when I first started with fish I thought it was going to be easy but boy was I wrong. Sure you can go online and read everything on fish but that does not guarantee you are going to be successful on your first try. Fish can be extremely picky about pH. Now I’m not saying to just buy any fish you come across but I do suggest you try your hardest. I found out it is better to use live plants as well as a bobble wall to make the water move a little bit to remove anything from fish feces to make the food go to the bottom of the tank for your bottom feeders to eat. I also learned to have snails or fish that eat other snails. If you don’t you might end up with pest snails if you are not careful. Pest snails breed nonstop. For a little bit, they are beneficial but eventually, they will overpopulate your tank. Not many stores sell snails that eat other snails like assassin snails in the area I live. the only snails I could find are apple snails and mystery snails. I found out that the pH in my area was low. So I started to use pH up and pH down to prevent my pH from going too high. then I was told about crushed coral. Crushed coral and seashells that you find at the beach help with pH control but it occasionally causes your pH to go high. Ever since I used pH down it helped with controlling pH but I still and problems eventually. A lot of my fish were nocturnal so I feed them right before I went to bed. but what I did wrong was I used distilled water and added stuff to it. When I changed it to spring water it was fine as well as tap water. I ignored the chemicals in the water considering it was a small amount that I would help with preventing diseases and it worked perfectly fine. Now that my fish are dying of old age I feel accomplished.

Things you need to watch out for:

• pH levels not too high/ low
• aggressive behavior
• Brown slime
• White fuzziness of plants or rocks
• Know the nitrogen cycle inside and out
• watch for overfeeding
• Never put your hand in with aggressive fish no matter how small
• wash your hands well before/ after cleaning your tank
• make sure no soap is on you or any objects you put into your tank
• when doing ammonia treatments put two cupfuls or one tablespoon of ammonia for every five gallons of water
• feed slightly cooked peas if your fish seems constipated