Thinking of getting fish! How much work is it?

[Anonymous]

A school of Tetras, in an appropriately sized tank.

How much time do you dedicate to fish care every week?
What do you estimate your costs to be?
What do you do with your fish when you take vacations? We leave for two weeks every year.

Any recommendations for fish stores? I popped in to look at Congressional Aquarium. Is it a good place to source fish?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Plan to clean the tank weekly, including 1/3 water change. You'll need a suction vacuum and a bucket. And chemicals for the water.

If the tank is usually clean, you can leave for a couple weeks on vacation without trouble. They'll be fine with an auto feeder or a friend coming by a couple times.

Tetras are notoriously finicky and prone to dying, ymmv but consider guppies or platies which are hardier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Plan to clean the tank weekly, including 1/3 water change. You'll need a suction vacuum and a bucket. And chemicals for the water.

If the tank is usually clean, you can leave for a couple weeks on vacation without trouble. They'll be fine with an auto feeder or a friend coming by a couple times.

Tetras are notoriously finicky and prone to dying, ymmv but consider guppies or platies which are hardier.

OP here. Thanks. I was just reading about neon tetras and apparently they need very low-salt water, which can be achieved by using RO water, overfiltration, and hardly ever cleaning the filter. I would need to filter the water for at least 4 months before putting any neons in it:

https://aquariumscience.org/index.php/17-3-blackwater-fish/

[Anonymous]

If you have a bubbler and power goes out neighbor should come by to see it's back on.

[Anonymous]

A alot, weekly water changes, monitoring the water, etc. You need to clean the filter.

[Anonymous]

We had fish and a naturally planted aquarium.

Once the plants were established, we only needed to clean it every once in a while. We also did not need to feed the fish regularly. They ate stuff off the plants. The plants and fish waste created its own ecosystem, so we tried to leave it undisturbed. The warer was clear greenish, like clear lake water. We did have to top off regularly due to evaporation. Due to the high chlorine in northern Virginia water, we had to use pet store water, ehich was the most expensive part.

We mostly had platty fish, which are mostly low maintenance except they breed incessantly, and eat their own spawn, which might be upsetting for kids. We had to have a separate "nursery" bowl for the ones we were able to catch and rescue. Over the pandemic, we ended up supplying half of the locked down neighborhood kids with fish due to the prolific reproduction by the platy fish.

[Anonymous]

We had one for 10 years and it was great! The real work and expense is up front. If you have a budget in mind, double it. Once you get everything established, get your water ph stable and appropriate, etc etc, I’d say it’s 20-30 minutes of work every two weeks to maintain.

I agree with PP that a planted tank is the way to go if you can get it to take. But it’s tricky and often fails even though you did everything right. And if it does take off, you might find yourself needing to mow your aquatic lawn!

We had everything over the years. All the fish you could buy at a big box pet store, shrimp, an electric blue crayfish. Even a tiny turtle for a few years (not compatible with a planted tank or any fish less than half its own length— sliders are good hunters, and omnivorous and voracious) but she grew fast and was released.

Neons are beautiful and I totally see your vision. They’re difficult though. Guppies were my favorite. Hardy, pretty, varied. Same as PP, we supplied guppies to anyone who would take them off our hands. We’d choose which ones to keep and then track their genetics in the offspring. We also used the aquarium and a cheap plastic microscope for a ES science fair project.

Overall great experience for the kids — maybe bc I did most of the work! But they loved it and spent hours observing. And I loved it. It was my hobby. And like many hobbies I went through all the permutations and levels of difficulty and eventually passed the whole thing down to another family. No regrets!

[Anonymous]

We don’t know one friend or family member who kept at this hobby for more than 3-5 years. It was a passing fancy and everyone’s interests waned. Vacations were another hassle. The moms took on the cleaning. Constant issues. There is a reason why businesses with fish tanks just pay for a company to deal with this.

[Anonymous]

I had a 75-gallon fish tank for 10 years and the day I gave it away was a big relief. Tetras are very finicky and need excellent water conditions. I had a sizable group of clown loaches and they lived up to their name, beautiful and entertaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We don’t know one friend or family member who kept at this hobby for more than 3-5 years. It was a passing fancy and everyone’s interests waned. Vacations were another hassle. The moms took on the cleaning. Constant issues. There is a reason why businesses with fish tanks just pay for a company to deal with this.

Yeah, I think a lot of people get into it as decor, sucked in by instagram videos, thinking it'll be sooo feng shui, and only later realize it's ... alive. And in a completely unnatural way that requires human intervention and care.

I'm PP above who leaned way in, and it was the main decorative element of the kids' room. But also, it was pets, and science, and a nightlight on a timer, and a rewards system (good grades earned a fish store purchase, which stayed compelling to them for way longer than I thought it would.) One of my all time favorite videos is my 8-year-old bringing a clutch of snail eggs into focus on her little microscope. She sees the little hearts beating, and squeals and wiggles while still glued to the eyepiece.

That said, I don't miss it now. I'm so glad we all did that together for as long as we did. But I won't deny it was more work and expense than any mere decor deserves.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

Thanks for the descriptions - 10:51 PP, you certainly gave your kids a wonderful experience they'll never forget!

My kids are grown, so this is a hobby just for me. We have many other pets, hence why I'm wary of adding more work, but it's not like I can't do the work. Mostly I'm worried about how the fish will do when we're not home for long stretches of time. As PP said, if there's a power cut, etc. We'd need someone on standby, I suppose?

For any of your tanks smell, PPs?
Despite all the pets we have in the house, I'm very sensitive to smells and try to keep a really clean environment.

[Anonymous]

Mine didn't smell. Well, when i took the hood off and stirred up the gravel for cleaning, there was a faint pond-smell, but nothing offensive, and only when disturbed.

If you are absent for more than a few days, a planted tank is the way to go. The fish can eat decaying plant matter, their poop fertilizes the plants, the plants clean the water to some extent, and it's its own little ecosystem. Planted tanks IMO are stunning, kind of the gold standard of aqua-hobbies. But they are tricky! You can also get autofeeders that clip to the side of the tank and dispense food on a schedule.

And yeah, you should probably have a neighbor who can come in in case the power has gone out, to make sure everything is cycling correctly. An established planted tank gives you more leeway, because the plants will absorb some of the nitrates/ ammonia, but you want to minimize disruptions. Even a big tank is so small compared to a natural aquatic environment that upsetting the balance can cascade and kill the whole thing. This is a bigger risk earlier in the project. If you have to start over a time or two, don't get down on yourself. It's more normal than not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

Thanks for the descriptions - 10:51 PP, you certainly gave your kids a wonderful experience they'll never forget!

My kids are grown, so this is a hobby just for me. We have many other pets, hence why I'm wary of adding more work, but it's not like I can't do the work. Mostly I'm worried about how the fish will do when we're not home for long stretches of time. As PP said, if there's a power cut, etc. We'd need someone on standby, I suppose?

For any of your tanks smell, PPs?
Despite all the pets we have in the house, I'm very sensitive to smells and try to keep a really clean environment.

I am one of the ones with a planted aquarium. It didn't smell from the area. If you took off the lid and stuck your nose above it, it smelled similar to pond like PP said.

It did smell nasty when you cleaned it, from stirring up all the gunk on the bottom.

As far as traveling goes, because it was a planted tank, we could go a couple days without feeding the fish. If we went on a short trip, we didn't bother doing anything. If we went on a longer vacation, we just had the neighbor kid drop in every couple of days.

The biggest hassle was having a tank take up space.

[Anonymous]

I had a 40-gallon angel fish tank for many years THROUGH SEVERAL APARTMENT MOVES! (I was crazy, I think.)

It was crazy town because I had to move the tank every year or two, which involved emptying 2/3 of the tank and very carefully transporting it....and then setting it up again.

As others said, it requires weekly maintenance. I had a siphon that made water changes a lot easier--if a little messy. Maybe the technology has improved since those days.

As a fish owner, I went on vacation for a week. Before I left, I gave the fish a slight bump up of their fish food, and then I left them alone for the week. They were fine! Fish (angel fish, at least) can survive without food for a little while.

Yes, it's tiring work, but a newly cleaned aquarium is so beautiful and rewarding to look at. I say go for it!

[NP]