Obviously you have to put everything into to a tank of some sort. There are many types of sizes and shapes that you can choose from. It all depends on what you are looking for and how much money you plan to spend. Tanks can range anywhere from $10 to $2000+. Many beginners make their first mistake by buying a small aquarium. The smaller the aquarium the harder it is to maintain the perfect balance that is needed for life. There are also many different shapes that you can choose from. There are the most common the rectangle then there are others like the octagon, cylinder, concave front, concove front, corner, or you could even buy an aquarium that is used as a coffee table.

Filter(must)

There are many types of filters in the world of aquariums, some are very useful while others do almost nothing. A filter is used to clean and filter (hence the name) the aquarium water so that the fish and certain types of bacteria can live and thrive. If a filter is not used, very frequent water changes will be needed and many of the fish will perish due to poor water quality. Many of the different types of filters in the market clean water well, and only need there filter media replaced once every other month or so. The filter media is what the aquarium water passes through as it gets cleaned. A power filter is a perfect example of how the media cleans the water. A power filter is a simple box-shaped object that hangs off the back of your aquarium. It pulls water up through a sihon powered by a small motor and then sends it through different media before returning it to the tank. The first thing it takes out is all the big of stuff that shouldn't be in the aquarium water(uneaten food, waste, algae clumps, etc.). The mechanical media usually consists of a bloch of foam or a clump of blue "filter floss". From here, the water continues out thruogh the foam and enters tne chenical media. This is usually Granulated Activated Carbon (GAC), a smaller package of carbon tha absorbs some of the bad chemicals from the water. From here, the water is either returned th the aquarium by a small water-fall-like spuot, a spray bar, or id filtered through a third media before going back to the tank. Used in AquaClear filters, a third section of the filter is devoted to a cartridge called AM-RID. Bascially, it helps remove ammonia from the water, so in fact it's second type of chemical filtration. On top of all this, bacteria loom inside of the filter and in fact it's a second type of chemical filtration. On top of all this, bacteria loom inside of the filter and in the aquarium gravel. These bacteria are good bacteria, because they help break down the waste and such and use it as food. A power filter is a great choice for any freshwater aquarium, and the only maintence needed is that the media cartridges are rinsed weekly and replaced every second month.

A filter that relies entirely on biological filtration is an undergravel filter.To describe simply, it's a large plate that sits under the gravel out of sight. What you do see, however, is something like a large power filter siphon coming up from the gravel. First this tube is taking water from the filter plate and sucking it up to the top of the aquarium, where it is let go. Now in order for that to happen, the water must come from the aquarium and pass through the gravel and the plate to create circulation. As the water passes through the gravel, it is also passes through tons and tons of bacteria colonies that live in the gravel. Here, the water is filtered by these bacteria and cleaned of bad things that you don't want. These aquariums are good because they need very little maittence. But, of they do require work to be done, they are very hard to service if your aquarium is full of water, fish, and plants!

Another filter is the sponge filter. A sponge filter consists of a smaal sponge like airstone that passes water through it. These are ideal for tanks in which fry are being raised in. The other filter for fry tanks is the internal box filter.

For those of you who drive nice cars, have executive positions in your company, or take trips to Waikiki biannually, why don't you do for a top-of-the-line filter? A perfect example would be a poweful external canister filter. This is much like a high powered power filter except that it can be placed under the aquarium or out of sight somewhere else. Another type of filter used usually only by advanced aquarists is a trickle filter. A trickle filter can be stored away from the tank much like a canister filter can be, but requires much more space. Although trickles are usually only used in salt-water aquariams, some heavily stocked chilid tanks benefit from them, too.

Heater(must)

A heater is essential to keeping an aquarium at a comfortable temperature for your fish. You do not need a heater, however, if you plan to keep goldfish. All tropicals do need a heater to keep the water at around 75F, which most fish are comfortable at. Of the different types of heaters available, I would recommend against getting a submersible heater. I prefer the heaters with which the top of the heater with control dial is out of the water at the back of your aquarium. Submersible heaters are difficult to troubleshoot and to get at for maintenance. Selecting the wattage needed to heat your aquarium is easy. Simply multiply the amount of gallons your tank holds by 6 to get the wattage needed. If you find yourself in between heater sizes, here is a small rundown on tank sizes and wattage needed.

First off, let me explain why I put lighting as a must and optional. It can be optional only if a) You plan on keeping your aquarium in a well lit room by sunlight b) You only plan on keeping fish that prefer subdued lighting c) You hope on keeping only plastic plants. If you want to go real cheap, you don't really need lighting, but why have an aquarium if you can't show it off to people the way it was meant to be seen.

Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, let's thalk about lights. First off, the most two common types of lighting are fluorescent tubes ans tungsten (incadescent) lamps. Tungsten are cheaper, come with many disadvantages. First of all, they require a lot more energy that fluorscent tubes and burn out a lot. Also, arquatic plants require certain wavelenghts of light for optimum growth. Many fluorscent tubes produce these wavelength (which also benefit fish), while tungsten bulbs lack these. Fish also look better under these types of lights. A rough guide to follow for how much lighting is required for your aquarium is simple. If you're using tungsten bulbs, then about 40 watts of lighting is needed for every 12 inches of aquarium length. If you plan on using fluorscent tube lighting, than about 10 watts is needed for rvery 12 inches of aquarium length.

For all types of aquariums, cover glass is needed to reduce evaporation losses and to stop dust from getting in the water. They also prevent floating plants from uverheating and active fish from leaping out of the tank.

Fish food(must)

All fish require some sort of nutrition. Some fish will eat the algae off of the walls of the tank. Others will eat plants or scavage the bottom of the tank. Most, however, require some type of flake or pellet food. This can be purchased relatively cheap at a local pet store.

Substrate(must)

Anyone who has owned an aquarium knows that subsurate is vital in an aquarium. It serves the purpose of recreating the fish's natural environment. But, it also serves a much more practical use in the home aquarium. The substrate houses most of the bacteria in the aquarium, which are essential to the fish. If you are usingan undergravel filter, then you might want to have approximately 50% more substrate than what you would normally use to house the bacteria.

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