Site last updated 23rd of May 2013

I entered aquarium keeping simply by chance. My son had a River Reef 94L which he had owned for about a year before he grew tired of maintaining it.I agreed to take it off of his hands and that was how it all began.

I had been given a very small booklet concerning the aquarium, and was surprised to see that it had built in filters, which were out of site and built into the back of the aquarium. I asked when the filters were last cleaned and he replied "what filters".

Knowing nothing about aquariums or how they were run I tried to look at as many aquariums as I could. Some were good but most were covered in various types of algae.

I went straight out and purchased the new filters for the aquarium, and asked at the LFS for some advice. Good job I did, as I would have just thrown out the old filters and put in the new.

Over the next few months the aquarium started to look a lot better. I was told that the reason for the algae was due to high Nitrates. My tap water is 25 to 35 ppm depending on the rainfall.These figures are reputedly too high so I had to look for some way of reducing the numbers?. I was told about RO (reverse osmosis) units that you could purchase that would output water with zero Nitrates, so this was the road I went down.

The fish that came with the aquarium were 4 Serpae Tetras, 4 Black Widows, 2 angel fish, 1 Rainbow Shark and 2 Common Plecs. Little did I know that these fish were going to give me some serious problems later on down the road. The fish were now being fed and looked after and the 2 Plecs started to grow, and as they did one started to bully the other, so I knew that if I was going to keep the fish I would have to find a solution.

A year and a half after inheriting the River Reef 94L I was told of someone who was immigrating and planning to leave his aquarium and fish behind. After a lot of arrangements I managed to get the help of some friends and the aquarium was broken down and moved to my home. This aquarium is an Aqua One 1200b of 300 litres (66 UK Gallons), and had a lot of Goldfish that came with it.

Two years after I had started, I purchased 2 Aqua One 900 Marine aquariums (42 UK gallons). The plan was to separate the Plecs and share the rest of the tropical fish between the 2 new aquariums.

I would not be able to make any further changes as the 3 aquariums fill up our small living room, so lets hope for the best.