Newbie-How Many Fish?

I agree with Iain. The price and size of the animals living in the tank is
regardless. Giving an animal the best conditions is the best solution.

Saying to ignore test kits is ignorant!

Iain Miller wrote:

"Fish Keeper" wrote in message
...
for crying out loud. this is a little girl with a five gallon tank with
a frog and a little fish.
if you want my opinion.....get another little frog and maybe one more
fish. the less you have in the tank the better. don't worry about all
that testing stuff....we are not talking about an elaborate system with
exotic expensive fish here. if you want a catfish or large snail that
would be fine. small cory cat would work o.k.
change out about a gallon a week of water (using same temp and
dechlorinator). enjoy them and forget the test kits.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I'm sure the OP wants this thing to
work & the more you know about what's going on the more likely it is to do
so. Next step might be to get a bigger tank with more fish - who knows.
Either way the cycle applies whether its 5 gallons or 500 gallons. My kids
(5&7) help look after the two tanks we now have & the testing is all part of
it - indeed, they remind me to do it from time to time & they enjoy knowing
that we are doing the best we can for our fish. They also learn from it.

A while back we set up a 10G with only two platties in it & we had more
problems cyclling that than with either of the two bigger tanks we now
have - Nitrites nearly went off the scale (probably because we over fed -
hence the stuff I wrote about not doing so).

I.