I bought an aquarium, marina seahorse aquarium 14l from P@H, set it up and 4 days later went and bought 2 cloud minnoes, the next day they were both dead and stuck to the front of the filter, emptied the tank, cleaned everything conditioned the water with tap safe, left it running for 4 days again this time bought 2 small comets, next morning the exact same thing both stuck to thr front of the filter, I am following all the instructions to a tee and now my daughter is getting upset, I'm considering just binning the idea but I like having fish, what do I do??????

Hi lainey

Seems like you have a rough start to keeping fish (like many here did) but hope FK can help. Some shops don't give very good advice I'm afraid!

Filters in fish tanks need to build up enough bacteria first, before they can deal and break down with ammonia, the result of fish poop and fish excreting ammonia, which in turn becomes nitrite and then nitrate. Usually this means adding a liquid source of ammonia (the fake fish) for 4-6 weeks to build up the filter bacteria, before the tank is safe to add fish. Most fish die if this is not undertaken first.

Liquid ammonia can be sourced at Homebase or Boot's on-line.

See here for making a tank safe before fish get added:
http://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/articles ... hless-cycling-article.htm

The other issue you have though is tank size, 14 litres will house no fish I'm afraid. A small shoal of fish (such as white cloud mountain minnows) require 60 litres and fancies need 180 litres just for two.

Have a look at the caresheets on the left hand menu here for tank size requirements. Depending what tank you can fit in, there may be other fish post a cycle more suited.

This link will assist in explaining too:
http://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/articles ... e-choosing-right-fish.htm

Sorry for the losses hard for children I know but hope we can get you back on track if fish keeping is what you really want to do.