Aquarium Maintenance Essentials

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.