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03:16
Hey folks! I have a growing interest for aquariums, but I would like to be more knowledgeable before even thinking of getting one. The problem is I have no clue which information is reliable out there. Do you have any book or website to recommend to a curious beginner?
 
5 hours later…
08:07
0
Q: Are dogs sensible to star anise's smell?

trejderI have just read (in Polish) a 1985 crime novel (very weak), by Norwegian author Gert Nygårdshaug. It seems, that it wasn't translated to English (but, that's not a problem). Its original title is Honningkrukken. In the end of this story, there is a tiny note, that main character took a bottle o...

 
7 hours later…
15:00
@Kareen As far as picking fish go, I'm a big fan of the "What Fish?" books. They give good summaries of the requirements of the fish and what trouble you might have with them.
They'll have all the common fish you'll see in a pet store.
As far as tank care goes, the most important thing is learning about the nitrogen cycle, and the importance of nitrate and nitrite levels.
10
Q: How does one effectively "cycle" an aquarium?

Peter GraceI have read that prior to putting fish in an aquarium, one must "cycle" the tank so that bacteria that eat ammonia will produce nitrate, and nitrate-eating bacteria will make nitrite. I understand the chemistry behind it but I'm not really sure what is the best practical method to do this. I'd ...

 
2 hours later…
17:07
@MattS. Great, thank you!
17:20
@Kareen No problem. The only issue I've seen people have with starting new tanks is not being patient and putting too many fish in the tank too early.
Yeah, I'm not planning on getting a tank for a while (I don't have a lot of room in this apartment and I want fish to have space), so I'm up for learning as much as possible about care in the meantime and hopefully know what I'm doing by the time I get lives in my hands.
Bigger tanks are better not just because you can put more fish in them, but because they'll have a larger buffer for the cycling process.
Don't let anyone sell you a tank smaller than 10 gallons unless you're planning on keeping a betta or shrimp.
The general rule of thumb is for each gallon of water, you can have 1 inch of fish.
Of course that can vary, like if the species is an active swimmer.
17:39
Right, I'd definitely want at least a 10 gallons
Live plants will also help keeping the tank clean and the chemicals stable. The downside is that they're a bit more pricey than plastic plants, and can be a pain if you have fish that dig around the substrate.
I've had to replant things daily until the roots grew long enough because of an active catfish before.
Yikes
He's about 7 inches long so he mows down anything in his way when he wants to.
We had a tank when I was a kid and of course my mom did all the hard work, but we had a couple of live plants, so only having plastic plants didn't even cross my mind.
Wow, didn't know they could do that, all we had were tetras and guppies
I had a native tank set up, with a pictus catfish and a small sunfish for a while.
I think normal people keep cory or oto catfish.
17:49
Yours sounds awesome though.
The oto cats will sucker themselves to the side of the tank, which is kind of cute. liveaquaria.com/product/…
That is cute. Also sounds super useful.
0
Q: How can you tell the difference between a male or female banjo catfish?

Matt S.I recently added two banjo catfish to my tank, and just out of curiosity, I was wondering how I would determine the sex of them?

Something to consider when you're looking at fish, is there are 3 levels that fish swim in. Top, middle, and bottom.
Most fish you'll see at a pet store will swim in the middle, except for the bottom feeders like catfish.
But there are some top-level fish like killi fish that will only swim around the top.
If you can pick out fish that are divided between the 3 levels, you can have more room in your tank for more fish, as opposed to only getting fish that swim around the middle of the tank.
Interesting
 
3 hours later…
20:34
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Q: Could we have community ads too?

Matt S.On many of the other Stack Exchange sites I've seen meta posts collecting community ads to submit to help advertise their site across the network. Are community ads something that we would want to do?

21:30

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