Aquarium equipment

Setting up your aquarium is this easy!

You can decorate and furnish your home to your taste with table, chairs, carpets and cupboards without needing to hire an interior designer or to purchase expensive art. The same applies to your aquarium!

The equipment in your aquarium is dependent on two factors: What demands will your fish have and what suits your personal taste? Let’s start with the second factor. What fish species would you like to keep? Cichlids from Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi? Then you need a rocky reef aquarium. Goldlfish? Then hardy plants are the only option. Or a jungle aquarium with a shoal of tetras, catfish and a pair of dwarf cichlids? Then you need wood and a lot of plants

What aquarium type suits you?

In “Essentials” you will find 4 themed aquariums with all the information you need, including a film, a setup guide, a shopping list and the electricity consumption.

Jungle aquarium type JBL Rio Pantanal®

A bit of jungle river in your living room. Lively underwater action! No problem with the JBL Rio Pantanal® aquarium

Rocky reef aquarium type JBL Malawi Rocks®

The fish of Lake Malawi are as colourful as the fish in the coral reefs. This aquarium brings a bit of freshwater reef into your living room

Goldfish aquarium type JBL Goldfish Paradise®

Lively goldfish in the aquarium enhance any room perfectly! Invite some new flatmates into your home with this goldfish aquarium.

Aquascaping aquarium type JBL Dreamscape®

Mountains, valleys, meadows and fish! Create your dreamlike landscape under water with the Dreamscape® aquarium

General tips

And if you can’t find what you need with our theme aquariums, here some general tips to set up an aquarium:

Fish stock

First, stock your aquarium with fish that are mutually compatible, which you like and which are suitable for your aquarium size.

Substrate

Your selection of fish now determines how fine the substrate needs to be and whether it can be sharp-edged or not in the case of burrowing fish.

Stones and roots

Now you can put in stones and/or roots. Feel free to choose whichever layout you wish. Don’t forget to include a few hiding places for your future aquarium dwellers where they can hide.

Installing technical items

Now install the technical items. Attach the filter suction pipe (for external filters) or the complete filter (for internal filters) to the aquarium.

Pouring the water in

You have now set up your basic framework. You can now either pour in the water or insert the plants before the water.

Adding plants

When inserting the plants, please remember how tall the plants will grow and how much space they will take up at the sides. Plants that remain flatter should be placed towards the front pane, while taller plants should be placed towards the back.

Special cases

Many labyrinth fish build foam nests and need floating plants on the water surface. Burrowing fish such as loaches and armored catfish need "soft" substrate, which means not sharp-edged grit or lava soil!

There are fish species for which every plant is seen as food. For these fish you unfortunately need to forgo plants or you have to rely on plastic plants. But for many plant-eating fish species it is also possible to take countermeasures with lots of fast growing plants. Fish also jump and unintentionally depart from the tank. A good cover or a securing of the corners and loopholes in the cover pane may help against “dried fish”. It is easy to plug such holes with foam.

A word about cookies before we continue

The JBL Homepage also uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: We require technical and functional cookies to ensure that everything works when you visit this website. We also use cookies for marketing purposes. This ensures that we recognise you when you visit our extensive site again, that we can measure the success of our campaigns and that the personalisation cookies allow us to address you individually and directly, adapted to your needs - even outside our website. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not allow (more on this under "Change settings").

The JBL website uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: Technical and functional cookies are absolutely necessary so that everything works when you visit this website. In addition, we use cookies for marketing purposes. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not (more on this under "Change settings").

Our data protection declaration tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. Please confirm the use of all cookies by clicking "Accept" - and you're on your way.

Are you over 16 years old? Then confirm the use of all cookies with "Noticed" and you are ready to go.

Choose your cookie settings

Technical and functional cookies, so that everything works when you visit our website.
Marketing cookies, so that we recognize you on our pages and can measure the success of our campaigns.

PUSH messages from JBL

What are PUSH messages? As part of the W3C standard, web notifications define an API for end-user notifications that are sent to the user's desktop and/or mobile devices via the browser. Notifications appear on the end devices as they are familiar to the end user from apps installed on the device (e.g. emails). Notifications appear on the end user’s device, just like an app (e.g. for emails) installed on the device.

These notifications enable a website operator to contact its users whenever they have a browser open - it doesn’t matter whether the user is currently visiting the website or not.

To be able to send web push notifications, all you need is a website with a web push code installed. This allows brands without apps to take advantage of many of the benefits of push notifications (personalised real-time communications at just the right moment).

Web notifications are part of the W3C standard and define an API for end user notifications. A notification makes it possible to inform the user about an event, such as a new blog post, outside the context of a website.

JBL GmbH & Co. KG provides this service free of charge, and it is easy to activate or deactivate.