20 Gallon Fish Aquarium Starter Kit Review

20 Gallon Fish Aquarium Starter Kit Review. You can also find aquarium starter kit deals on amazon if you want to have a look. There are some descent deals I talk about in this livestream. Amazon has all kinds of sizes too. Here is a link: Starter Kit Setups: https://amzn.to/2pTs9w5 Continued Conversation: Very new fish owner here in need of advice. (Please be gentle. I’m aware that I messed up. I would just like to figure out everything I did wrong, so that I don’t repeat the same mistakes. Yesterday, I deep cleaned one of my tanks. I put my Betta in a glass and dumped the water, saving a large glass of water, about 25% of the tank, but might have not been enough. All the silk plants had a layer of algae on them, so I let them soak in warm water with some bleach for 10 mins then triple rinsed then in cool water. I rinsed the gravel, and scrubbed out all parts of the tank with water and a scrub brush. I reassembled the tank, and replaced two of the silk plants with real, aquatic plants. I put one silk plant back in as well as an elephant ornament, both have been in the tank since I set it up. I filled up the tank with fresh water, added stress coat and the glass of old water, then allowed the filter to run. A little while later, I check out my clean tank and see Clifford acting very lethargic. He’s usually pretty lively, especially when he sees me, so I was worried. I scooped him out and put him back in a small glass to observe him. He began to act like his feisty self again, so I put him back in the tank thinking he may just be tired from the stress of everything. However, this morning I found him no longer with us. I feel awful because I’m sure it was my fault. I’m assuming I changed too much water, and the shock killed him, but I wanted to share my story to see if I did anything else wrong, and what I can do differently. I’m very new to aquariums in general, but especially to Bettas. They’re beautiful and I love their personalities, so I’d like to get another one, but I need to make sure I know what I’m doing (and what I’m not doing) to give the next fish a long, happy and healthy life. Aquarium starter kits can be somewhat expensive at times. With the artificial plant that you cleaned in bleach, after rinsing it very, very, very, well you should have then soaked it in a container of fresh water that was dosed with about 5x the normal amount of water conditioner to make very sure all the bleach was gone. The water conditioner would have neutralized any remaining bleach. Did you make sure to match the new water's temperature with the temperature of the water you saved? If you didn't he might have been in shock from the change in temperature. How often are you doing water changes? If it's weekly, and none of your levels (ammonia, nitirite, and nitrate) had spiked, doing a large water change should not have bothered him. It's when you fail to keep up with the water changes, and the levels change drasitically, that they are most likely to be shocked by a large change. Hi, I'm very sorry to hear of your loss. Before you get a new betta, go ahead and let you full tank sit for about a month. This will allow it to cycle properly before you add any other fish. Buy yourself some Seachem Prime and a master test kit. It has instructions in it that will help you do the tests. For the first week, feed your tank like there are fish in there. This will cause ammonia to build up, this is good! It will then be converted to nitrites. After a couple of weeks, your ammonia and nitrites will be high, the beneficial bacteria need the nitrites to reproduce. Your tank will be ready for new fish when you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and 20-40ppm nitrates. Then, do a 25-50% water change so that your nitrates are around 10-20ppm and you're all set for a new betta! i'm new too. learned that you should use super hot water on them maybe scrub w clean brush but not hard enuf to damage plant, wait til water cools, and then put back (adding conditioner to any fresh water u add). no bleach, no chlorine, etc. just plain hot water. 30-50% water change at most. new water was same temp as old water and you let clifford acclimate to the water temp before you put him back into tank? Some good advice here. You can use a weak bleach solution on your ornaments as long as do like someone else stated. Also, unless there is a specific health reason, you should never do a "deep clean". You destroyed much of the beneficial bacteria. A simple gravel vac is all that is usually needed. Same goes with your filter. Rinse out the media in tank water (at a different time you do water changes) and replace only when necessary. Your filter houses a lot of BB as well.