Want to do everything in your power to keep your aquarium in good condition and well maintained? There can be a multitude of areas and aspects to consider and watch when owning and caring for an aquarium. Here is an aquarium maintenance guide to assist you that goes over important aspects and elements to look at when maintaining your aquarium.
Know Your Fish
It is extremely important that, when choosing what fish you are going to have in your aquarium, you look for many different things—including the needs and behavior of the fish. Managing and regulating fish’s behavior can be a challenging aspect of maintenance, but these steps are crucial to the overall wellbeing of the aquarium.
Why is this so important? Well, sometimes certain fish just aren’t compatible with each other. Not only do different fish have different needs such as aquarium conditions and water parameters, but there are also times when the fish’s behavior comes into play. Educate yourself, so you don’t have fights in your tank!
Isolate Your New Fish
After deciding what fish you want in your aquarium, it is important to make sure to isolate them before integrating them into your tank. This is a key factor simply because you don’t want to risk taking any disease or infection that the fish could have encountered before and adding it to your tank. A two-week isolation period not only allows for nothing bad to be transferred, but it also allows for a transitional period for the fish.
Test and Change Your Water
Not only should your water be tested weekly, but it should also be changed when necessary. Having your own testing kits allows you to look at and regulate a multitude of important parameters when keeping your aquarium maintained on a regular basis. These areas include—but are not limited—to the pH level, alkalinity level, water hardness, chlorine and chloramine level, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and salinity. Each of these different areas has parameters that needed to be followed.
Cycle the Tank
This step is crucial for the overall well-being of the tank and its inhabitants! When beginning your aquarium, it is extremely important that you establish a nitrogen cycle. This should be done for at least a day before any fish enter the aquarium. But what exactly does this mean? A nitrogen cycle allows for any and all unhealthy elements to transform into bacteria that are beneficial and needed for survival for the inhabitants of your tank. What happens is that fish digest their food, and when it is digested and expelled, it is ammonia-rich waste. The bacteria then can take that ammonia and turn it into nitrate. Cycling the tank allows for the water to be livable and accumulated until the water is changed.
Do not skip this step. If you do not follow this step, then it can be detrimental to not only the inhabitants of your tank but your aquarium overall.
Maintain Your Filtration System
All your previous steps will have been a waste if you do not keep an eye on your filtration equipment. In order to keep this maintained, one should inspect and clean it every month. By replacing the carbon and filter cartridges and rinsing the pre-filter you are doing what you can to maintain your system. Always make sure that your specific system doesn’t need any additional maintenance.
Know How to Clean Your Tank
Find the sweet spot! Don’t over clean, but also make sure you clean enough. Cleaning allows for harmful waste that is in the aquarium to be removed. This allows for new helpful materials to replenish in the tank. By finding a happy medium when cleaning your tank, you are able to create a balance.
Please, do not use any cleaning products, as they could be harmful to all aspects of the aquarium. Instead, use lime remover or any glass cleaning products that are specifically made for aquariums. By doing this, you will ensure that your aquarium is safe and clean!
Regulate Heat and Light Levels
Always make sure that your temperature for your aquarium is kept stable, meaning in the range of 74 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit. This could differ depending on what fish you have present in your aquarium. This is why the education on your fish is important; you don’t want to pair a fish that needs lowlight with a fish that needs a large consumption of light.
Don’t Overfeed Your Fish
Setting a healthy feeding schedule is key! Overfeeding can kill your fish. The key is to only feed them what they can eat in one minute. Anything else can be harmful. It can also be helpful to skip feedings occasionally to just maintain the overall health of the aquarium.
Keep a Look Out for Disease
Being aware and present for your aquarium is a must. This will allow you to know when something is off or not working correctly. By doing this, it also allows you to get a feel for and spot anything out of the ordinary for your fish. You don’t want to miss a sign that your fish is sick. There are various symptoms that could occur when your fish gets sick, so understanding and educating yourself on that material would be greatly beneficial for your overall aquarium maintenance. This will also allow you to take the necessary steps when disease or sickness is found.
Make Sure Your Fish Is Healthy
Taking care of your aquarium can be a lot of work. However, it is crucial that these steps are taken and followed to ensure that your fish are happy and healthy.
Here at eFishMox, we do everything in our power to help you ensure that your fish are healthy. We have done this right here by providing you with an aquarium maintenance guide, but we have also done that by providing you with products and antibiotics such as fish sulfa forte to help care for and treat your fish. There is nothing we want more than for your tank to be healthy and you to be happy!
