Small, floating, cups... I use the cups my bettas come in. (after a thorough cleaning if course) I use them for things like fish transport, emergency separation, and occasionally for acclimation.
List of things aquarists should have on hand
- Thread starter jpierce3
- Start date
An expired credit card or used up gift card for scraping stubborn algae off of the glass, and a Dobie sponge for inner tank maintenance. The Dobie has no additives, and is a rock star at scrubbing heaters, rocks, tubing and all manner of what-have-you safely and gently.
Monofilament - for tying plants and scape together
turkey baster - perfect for fry and eggs
binder clips - handy for holding bags shut, clamping air hose
turkey baster - perfect for fry and eggs
binder clips - handy for holding bags shut, clamping air hose
yeah most of my tanks i have bought have been used but some way or another you find yourself spending money on new fish, new shrimps, plants,snails etc....lol.
Sort of. I'm cheap so I have never once bought a new tank. Got them all, stands included, used. Had to do some repair work every now and again, but tanks are easy to fix. Built quite a few stands with a buddy of mine. Used to get peoples "broken" filters and air pumps and what not and just fixed or mixed and matched till something worked. I think I have bought a couple powerheads a filstar or two new, but that's it. Oh, I bought a pond liner new. Don't get those used.
In fact, I'm going to get my pond filter back up and running for the 500g pond. I won't spend more than $20 at Lowe's for some plumbing and I have a good pump I bought used for $20. Over the winter I'm going to start working with acrylic so I can experiment with making tanks, sumps mostly.
Join a local club. Trading and working deals with members is a great way to get fish for a lot less than lfs and usually are a lot better taken care of. Oh and of course selling fry gets you money back to buy more fishy stuff
A couple of spare 5 gal buckets
Battery operated air pump and stone
Long stainless steel skewers for feeding veggies
Back scratcher for playing with the substrate
Variety of bottle brushes for cleaning filter tubing
Battery operated air pump and stone
Long stainless steel skewers for feeding veggies
Back scratcher for playing with the substrate
Variety of bottle brushes for cleaning filter tubing
tweezers! if you ever have any visible parisites on a fish, you can put the fish to sleep and pry them off with the tweezers, and its handy for feeding frozen bloodworms.
Totally essential. I couldn't image doing a bucket brigade when I had 40 tanks going. Especially doing daily water changes on fry and grow out tanks.
I like some of the other things people are using. The tongs and back scratcher would be cool for my wife since she can't reach the bottom of the tanks without a stool. I also like the chop sticks for a poken' stick. I usually only use a poken' stick out on the farm when I think something is dead, but guess it would work for a fish tank also.
Back up Generator for large fish rooms
If you keep a really large fish room and live in cold weather, let me suggest a back up generator. It was -4 here one very cold winter and my power went out. My fish room was only partially insulated. It was well heated normally, but it got cold the fastest. By the time I could borrow a generator, it was too late. It got down to 23F in the room. Tank temps dropped to 35F. Luckily, most of my show male were in the 125 in the house. House was down in the low 40's, but I cover the tank with a down comforter so it only got down in the high 60s. Lost $5000 in stock that day. It only took a few hours and I was still at work for the first two with my wife panicking at home.
I lost a $350 breeding group of wild-caught A. stuartgranti bi-colors that were amazing looking. Lost a bunch of F1 Maylandia estherae that had the blue males and red-orange females, a wild-caught group of Lab. "Hongi" and about 200 fry to 1 inchers. About 300 yellow labs all sizes and all the females. A huge group of Lab. "perlmutts." The list goes on and on.
