hobby … the different characteristics of fish offer plenty of challenges and insight into the wonderful world of nature that surrounds us.

The successful aquarist believes in the concept that understanding how to keep up a successful aquarium leads to an understanding of how important nature is to properly support our planet. Conservation, ecology, environment and nature are the most important words in our lives. Now more than ever

There are many different types of aquarium filters. The two main categories I would divide them into are internal and external.

Rather than go into the differences I’m going to flaunt conventional wisdom and say that any filter that exposes the aquarist to flooding is off the list as far as I’m concerned.

Then I will go one further and say that I prefer natural filtration which reduces the possibilities to very few.

Live rock, macroalgae, and water.

Let me begin with water.

The more water in an aquarium relative to what is living and inhabiting the tank the better the capacity of the aquarium to absorb the biological wastes generated by the inhabitants. The ideal set-ups are often found at public aquariums where the source of water is sometimes nature – such as the ocean for a marine aquarium or a lake for a freshwater aquarium.

To be continued ….