(upbeat music)
- [Steve] So I'm a strong believer
of taking care of a fish tank,
is knowing as much, what to do as what not to do.
And I've got a few thoughts on this.
And this is not an expert video.
If you've been taking care of fish tanks for five years,
with success, this isn't gonna help you,
but if you're new at it, it may be helpful.
The biggest thing, that a lot of people make a mistake,
is don't overfeed.
You don't have to feed these fish every day.
In fact, when I go on vacation,
these fish go for an entire week, and they don't get fed,
and they seem to do just fine.
I come back and they're hungry, I may have them fed once,
like have my father in law drop in, and give 'em a pinch,
- [Dustin] And if you do have your plant,
or your fish fed on for vacation,
pre-measure the amount until otherwise,
they're gonna come in.
and dump the whole stupid container in there.
Ask me how I know this.
(laughs)
Yeah, great.
- Oh by the way,
does anybody fed the fish while they're in their bags
on the way to the pet store?
No, you don't need to feed your fish every day,
you don't need to feed your fish three times a day.
(music plays)
- Exactly.
- What's next Steve?
- Don't keep the lights on all the time,
if you were going to plant an aquarium, put it on a timer,
put it on a timer for like six hours a day,
maybe seven hours a day, and don't leave it on 24/7,
if you leave your light on 24/7, the fish are gonna hate it,
and the plants are gonna grow a bunch of algae,
and they're not gonna do well.
- How long?
- I've got this one six hours,
and if you don't have really strong lights,
maybe seven hours, but if you get too much algae,
cut it back, you're doing too much,
and you'll figure it out depending
on how much algae you have.
So, don't leave the lights on for too long.
- Don't be too cheap.
Don't buy the cheapest lights,
the cheapest heater, the cheapest filter
because if you're buying really junky stuff,
something's gonna fail, and you're not gonna do well.
It's not gonna heat evenly,
the filter's not gonna do a good job,
the lights aren't gonna grow your plant, don't be too cheap.
- Don't be too cheap is a beautiful thing,
I wanna just put those in kind of,
my order of importance of heat of those,
and number one thing not to cheap out on,
and this is a tough one between number one and number two.
Number one, for me, would be the heater
because if you cheap out on the heater,
the heater could get stuck on, and actually kill everything,
or if it's stuck off, it stays cold,
cold is not as bad as hot, but hot would kill everything.
Number two being so close behind with lighting.
You can get it buy with crappy lighting,
but you're never gonna have a lot of success,
and number three would be the filter,
the filter, you do your water changes,
you got a little more leeway, that's my personal ranking.
I don't know if you'd agree or not, but...
- Well, I mean, I'm not saying don't look for a deal,
I'm just saying just don't buy junk.
- Don't buy junk.
- Like if you buy the worst junk that you get at Wal-Mart,
you're not gonna do well.
- Dude, I bought a K-Mart heater as a kid,
I'll never forget it dude,
it was like I had like eight bucks,
and I was like this heater's five bucks, I got a gamble.
- Did it cook everything?
- Oh it was horrible, dude,
I like burnt my dad's carpet on the floor of his house,
and like yeah, it was all bad.
(music plays)
- Don't stir up stuff too much.
So, if you're like moving stuff around,
and you're stirring up a little bit,
add your declorinator, right?
I use Prime, not everybody uses Prime,
I'm a fan of Prime, I've been using it like 20 years,
and it's never done me wrong, so I stick to it.
- Yeah, sure.
- But like, if you're gonna stir it,
so don't constantly stir stuff up,
it's best to just leave stuff alone.
Yeah, every now and again
you need to clean out the sponge of your filter,
and then add a bunch of Prime,
but don't stir stuff up all the time.
Don't get the hardest plants, and fish,
and expect to be successful
because if you've got fish that no one else can keep alive,
and you don't know what you're doing, why..
(laughs)
- They're gonna die.
- You're gonna kill fish.
- And you know, I've got some challenging plants in here,
but I've got carbon dioxide,
and I've got metal-halide lights, so if I did not,
I would not be getting those really hard plants.
- Yeah, start with, and just a caveat to that,
start with easy stuff, when the easy stuff lives,
congratulations, you've achieved level one,
then let's move up a level.
Start with easy.
- And if you're buying on Dustin's site,
you have stuff rated as for beginner, and not for beginner.
Just read the fine print.
- Read number one, it can grow in your toilet,
ten's almost impossible, that's it.
- That's right.
(music plays)
- Good plug.
- Don't buy fish that don't agree with each other.
If you get an angel fish, it's gonna get big,
and you get some tiny little tetra,
the angel fish will eat your tetra.
It's gonna happen.
- How about this?
Don't buy fish that have like other dead skanks in the tank.
Like if you're buying,
and this is a different level of like,
what we're saying here.
- Yeah go to the pet shop,
and there's like three floaters in the tank.
- Yeah, if there's five dead fish
in the tank that all look horrible,
like don't buy fish out of that tank.
- Yeah, but buy fish that agree.
Talk to the people at the pet store,
say what fish can I put with a cardinal tetra,
and they'll tell you a ram.
- Preferably the older person at the pet store.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- General rule.
- And I think the most important rule for fish tanks,
Don't get into fish tanks, if you don't like fish tanks.
If you don't enjoy this hobby,
if you don't actually like doing the work,
messing with occasional water changes,
enjoy setting stuff up and breaking it down,
enjoy messing with it, if you don't enjoy this, don't do it.
- Yeah, they're not something you hang on the wall,
and forget about.
- It takes a little bit of work, and like, but I enjoy it.
I actually like working on this,
I like you know, doing water changes,
I like you know, switching stuff up,
I like you know, changing the way things look,
and just working on it,
it's something I enjoy working on when I'm not at work.