Everyone love to have a beautiful aquarium sitting in their living room or bed room to get the privilage of viewing it. But most people don't realize the importance of maintainance. Poor or improper maintainance can lead to higher mortality of your fish. Everyone is busy with other things in life, that pulls them away from the responsibility of their fish. So how do we fix this problem? How can you maintain healthy fish with minimum maintainance?
Here are some simple and basic tips:
1) Get a big aquarium. The bigger, the better. The reason being, larger volumes of water tend to fluctuate less in ph, ammonia and temperature. This eliminates the sudden shocks that your fish experience due to drastic chemical and temperature changes.
2) Keep minimum fish. The less fish, the better. Each individual fish releases waste products which pollutes the water. The more fish you add leads to more pollution to the water. In addition to polluting the water with their waste, they also utilize the dissolved oxygen, thus reducing the oxygen content in water.
3) Keep small fish. The smaller, the better as small fish have lower demands of food and produce less bio-waste. Small fish like tetras, guppies, dwarf gouramis etc. are best.
4) If keeping bigger varieties like gouramis, angels, tigers etc. you will need to keep very few of these. The bigger the fish, the lesser the number.
5) Install a few sponge filters in your aquarium. The more, the better as there is more surface area for nitrifying bacteria to grow on.
These filters can be cleanced once in 3 months. If your using power heads, you will need to clean them more often as they tend to clog up real fast.
6) If your water source is not chlorinated, you can setup a drip and overflow system. Believe me, this is the king of automation and can totally eliminate your having to maintain your aquarium. In a drip system, there are two holes in your tank on either side. One hole is for the water to fill, which is higher at the top and the other is for the excess water to overflow. Pipes are used to divert water and there are lots of other tools and accessories that help in this setup. Be sure to regulate the water input to as low as a couple of drops per second. I'll write more on this in another article.
7) Feed minimal. If you notice food wastage post 5 minutes, reduce the food.
Hope this helps. If you like this article, be kind enough to share it on facebook or any other social media.
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