Beginner - New To Fish Keeping, Would Like Some Help And Advice :)

You are right, the fish you name all need soft water.
Have a look at endlers. They need hard water and are lovely little fish. But males only as they breed like rabbits and you'd need at least 3 females for every male which soon means more endlers than you can cope with. They come in several different colours and patterns. A tank with a dozen or so mixed pattern male endlers would look stunning.
(The reason you need a lot more females than males is because like all livebearers, males chase females constantly. With more females, each female gets time out while the males chase another female)

Make sure you use straight tap water, not water from a filter. Some replace the hardness minerals with hydrogen ions. pH is the measure of hydrogen ions, an upside down measure. So if you add a lot more hydrogen ions, the pH drops. My old Brita filter dropped my pH from 7.5 to off the bottom off the scale so less than 6. Other types of filter replace the hardness minerals with sodium, and lots of sodium is not good for fish.

You do not need soil for plants, sand or fine gravel is fine. But you need deeper than 1 inch if you intend plants rooted in the substrate.
The alternative is to use plants that grow attached to decor. That's all I have in my tanks.

A lot of wood floats at first. Soaking it in a bucket gets it water logged so it sinks. It also allows the worst of the brown tannins to leach out.
And wood is ideal for attaching plants to 




I know what you mean about your mother. My husband thinks I'm mad the way I treat my fish  The only thing you can do is to tell her that fish are living creatures and they must be treated with respect. This means making their home as good as you can, which means getting the tank suitable for them. More fish die from water problems than any other cause.
Your Mum's way is probably based on old time thinking, or based on what shop workers say. We now know that all lot of old information is not correct, and it is well known that shop workers haven't a clue.




Re the photos, I'll have to let someone else help with that. Do you have access to a computer to down load your photos to? I upload photos from my laptop, which is easy. I have no idea how you do it from a phone 

It all depends on what the wood is. Bogwood tends to leach tannins, while redmoor doesn't, for example. There are lots of other types of wood as well.

How fast a piece of wood gets waterlogged and sinks also depends on the type of the wood, and the size and shape. Thin bits of wood sink faster than blocks, simple because the water has less distance to go to reach right inside. I had a piece of wood a couple of years ago which took 3 weeks to sink. I was beginning to think it would never sink 

The one that's already sunk needs to stay wet. If it dries out it will need soaking again. I have several bits of wood in a box and if I decide to use a bit, I have to soak it again before I can use it.

You can put it in the tank whenever you want. Some people put wood straight in the tank and use rocks to weight it down till it's waterlogged. I find it easier in a bucket but then if I tried the rock trick, knowing me it would fall off and squish a fish 

Shoaling fish do better when you get the whole shoal at once. Harlequins also like some cover, of the sort provided by floating plants. I have the closely related Espe's rasboras and until I got some floating plants they just hid in the back corner.

Keep an eye on your ammonia level, and if it shows above zero, do a water change. If you do get ammonia showing up, check nitrite as well. That will only start a week or two after ammonia.



Lights should come on at least an hour after the curtains are opened/the room light is turned on, and at the other end either turn off an hour before it goes dark/leave the room light on for at least an hour after tank lights off. This is because of the way fish eyes work, they need a transition period of an hour between total darkness and full tank lights. That doesn't mean to have them on all that time, just avoid sudden lights on or sudden lights off whenever you have the lights on.
Fish also need the lights to be on for the same duration every day, and at the same time every day, so a timer is perfect for this - just set it for the same every day.

You don't need the blue light, though if they can be set on a different timer from the white lights, you can have them set to come on just as the white lights turn off. maybe a 5 minute overlap just in case the timers aren't in synch.

As for duration, if there are no live plants, then as long as you want, but remember that the longer the lights are on with a plantless tank the more algae that will grow.
With live plants, try 6 hours a day to start with. if the plants starts to suffer from lack of light, increase by an hour. If algae starts to go mad, try an hour less.

The timer could be a problem if the filter runs off the same cable. What about the heater, is that the same cable too?

The only way you can use a timer is to wire the lights differently, which would mean unplugging everything, disconnecting the wire for the lights from the mains cable, then going into the light itself and fitting a new mains cable.


Why on earth to they make tanks like this. Filters and heaters need to be switched on 24/7. Lights don't but they should be switched on for the same duration at the same time of day, every days. Our lifestyles mean we can be there at exactly the same day every single day of the year to turn the lights on and off.
Sorry, rant over.


I have written a post, paraphrasing the one on the other forum, about tank lights. https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/new-fishkeepers/tank-lights-how-they-affect-fish/




You haven't got a betta or gourami that you've not mentioned, have you  They blow bubble nests.
Did you set the tank us just before getting fish - it could be bubbles from the substrate.
Other than that, I don't know........