Hello all, complete newbie here, thanks for having me!
After lusting after other people's aquaria for years, even decades, I have finally managed to persuade my partner to buy me one for my birthday.
It's an Eheim Aquabay 104l, and it's currently sitting empty and splendid on the side, ready to be started up.
I've done a lot of reading around getting started, so am pretty happy with what I need to do, but the choice of fish (when I get to that point) is a bit overwhelming!
Can anyone suggest what kinds of fish would be good to form a healthy community tropical tank? I think like a lot of newbies I love the pretty fish (blues, yellows, reds and oranges) and would love shoaling ones all darting about.
I live in London where the water is quite hard (Thames Water say 262ppm or 15DH), and also apparently the pH can be around 8 or even a bit higher.
When we went to look in the shop there were some I liked the look of (not sure what they were) but the guy told me that if I wanted those ones I would have to buy my water in as the pH of the tap water was wrong for them. As there were quite a few that fitted that category I was wondering if it was worth doing that (could get expensive and be a hassle?) as if I don't do that quite a lot of pretty fish were ruled out.
Does anyone have experience of doing this and can you suggest what fish I should start with if I don't? I obviously need to decide this before I get going as it will depend what water I put in the tank to start off with.
Thanks in advance for your help. Very excited!