Hi Sami!
Your dad posted a note about your fish.  I'm sorry to hear that you lost your 
finny friends, but unfortunately this happens a lot to aquarists.  Sometimes 
you can figure out what happened, and sometimes you never do.  I've lost fish 
to illness, water problems, and stupidity (theirs and mine!).  I've had fish 
jump out of the tank, get stuck in the filters, and recently lost two fish 
who managed to get wedged between the rocks and the glass.  On the other 
hand, once you get a tank going and established, you'll get years of joy out 
of it.  And you must think in terms of the tank, not in terms of each fish.  
I never tell people that I have a certian number of fish.  I have three 
tanks.  And as some fish die, we replace them with new ones.  The tanks are 
always changing in their color and movement.  With fish, your not just taking 
care of animals, you're taking care of a whole environment!
The best advice I can give you for starting a new tank is to be patient.  
It's very hard (even for grown-ups), but a hurried tank can often become a 
dead tank.  The most important members of your water environment are the ones 
you can't see.  It's the tiny organisms that maintain the chemical balance of 
the water, so you have to raise them, before you can raise fish.  As hard as 
it is, you need to set up the tank with everything except the fish, and then 
run it for at least a week, two weeks if you can wait.  This allows the 
microscopic organisms (at my house we call them "friendlies") to start 
growing.  Once they are established, you can introduce the fish slowly.  Then 
the friendlies can strike a balance with the fish waste.
I also recommend using both under-gravel filtration and charcoal filtration.  
I use a filter called a Penguin 110 on my 20 gallon tanks.  I like the 
Penguins because they have a Bio-Wheel.  The Bio-Wheel helps to keep the 
friendlies growing.
You might also get a water testing kit, if you don't have one.  That way you 
can monitor the chemicals in your tank, and you'll know when the friendlies 
have the water just right.
Good luck with your tank!  And please let me know how it goes.
Feel free to write back with any questions you have.
Robby
--- Maximus 3.01
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