Aquarium Maintenance Essentials
Generally, how do I maintain a healthy aquarium?
The maintenance of an aquarium, and the general raw health of an aquarium is achieved relatively simply, and it goes across the board whether it's salt water or fresh water, it doesn't really matter. Once you have an established aquarium, you're going to have to have a good test kit or a reliable fish store to bring your water to have them test it. And then based off your test parameters, it's going to dictate whether you need to do a partial water change or not. It is rarely, if ever, a good idea to change all the water in your tank, unless there is some kind of massive toxin problem, and it's an emergency and you have to do it. You're typically going to do 40 to 50 percent water change over four weeks. You can break that down into 10 to 12 to 15 percent every week, 25 percent every two weeks, or the whole 40 to 50 every four weeks. Depending on the type of tank you have, I would lean one way or the other. Typically I say with fresh water, you're going to perform maintenance on that every four weeks, salt water every two, and reef tank every one. Along with the water change, you're going to obviously de-chlorinate the new water going back in, and match the temperature of the old water, and then you're going to want to do some visual maintenance. You're going to want to scrub the algae off the glass, and if you have fake plants or any fake decorations that you can take out that are covered in algae, you can take them out and soak them in really hot water to get the algae off of them, and then redecorate your aquarium.
How do I take care of the filter in my aquarium?
The filter itself you'll never change, but the media that goes into the filter has to be changed on a regular basis depending on the type of filter that you have. When you want to change filter medium, you're going to probably replace carbon or any kind of carbon filter pad or cross filter pad roughly every four weeks. That's going to depend on what kind of waste load you have, how many fish you have, what you feed, how much you feed, and how often you do water changes to get that waste out of there. You may change it more frequently, or slightly less frequently, but a good average is about every four weeks.
What supplies do I need to clean my aquarium?
You'll need some basic supplies when you're talking about doing maintenance or cleaning your aquarium. Depending on whether it's glass or acrylic, you'll need a glass or acrylic algae scrub pad. It can be hand-held or a magnet one. The pads you need have a pad inside and the magnet on the outside, and you then wipe the aquarium down on the outside. Alternatively, you can use a long handled one that has a handle on it where you can reach down to the bottom of the tank. You'll also need for a fresh water tank; a gravel vacuum, which is a big plastic tube that goes into a smaller plastic tube. You will then create a siphon, and you will literally vacuum the gravel to get the debris out; and while you're doing that you're changing a percentage of the water. Now there is a technique to it, it's not rocket science, it's not hard to do, but if you try doing it without being shown how to do it, you'll be vacuuming your tank and you'll look up and there'll be no water left in it and then you're in a world of hurt and your fish are going to freak out and you're going to freak out, so you want to come in and get taught how to do that; it'll take about five minutes. Other than that, there's really not a lot of equipment that you need other than your filter media and water conditioners to take the chlorine out of the water. That's pretty much all you need.
How do I know when to clean my aquarium?
The organisms or the toxins that are going to dictate whether you clean your aquarium are microscopic. They're not visible to the naked eye. Testing is paramount. I tell people to test depending on the type of tank. It could be as often as every week, or it could be every four weeks. You should never have ammonia, never have nitrite, and your ph should be stable, 7-0 to 7-8 freshwater, 8-1 to 8-3 saltwater. The real kicker or the indicator is the nitrate level, typically in freshwater and saltwater fish only. If that starts to climb above 40 parts or 60 parts per million, it's now telling you that your waste levels are climbing up. You're going to start to see more algae growth, and maybe your water is going to get a little yellow or be a little cloudy. You want to get the service done before any of that takes place. Test the water and look at the nitrate as your water change indicator. When it hits about 40 to 60 parts per million, then do your partial water change. The other rule of thumb is that if it's a reef tank, every week do a small water change. If it's saltwater fish, only every two weeks. Do a larger water change, and if it's a freshwater tank do anywhere from 20% to 50% every four weeks. You could do that blind without testing. I don't recommend it, but they usually go hand in hand when all other things are equal.
How do I test the water in my aquarium?
When you want to test your aquarium water, there are basically a couple of methods you can go with. You can get a sandwich bag, or a zip-lock seal bag, or a small piece of Tupperware, and you can bring about a quarter cup to a half a cup of it to your local, reputable aquarium store and they can test it for you. Or, you can buy your own test kit, which is what I recommend, because you don't have to schlep water around, and the test kits are really simple to use. They've got little test tubes in them, with a level where you fill the water up to. And then they've got reagents, which are typically drops, easy to read instructions. You just follow the instructions. They have little colour-coated charts that let you determine what the levels are based on the colour that the water turns after a certain amount of time. All the instructions are right in the test kits and they're super-simple to use.
How do I clean my aquarium?
After you've done a test on your water chemistry and you find out it's time to do a service, or a cleaning on your aquarium, if you have a bucket to drain water into, that would be a good idea. Or, if you're near a sink you could do it that way. You're going to start your siphon, start gently gravel vacuuming the aquarium and taking it down anywhere between 25 and 40 percent, depending on how frequently you're doing the service. Once you're done with that, what I typically have people do is a lot of people ask me, "Do I take the fish out?" No. You've got two thirds of the water, or half of the water left. The fish are just going to go down to the bottom where the water is. Now, you can't take all day to do this, obviously, because you've got your pumps off. You're going to turn your pumps and your heater and everything off to begin with when you're doing the service. Then, you go through the gravel vac. You then want to scrub the surfaces of the glass and get the algae off of that. If you don't like the algae on the decorations themselves, you can pull them out and soak them in hot water to get them out. Then, you would redecorate your tank and refill it with water that's the same temperature as your tap, that's already in your aquarium. You can do that by feel or by using a thermometer. Also, you want to dechlorinate that water, fill it back up, and you're done.
How do I prepare the water to refill my aquarium?
When you're preparing tap water, again for fresh water or salt water, you have to de-chlorinate it. Now there's a couple of methods that you can take. The simplest is just to buy an over the counter, liquid instant de-chlorinator. It literally takes the chlorine out instantly or you can aerate the water and let it sit at room temperature for a day or two and that aeration will drive off the carbon dioxide, the chloramines or ammonia that are in the water. Then it's ready to go. Now if you're talking about a salt water aquarium, you have to not only match your temperature and take the chlorine out, but you have to match the specific gravity of the salinity of your tank. There's a meter called a hydrometer that lets you measure the salt level or specific gravity within the tank. You should dump that in your tank, find out what it is, write that number down, and then when you're using your synthetic sea salt and tap water in your big bucket at home and you're mixing it up, you use that meter and mix just enough salt to get it to match up. It sounds tricky. It is tricky, because it's really hard to get those levels to match right up. You can also buy this from most stores, but they do invest in a reverse osmosis system that rips everything out of the water and then they build synthetic sea salt for you and it's pretty close to the salt level you're going to need all the time and it's real simple to do.
