Items You Need to Clean Your Fish Tank

Shannon Frye
If you have a fish tank, you will need to clean the fish tank. You cannot have a fish tank without cleaning it at least once every two weeks. Sometimes you can get away with waiting 3 weeks, but the water will get very dirty. Your tank will start to cloud up and the water levels will get really high. You don't want high ammonia or nitrate levels, which is why you need to keep up on cleaning your fish tank. Cleaning your fish tank and doing a water change will help bring down all of your water levels.

You can purchase different tools to help you clean your fish tank. You can purchase a scraper which is made from plastic. It has a handle and it's great for cleaning off algae that is really stuck on the inside of your aquarium. This works well for acrylic tanks as well as long as you make sure that it's acrylic safe. You can also purchase a scrub brush. These brushes are really rough and they come on a long handle. They work well for cleaning off the glass. They don't work as well as scrapers but they will do their job.

For hard water deposits and algae that is really stuck on the glass you can use a razor blade up above where the water is. Do not place the razor blade into the water or drop the razor blade into the tank on accident because you will cause your fish to get metal poisoning. This will ruin your water and kill all of your fish. You will need to drain at least 50% of the water if you accidentally drop the razor blade into the water.

You can also use a toothbrush to clean the top section of the fish tank and the filter system. You will always need to purchase a siphon tube. This is used for draining the water and cleaning the rock. If you press the siphon tube down into the tube you will clean all of the uneaten fish food and debris out of the rock. This will lower your nitrate levels and your tank will be crystal clear. You need to spend most of the time cleaning the rock. You will want to stop cleaning the rock when you have drained the tank down 20 or 30%.

You need to purchase a siphon tube with a grid on the front. This is so that you don't suck up any fish. It will happen if you don't have a siphon tube with a grid on the front to block the fish from going into the tube.

Published by Shannon Frye

I am a stay at home mom. I have a 2 year old daughter.  View profile

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