Freshwater Aquarium Information – 5 Tips To Avoid Disaster

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Home aquarium keeping can be a wonderful hobby. A well maintained aquarium properly lit can look stunning with crystal clear water, colourful, healthy fish going about their business moving between thriving exotic plants. Aquariums are a common sight in doctors and dentists waiting rooms, this is because they are well known to provide stress relief and to have a calming effect on people.

On the other hand, if you don’t start out right then you could have the nightmare scenario of dead and dying fish, straggly plants, cloudy water and anything but a joy to behold. By making certain that you take note of the items listed below this will not happen to you.

So Called ‘Beginners Tanks’ Are Not For You

Small tanks, generally 12 to 18 inches across, are often sold as so called ‘beginners tanks’ presumably because they are easy to carry out of the shop! However it is important for you to realise that a home freshwater aquarium is basically in unstable equilibrium so you need to keep an eye on it constantly. Small aquariums are well known to be more dificult to maintain because they are not easy to achieve balance in and they go out of balasnce very rapidly. An ideal aqaurium size for a beginner should be in the region of 36″ x 12″ x 18″.

Do Not Buy Tank And Fish On the Same Day

This is a big big mistake. Before any fish enter your aquarium it needs to have been established for at least a few days, preferable a week to achieve some kind of equilibrium. You should set up your tank with everything in it except for the fish. You should leave it alone for a week. It is necessary for you to monitor the water temperature and its clarity and condition using test strips every day for the whole of that week. Provided everything has stabilised then introduce a couple of cheap fish and keep an eye on them for a few days. Add more fish only after they appear to be ok.

Select You Fish With Care

Do not expect all varieties of fish to live in complete harmony in your communtiy tank. This should not be left to chance. Sad to say that generally speaking if a fish is small enough to enter the mouth of another fish then that is what will happen i.e. it’s going to be eaten! Some species of fish have males that will fight to the death. Females of some varieties can be pestered to despair by the males so it can be good to have a ratio of females to males of certain species of around 2 or 3 to 1. Some fish are surface swimmers while others prefer to stay near the gravel. Different fish require different conditions (temperature, water ph etc), although this is not normally a major issue it should be considered. You should buy lively fish that can dart around the tank, avoid any that look sickly or have split fins. Finding a really helpful fish supplier who is willing to share his knowledge is probably the best way to go.

Do not overstock your tank

Various ‘rules of thumb’ exist for working out the capacity of your tank:

• 3 cm of adult fish length per 4 litres of water (i.e., a 6 cm-long fish would need about 8 litres of water).
• 1 cm of adult fish length per 30 square centimetres of surface area.
• 1 inch of adult fish length per gallon of water.
• 1 inch of adult fish length per 12 square inches of surface area.

Do not apply any of these rules too rigorously. You must realise that the fish you buy are youngsters and likely to grow to many times their size so they will eventually need more room. It is necessary to take this into account. Decide on your tank’s maximum fish capacity by slowly adding fish over a period of several months and keeping a watch on water quality.

Monitor the Water and Change it Regularly

It is important to monitor the water condition regularly as your aquarium can rapidly go out of balance and become poisonous to your fish. You may have heard of aquarium ‘cycling’. This is the name given to the process whereby fish waste turns to ammonia, bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrite and other bacteria turn the nitrite into nitrate. In the natural world this cycle generally works faultlessly without any intervention. Each week, to help it along, you must change at least 25% of the tank water. It is also important that you monitor nitrite and nitrate levels because high levels, particularly of nitrites will kill your fish.

So there it is. Follow this advice and you should make a good start and have an aquarium that you can be proud of and that will be a joy to look at.

John Thomson is an aquarium expert. For more great freshwater aquarium information, visit http://www.freshwateraquariumsecretsonline.com.