Caring for Your Aquarium

A fish tank is no different from owning any other kind of pet. You are going to need to spent a bit of time caring and maintaining it. If you follow a good regular maintenance routine not only will you have a cleaner tank, but you will avoid a lot of unnecessary and unwanted problems. And most importantly you will have fish that live a lot longer, healthier lives.

Daily

When you feed your fish take couple of minutes to just watch them. Fish that are stressed will not feed well. You should also watch them moving around the tank to see if any of your fish are behaving oddly. Fish that are hiding or that are not swimming well may be sick or stressed. You should also look for any signs of disease, growths, spots or abnormal coloration. Any one of these things is an indication that you have a problem and you need to address it as soon as possible.

Take a quick look at the temperature to make sure that there is no trouble and check the filter to make sure that it is operating smoothly.

Weekly

You are going to have to change between 15 and 20% of the water. Fish water gets incredibly dirty. Try not to change more than this because you might upset the bacteria balance that you have in the tank. You can safely add most tap water without treating it, if you stick to less than 20% replacement.

This is a great time to clean the gravel. It only takes a couple of minutes and you can remove the old water at the same time. You should also scrape the glass of any algae. Algae can grow at an incredibly fast rate, so take a few minutes and clean it off.

Count your fish. If you have small fish one may have disappeared without you noticing. Dead or decaying fish in a tank can cause spikes in the water balance.

As part of your aquarium maintenance routine you should clean and thoroughly check your filter. Depending on what kind of filter you own, and how many fish you have, you may be able to do this once every two weeks. Take the time to look at all the electric equipment that you are using. Make sure that they are working properly and that there is no problem with cords or connections.