2nd aquarium purchase question

wised

Hi all we are getting a 2nd hand tank and all is included except fish.. My question is how long do we have to put tropical fish into the tank? Wife said that i need to wait atleast 4 weeks for the water to be clean of the bacteria.

We were thinking of adding guppies and some algae eaters to this tank. What advice can you give me as i want the fish now!!!!

Calmwaters

You need to cycle the tank before you put fish in it unless you are going to put lots and lots of real plants in it. You can read more about the cycle here:
A Beginner's Guide to the Freshwater Aquarium Cycle
also I would suggest cleaning the tank and everything else with boiling water before you set it up. Then before you get fish please test you water and get the hardness and ph and then make sure the fish you are getting will do well with your readings. We have a tab on the top of the forum that is tropical fish profiles there is alot of good reliable info in there about lots of fish.

zof

I would like to point out you can do a fish-in cycle(although a bit more work), and guppies are perfect for this, depending on the tank size around 2 or 3 will work good for a fish-in cycle, also live plants cant hurt but might be too big of a step at once for you. Read the post by byron in our plants section before you add plants so you can get a little more background.

Calmwaters

In my opinion the fish in cycle is the worst way to go about it. It is very hard on the fish and alot of time the fish don't make it.