Now I'll be honest, when I first got the idea to set up an aquarium it was more of a " I've always wanted an aquarium" kind of a thing and unfortunately the biggest mistake that I made was not getting properly informed and thinking the classic - " How hard can it be ".Well its more complicated than it looks and there if one piece of strong advice that I can give it's this: GET INFORMED! Not like a quick google search here and there. Really take the time and understand the basics of fish keeping. It will save you a lot of stress, money and fish lives.
After bringing our very first tank home, which we decided to go for a 160L set up that included the basics bits for start up. We were obviously very exited to set it up and so we did just that. We weren't totally clueless about the set up, we knew the basics like, washing the substrate, dechlorinating and starting the cycle. One of our biggest mess ups happened right at the beginning. We didn't think twice about where the tank is going to live. So we placed it on a surface that wasn't perfectly level and stable, a couple of days later...CRACK! The bottom glass had split
Luckily the shop was very understanding and exchanged it for us, but we were literally back to square one again. That mistake cost us time, a lot of stress and a ton of wasted water.
So lesson learned. Always make sure you have a very sturdy, LEVEL surface to place your new pride and joy on.
Aside from the cracked tank disaster; the mistake that screwed us over the most was how we handled cycling the tank. We'd heard the basics from the shop - " it takes 4-6 weeks, but you can speed up it up with bottled bacteria" So we added the bacteria according to the bottle instructions and waited until the nitrite was zero for a couple of weeks. Then we added our fish. Big mistake.
The tank was nowhere near fully cycled. On top of that, we added to many fish at once and our filter wasn't strong enough for the bioload. Ammonia and nitrite kept spiking, and to prevent fish losses I was basically sleeping next to my test kit and bucket - doing emergency water changes, sometimes multiple times a day. It was exhausting, stressful and we still lost a few fish along the way.
That experience taught me that understanding the nitrogen cycle properly is one of the most important things when starting this hobby. I go into much more detail in my post - The Aquarium Cycle Explained.
After all the setbacks - the cracked tank, the cycling disaster, and a few other painful lessons - we finally took a step back, did a lot more research and started over properly. It took time and patience but today my tank is stable, the plants are thriving and we even have baby shrimp popping up everywhere. The occasional " What is my fish doing now?" moment still happens....but overall it brings me a lot more joy that stress.
