Freshwater Aquarium Maintenance

When I was growing up, my mother had one freshwater fish in a bowl, with a few rocks . Her idea of freshwater maintenance, was to let the replacement water stand for one day. She said this was to take out the chlorine from the water. She  did  something right, for when we moved and had to give the fish away, the fish was still alive after two and half years. Who knows how long it actually lived

Now that was a very basic fresh water fish . With today’s exotic fish for sale in the pet stores, it is going to take more than letting water stand for a day to remove the chlorine to keep your fish healthy and more importantly happy. Things you must consider for appropriate maintenance of your freshwater aquarium  :

1. Having proper water quality is important, but it is much more than just letting it hang around for a day . There are a lot more items to think of . You will need a test kit to rate for proper ph, water hardness, nitrates, specific gravity, etc. You will need to test the water for these properties almost everyday and make proper adjustments.

2. Proper cleaning of the gravel is important. You will need to vacuum-clean the gravel to remove food, feces and other contaminants to forbid the build up of nitrate, nitrite and ammonia. All of these contaminants are harmful to your fish.

3. It is recommended you only replace 25% of the water every week . But if you must clean the entire tank, do not use chemicals on the inside for glass cleaning, use a algae scraper instead. Even a slight amount of home cleaners is toxic to freshwater fish. You can use them on the outside of the tank, but verify you do not get any of the chemicals inside the tank.

This is just the tip of the ice burg on proper freshwater aquarium maintenance, there is much more to learn.