What You Need to Know About Fish Tanks and Water Changes

When it comes to fish tanks you will need to keep up on water changes. By changing the water your provide your fish with oxygen and fresh water. You remove fish waste and harmful elements from your water. If you don't keep up on water changes you fish will either die or become very sick.

When you don't change the water, you're fish will get stressed out which leads to many other problems. If you want to keep your fish alive you will need to keep up on water changes. You probably want to know how often you need to change your water.

You will need to change your water at least once every two weeks. You will want to drain the water about 20% every time that you do a water change. To calculate this out find the half way mark on your fish tank. Then cut that amount in half and that's about the spot you want to drain the water to.

You will want to spend half of your time draining the water and half of the time siphoning the gravel. You can purchase a siphon tube from the pet store. Make sure you purchase one with a grid on the front so you cannot suck fish into the siphon tube.

When it comes to siphoning the substrate you will only want to clean about half of the gravel. The first time that you clean the rock you will want to clean one side or the other. After 2 weeks, when you clean the fish tank again you will want to clean the other half of the fish tank.

You can move all of the decorations onto the the other side of the fish tank. You will not want to clean around the decorations. You will want to move the decorations because the majority of the uneaten food and debris will get stuck under the decorations.

You will want to scrape the glass before you drain the water. This will make sure that you suck up all of the debris and algae out of the water once it reaches the fish tank. If you scrape the glass after you drain the tank you will make the tank worse.

You need to follow steps when you clean the fish tank or you will make more work for yourself. Remember to clean the filter system and change the filter cartridges because the carbon will remove the rest of the harmful elements from your water.