How to Maintain an Aquarium: A Guide For Everyone

Aquariums definitely add beauty to any place. Irrespective of the place where they are, their presence increases the liveliness and freshness of the surroundings and improves the ambience. In-spite of their enchanting display, it is not easy to maintain an aquarium, it requires a lot of hard work and time and that too at regular intervals, so take up an aquarium only if you feel you will be able to devote regular time to it. I have an aquarium for the past 7 years and it has become a part of my family. The one thing that I learnt from last seven years is that maintaining an aquarium is not an easy job.

Maintaining an aquarium includes not only cleaning the tank but also checking the health condition of the fishes. Now let us see how I clean the tank. First I get the fishes into the spare tank and make sure that none of them are sick. We have to use water from the main tank. If any of the fishes are sick then I would put them into the quarantine tank and medicate them based on their illness. The water in the main tank has to be drained. Following that, the filters and the other electrical fittings, if any, should be removed. The gravel has to be washed and can be reused. But I prefer different sets of gravel which could be used periodically. Two or three layers of gravel can be used. Light or dark coloured gravel can be used based on the colour of fishes that we have. I use light coloured gravel with Goldfish, their lucid swimming style will surely attract anyone, they give out a lot of slime. This could be handled by adding plecostomus, Plecostomus shortly called plec are used for maintaining the tank, they eat the slime and organic substances in the tank.

Filters are another effective way to maintain the aquarium in a clean manner. Filters are available in a wide range of configurations and mechanisms. Based on the size we must select the right filter, I use a power head filter of 12 watts power. Overfeeding is another important point that we have to consider while maintaining an aquarium, overfeeding has two consequences. First, if the food is not consumed, it may lead to food poisoning and cloud the water. Second, if large amounts of food is consumed it leads to large amount of faecal matter, so over feeding must be avoided.

Younger fishes require more maintenance and intense care, they prefer live food and thrive well on plankton feed. Fishes also have high spiritual values in countries like China. It is strongly associated with Feng Shui. They have expensive fishes like Arowana also called as Chinese dragon fish. They demand a lot of maintenance, they are believed to bring prosperity to the owner. Adding plants would also make the aquariums seem really natural. However Natural plants will be eaten by the fishes, so we can also add plastic plants. Having an aquarium in a public place needs a lot of maintenance on a regular basis. We cannot afford to have a foul smelling dirty aquarium in our house. So maintenance is really essential. For a guest, a clean aquarium may be a fascinating object, but only the one who maintains the aquarium, will know the amount of work that is making it fascinating.