How to Set Up a Freshwater Aquarium

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Michael and today we are going to talk about how to set up a freshwater aquarium. One thing you want to take into consideration when you are setting up your aquarium is where you're going to place it. You don't want to put it in too much sunlight because that will cause too much algae to grow into your tank. Another thing you want to take into consideration is the size of your tank. This right here is a 16 gallon aquarium so when I'm looking at my gravel, I want to make sure that I have 16 pounds of gravel because you need one pound per gallon of gravel. And that's to set up the correct bacterial level in your tank. You want, it's going to grow good bacteria down in your gravel. The other thing you want to look at as well, is the chemicals that need to go into your water. I recommend checking with your local pet shop to see what your particular needs are in your area. Here in our shop, we use the Kent Ammonia Detox. And this helps get rid of the ammonias, the chlorine and the chloramines, so that we can have safe levels for our fish when we set it up. Another really good thing to put in that aquarium as well is a product like Eco-Start and what Eco-Start does is it adds good bacteria into that tank and that's something that needs to be established as well. So once you've picked out your products like that, you take your gravel and you want to rinse your gravel out. A kitchen colander is excellent to use to rinse that gravel. Just rinse it really well with fresh water. Then take your gravel and you place it into your tank. Set your ornaments up whatever you've chosen, into that gravel as well, and then you can start to fill that tank up and put your chemicals in, as well. Your filter that you've chosen should be rated for your particular tank. Like I said, this is a 16 gallon tank. I've actually chosen to use an aquarium filter that's rated up to 30 gallons. I like a little bit extra filtration for my tank so that I can add a few extra fish. Once everything is established and your tank is going, you can then add fish at that point. Today we talked about how to set up a freshwater aquarium and my name is Michael. You have a good day."