Aquarium keeping at home can be a wonderful hobby. There is nothing better than to see a beautiful thriving aquarium full of healthy, lively, colourful fish accompanied by thriving live plants. Aquariums provide stress relief and have a calming effect on people this is why they are commonly seen in doctors and dentist waiting rooms..
On the other hand, if you haven’t started out on the right foot then you could have a nightmare on your hands; cloudy water, diseased and dying fish, straggly plants etc. By making certain that you take note of the items listed below this will not happen to you.
Do Not Buy A So Called ‘Beginners Tank’
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 you need to know that a well maintained home aquarium is a delicately balanced ecological system which can easily become unstable. 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. Without going into any details here, your first tank should be no smaller than 36″ x 12″ x 18″.
Do not buy your tank and your fish on the same day
This is probably the biggest mistake that you can make. Your aquarium has to achieve some kind of equilibrium before you should consider adding any fish, this equilibrium normally takes up to a week to establish. Ideally you should set up your aquarium with everything, including plants but no fish. Leave it like that 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. After you have made sure that everything has stabilised introduce some cheap fish and check on their health over the next few days. If they appear to be ok then buy and introduce the rest of your fish.
Choose Your Fish Carefully
Do not assume that all of the fish you buy for your community tank will live happily together. You should not just take a chance on this. Unfortunately it is generally true to say that if a fish’s mouth is large enough for another fish to enter it then that will happen i.e. it’s going to be eaten! Males of some species 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 prefer to stay near the gravel while others prefer to swim near the surface. Different fish require different conditions (temperature, water ph etc), although this is not normally a major issue it should be considered. Buy fish that are full of life, do not accept any fish that look sickly or have split fins. The best approach is to find a really knowledgeable fish supplier who can advise you about these things.
Do not Overfill your Tank with Fish
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.
Don’t regard any of these rules as written in stone. 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 very important to take this into account. Establishing maximum capacity is often a matter of slowly adding fish and monitoring water quality over time, following a trial and error approach.
Check the Water Quality 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 have possibly 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 much larger natural environment this ‘cycle’ does not need any outside intervention. It is necessary to change at least 25% of the aquarium water to help it along. Levels of nitrate and nitrite in the water need to be checked regularly because high levels of these, particularly nitrites, will kill your fish.
So there you have it. By not falling into these traps you will make a good start with your aquarium and end up with a stunningly beautiful addition your home.
John Thomson is an aquarium expert. For more great freshwater aquarium information, visit http://www.freshwateraquariumsecretsonline.com.
