Getting Started with a Freshwater Aquarium

Starting a freshwater aquarium involves some initial cleaning, a little equipment installation, and a very important process that usually takes several weeks and is known as the nitrification cycle. The latter may sound like an epic Wagner opera written for aquarists, but it's actually a chemical and bacterial process that makes your aquarium habitable for fish.

Getting Started By now you should already have purchased an aquarium, an aquarium stand and canopy, and all the plants, aquarium supplies and equipment that your aquarium requires. If so, cleaning is the first order of business. Start by washing the aquarium. Then wash the supplies, aquarium decorations, and substrate. Yes, that means you need to wash the gravel that goes in the tank. Put it in a bowl and keep rinsing and draining until the water comes out clean. Once that's done, add the gravel to the aquarium.

Fill the aquarium about halfway before adding accessories and installing equipment such as filters, heaters, and lights. Make sure it all works properly as you finish filling the aquarium. Add dechlorinator when the tank is full.

The Nitrate Cycle
We seldom think about all the processes taking place to make the earth's atmosphere livable for humans, but fish require much the same thing. Here's how it works:

Fish produce ammonia through their digestive and respiratory processes. Ammonia is also created by uneaten fish food. This ammonia can become toxic to fish, but is prevented from doing so by nitrosomonas, bacteria that convert ammonia into less toxic nitrites. Such nitrites are still toxic, and require a further transformation by another bacteria, nitrobacter.

Until this nitrogen cycle has been naturally established, your aquarium is not going to be a very hospitable place. The problem is that ammonia is required to start the nitrate cycle, and ammonia is typically provided by fish (though nitrate cycles can be instigated by adding pure ammonia or importing bacteria-laden water from an established aquarium).

The traditional way of establishing the nitrate cycle is by adding hardy and inexpensive fish, such as barbs, danios, and mollies. It sounds cruel, but these are the fish best capable of handling the increased toxicity commensurate with an initial nitrate cycle.

A lot of algae may form during this stage due to excess nutrients in the water, but a 'biological filter' should be established in your aquarium within four to six weeks, at which point conditions will stabilize. Nitrate levels can also be reduced by making regular partial water changes.

Do not introduce new fish to the aquarium until the nitrate cycle is through. Use test kits to check ammonia and nitrate levels in the water. When both are at or near zero, your aquarium has cycled.