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Buying an Aquarium Tank
Whether it’s a saltwater aquarium or freshwater aquarium that you are looking at buying you will find many different shapes, styles and sizes available in the market. Even if you have limited space in your house or apartment there is an aquarium tank to suit you.
Considerations when Buying Aquarium Tanks
When buying an aquarium tank you will have the option to buy a stand. Gone are the days of ugly steel stands and they have been replaced by beautiful cabinets or wrought iron stands. Remember if you standing your tank on an existing cabinet, that your tank when filled with water can weigh a lot and your existing cabinet can quite easily collapse.
Think before Purchasing
Your first purchase of any aquarium set up is the tank, as all equipment you buy will depend on the size and volume of the aquarium and generally the bigger the tank the more expensive your other equipment will be. Consider these few parameters which will affect you decision. Your aquarium will be different to another person and will have to suit your environment and space of your house.
What’s the reason or purpose of your aquarium? Are you having a tank in your living room or maybe in your office? Or maybe you want set up a community aquarium or just a species aquarium? These questions can give you ideas on the size and shape of the aquarium tank.
Upon deciding on the purpose you can get an idea of the size of tank that can fit in our chosen space. When measuring allow a good foot either side for you to move around for cleaning and maintenance and 8 inch behind to allow for cables, filters and heaters to be located. After you have filled your aquarium it will be too late to move it for maintenance or cleaning so plan in advance.
How Heavy is Water?
Plus or minus a gallon of water is 10 pounds, so a typical 24×12×20 tank will hold approx 25 gallons, which will weigh n the region of 250 pounds, so take this into consideration when choosing your aquarium tank. By using this we can estimate the weight of your aquarium setup when you include the water, rocks and equipment etc.
Calculating the Volume of Water for Odd Sized Tanks
A good formula for obtaining an easy on-the-spot total for the gallon capacity of any rectangular or square shaped aquarium is as follows:
Multiply the length (inches) x width (inches) x height (inches) and then divide by 231. The result is the capacity of the tank in gallons
What kind Aquarium do you want?
You are setting out on the freshwater side of the hobby or why else would you be here…right? This site wll go though the processes to set up your aquarium, but before we go to far into freshwater aquariums lets have a quick glimpse what you may want move into after you mastered the basic freshwater aquarium guide.
The aquarium hobby has three basic systems:
- Freshwater System
- Saltwater System
- Brackish System
The fish, plants, equipment, tanks and management will be different for each type of system. We will discuss over the next few articles a brief overview of each type of set up and give you ideas of initial set up cost, difficultly level, space considerations and availability of speices.
Freshwater Systems
freshwater aquariums are the most commonly practiced hobby and ideal for a beginner for a few reasons:
A freshwater system is not quite as expensive as a saltwater aquarium- Saltwater aquariums require additional equipment and genrally larger tanks.
- Freshwater fish are generally cheaper than marine fish- its always better to work wth less expensive fish an buying exensice fish and lsing them.
- Freshwater fish are generally more ready available from most aquarium shops than the marine fish- Marine fish are more sensitive to water conditions than freshwater fish which can have a more varied water conditions and still survive.
- Generally freshwater fish breed more easily- you may have the opportunity to sell yout fih back to your local fish shop.
- You can have more fish- With the same size tank you can keep more freshwater fish than you could mariine fish.
Freshwater systems can come in two types either tropical or coldwater.
Freshwater Tropical Aquariums
A freshwater tropical aquarium offers huge numbers of variety for both fish and plants and will give you endless ideas for your aquarium. Most tropical fish are easy to keep and very inexpensive which is why they are ideal for the beginner hobbyist. There is plenty of ready available kits for sale at your local fish shop which will include, tank,hood,light,filter and heater but these sets will exclude fish,plants and gravel but can be brought seperately.
Freshwater Coldwater Aquariums
These fish will come from colder waters than there tropical cousins, kits can be brought much alike the tropical kit, but they will not have any heater. Tanks or ponds will need to be larger as the fish are largr and consume more oxygen.
When keeping freshwater coldwater aquariums the room temperature they are kept in is important, as a warm room will heat up the tank. Generally getting fish for this setup is difficult except for goldfishsoyou may have to source though the internet to find the fish you want.
Marine Systems
The saltwater used for these type of aquariums is normally made form combining freshwater and a manufactured salt. A good filtration system is required in marine tanks as the fish require higher oxygen levels and lower ammonia levels.
Its recommended before you start out with saltwater aquariums is that you have basic knowledge with freshwater aquariums, you can actually go straight to saltwater aquariums but they are expensive and a little mistake could put you off aquariums for good.
You may want take a look at Saltwater Aquarium Guide to have a better understanding of whats required.
Brackish Systems
The brackish aquarium is the least popular of the three types of aquariums because they are hard to find at your local fish shop and generally they are more expensive than freshwater fish.The water in a brackish aquarium lies some where between the other two in terms of salt content.
The equipment is the same as a freshwater aquarium system but the plants are different as they need tolerate a brackish system.
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