For those of you who know about fish

[AndrewGeibel]

Next year I am planning on setting up a fish tank in my apartment. I was given a 20 gallon tank to use. My question is what type of fish is easy to take care of, fairly clean, and can live comfortably in a tank of that size. It would be nice to have a fish that might not need heat. Gold fish are simple and cheap but I have had them before and they are pretty messy fish. Also, what type of filter would you guys most recommend?

[jknudson]

Those are some very open ended questions. I would find a fish that catches your eye in a local shop, do some research on your own and see if it would be suitable for that size of tank.

As far as filter choices, all I will recommend is to overfilter the tank, it will make your life that much easier.

Goldfish are great temperate fishes...but like you said are very messy.

A few other good choices for an unheated tank (within reason 72F+ ideally) would be White Cloud Mountain Minnows, zebra danios seem to do alright without a heater as well. Mountain stream pelcos.

My recommendation would be to spend the $10-30 on a good heater, that will open you up to many more fish.

Good luck!

[Ginevive]

Hm; goldfish tend to be a bit messy in smaller tanks. If you wanted them, you could feasably fit two in a 20g. But comets/commons can get upwards of a foot in length, so this is not big enough for them permanently. Two "fancy" goldfish would be fine in that size of a tank. Orandas are a hardier type of fancy goldfish;if you're beginning, I would advise against bubble-eyes, pearlscales and the more fragile ones. Black moors and telescopes are good choices too, if you think they're cute (I do.)
You could get some lower-maintenance tropicals if you installed a heater; this is not hard at all, to keep at the right temperature in a normally-temperatured room. Goldfish are great fish, but are pretty messy and produce a lot of ammonia; tropicals such as tetras, platies, and swordtails are a bit cleaner in relation, and you could get more in a 20g tank with relatively less cleaning than goldies.

[Bojangles37]

I used to keep a fairly wide variety of fish. No matter what you use, a tank is always going to need regular cleaning, but a good filter will certainly help. My favorite tank included a small school of neons, two khuli loaches, two clown loaches, a pleco, a few sword tails, and occasionally a couple rainbow guppies. Sometimes I had a couple of those little catfish type critters, but that was only if we felt like getting one. With a 20 gallon tank, you can safely put a fairly big group of smaller fish, as long as they aren't going to eat each other.

ALL of those fish proved pretty resilient for me, as, I hate to say it, but we wanted to get rid of the tank and no one wanted the fish, so we didn't really do a whole lot and none of them died. (Not sure that we had rainbow guppies at the time though, they don't seem like the surviving type.)

[Argentra]

Well, the rule of size is one inch of fish (total full grown size) per gallon of water. So you could have 20" of fish.

Do spend the money and get yourself a heater and a good 30-40 capacity filter (as they said, overfiltering saves you trouble). Heck, if I could I would send you my extra heater and air pump. Where do you live?

As for good fish species, in a tank that "small" the best choices would be the smaller community fish such as tetras, platys, guppies(single sex!), and swordtails. Also, having at least one loach or pleco will help cut down on cleaning duties as well. Make sure that whatever you choose, you have the tank setup and running for at least three days before adding fish to cycle the water.
Visit your local stores to get a look at the different fish and see what catches your eye. Then, make note of the species names and do some research online about them. Fish are all about available space and what the owner wants to see.

[Entropy]

I have a tank in our bedroom which is kept rather cold. It consists of 5 cherry barbs, 5 gold barbs, 2 neon tetras (I have NO CLUE how they survived.... crazy) and two betas (male and a female). And they are quite healthy and have been for quite awhile. It tends to be in the low 70's to upper 60's in there depending on things.

[Brimstone111888]

I would get a 40 gal top filter and an undergravel filter. The combination of the two made one of the cleanest tanks I've ever had. But as some people said, no matter how good your filter is you need to clean it. I could go 2-3 months before it would need a cleaning.

I would get a heater, most fish are tropical and need some heat. They are pretty inexpensive and all you have to do is make sure the water stays high enough.

Well you have the option of getting a wide variety of fish. One thing many beginners do is buy a whole bunch of expensive fish for their new tank and then a few days later they are all dead. I hate to say it but usually first fish that go into a new tank are "sacrifical". Fish produce bacteria, some bacteria they need to live, eat, breath, and poop properly. This bateria is usually spread through fish poop. So until it levels off some fish are going to die.

An easy way to avoid this is buying a prodcut called "Cycle". It pretty much puts the bacteria in the water for you.

Some easy fish:
Clown loaches- Easy but a tad expensive, They need schools of 2-3.
Angelfish- Pretty but semi aggressive
Tiger Barb- Semi aggressive, but most barbs are.
Plattys- Easy and come in a billion colors, but breed so easy. Left unchecked they can take over tanks. Same with guppies.
Gourami- Pretty fish little aggressive

There are many many more. Also have your watch checked before you buy fish. I think any place that sells fish does a water check for free.

Sorry for the length, but I hope it helps.

[PythonWallace]

If you can have up to 20" of fish in there, I would go with 2 crappy or blue gills. When they hit the 9-10" mark fire up the skillet and start over.

[AndrewGeibel]

Awesome ... thanks for the reply's everybody. I have some time to research it because I won't be moved into my apartment till August. I will start looking around at the different fish and filters and such.

[Entropy]

Angels do not do so well in chilly water, believe me. The Gouramis and Loaches aren't cold water fans either.