two fish in a tank and one says to the other "how do you drive this bloody thing"

sorry

Pmsl ... I am sad but love jokes like that ...no more though can I have some serious answers please!!

[i]I don't want something I have to clean out[/i]

Don't get a tank then. You are going to need to do some maintanance, 10-25% water changes every other week (using a syphon to glean the sand or gravel), give the filter a rinse form time to time, scrape algae of the glass (depending on your water and light situation). If you don't a) it will look bobbins b) your fish will have shorter and stressfull lives.

I don't want something I have to clean out

Get a picture of a goldfish ?

http://www.iphonestalk.com/iphone-app-turns-your-device-into-an-aquarium/ 😉

Small and low maintenance,i`d look at the Betta fishes. I have Betta albimarginata. Poor water quality through lack of maintenance is where these fish thrive.

Betta

Bettas might be able to breathe atmospheric oxygen and can therefore survive in stagnant water, but it doesn't mean that they should be abused - they can still catch infections, get ill, etc.

If you add something to the water everyday, and I'm guessing most people intend feeding their fish everyday, then it will build up - the organic material can't simply escape from the aquarium on it's own, so it has to be removed by a human.

Unless of course you have the perfect ecological cycle, in which case you wouldn't need to feed the fish at all.

I have a 5ft tank & set up you can have for a pittance, I just want shut of it. If you had it under stocked you'd only have to do minimal cleaning (its over filtered and as a result its a lot less bother). In Wiltshire. Also have it sat on an ercol sideboard that can go too.

The fish aint zero maintenance,but the Amazon frogbit does a good job of nitrate removal... Stagnant it isn`t.

I was using the term stagnant here, as in water which contains very low levels of oxygen.

Okay maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. I don't mind having to do maintenance, what I don't want is the old fashioned bowls you had as kids where every week you had to tip the fish into the bath and scrub the bowl.

So what kind of maintenance/cleaning will/should I do? What types of fish should I be looking at?

And make sure your sideboard will safely take the weight - each litre of water weighs 1 kilo. Then there's the fish on top 😉

MAstiles ... yup that's something handy I wouldn't have thought of! THink I'll head into a shop for a bit of advice/perusing on Friday .

We went to a local oriental fish shop when we were still in the Big Smoke, it was in Syon Park in Isleworth.
The guy there said £100 gives you a good start (the tank, heater, filter, some fish, plants and other bits needed) and a bit of change too. We never went ahead as I couldn't stand the buzzing sound. Now I have a cat so the tank would not be entirely advisable 🙂

Get small Danios/minnows & loaches if you want low-maintenance.
Barbs look nice but can get aggressive if not kept in groups (when I was down to a single one, it started nipping the other fish)
I've got/had fancy goldfish, they poop a lot!
I've always found petshops/aquarium shops to only have boring fish, there's much more interesting varieties to be had from specialist breeders for not much more money.

Anyway, i'll be getting rid of mine soon, my favourite fan-tail (Jaws) died recently, he was a massive beast & i'd had it 8years. 🙁