Hi There!

This is my first post so I'll provide a brief history of my aquarium adventure. I have been into aquariums for about a year and a half now. For about a year I had a 15 gallon (nano) tank, initially with some Guppy fish in them. Later I tried adding different community fish species such as black molly, sword tail, neon tetra, ... with mixed results. Mostly of the new fish that I introduced died and the owner of my local fish store told me that most fish are not compatible with Guppy as it has certain kind of parasites! Not sure if this is true as I found scores of articles about mixed community tanks. Comment below if you know more about this.

I've always been into cichlids so I decided to give them a go in my aquarium. Most local fish stores in my home town (Ankara, Turkey) only has two types of cichlids commonly known as the Electric Yellow (Labidochromis caeruleus) and Pindani (Pseudotropheus socolofi). So I bought them and put in my community tank. At that point I had only two Guppies left, and not surprisingly, they died a few days after the introduction of the cichlids.

After having the cichlids for a few months, it was clear that this aquarium was too small for them. So I decided to buy a larger aquarium and purchased a MinJiang brand aquarium from the fish store. I paid it a hefty price of 1000TL which is about 350$. But apparently that was still a good deal. The aquarium is slightly longer than a meter and it takes 160 liters (about 40 gallons) of water. Initially this aquarium seemed huge. But now I got used to it and it actually looks small. Here is a picture of my tank as it is now:

I have about 20 fish in my tank and as you can see I have decorated it with natural rocks that I bought from a garden store. I have two Anubias plants (Anubias barteri var. nana) and two Java ferns (Microsorum pteropus). I also have an artificial plant that you can see on the right. Finally I have two pieces of Mangrove roots and I'm using a type of white sand that I also bought from the fish store. In a later post I'll share more information about the types of fish, plants, and materials in my aquarium including things like the filtration system that I'm using.

To keep this post short, I will conclude by saying that I'm very open to learn new things about how to maintain a healthy and vibrant aquarium. I would love to read your comments to keep this blog more interactive. Having this blog will be a learning and sharing adventure for me, and maybe I can inspire some interested people to get into this hobby as well.