Feeding, Tank Care and Decor
Feed your fish “Little and Often” if this is possible, if not feed your fish twice daily, the food you give them should be consumed within a matter on minutes. Give your fish as much variety as possible, combine frozen, dry and live foods, and feed your fish nothing one day a week. Check out the protein levels of dry foods, some may not be suitable for the fish in your aquarium.
If your keeping common tropicals I would recommend a water change twice a month, and giving your aquarium glass a wipe inside with a soft cloth / or pair of old tights, a couple of times a week. When you carry out your water change use a gravel cleaner and siphon out approximately a third of the aquarium water, whilst cleaning the substrate at the same time. If your running an undergravel filter place the siphon tube down the uplift tube, to remove the sludge from under the undergravel filter plates, remove any dead plant leaves and generally give the tank a good stir up. When refilling the tank the new water needs to be dechlorinated and a similar or slightly higher temperature to that in the tank.
Water quality is the most important factor in sucessfully keeping fish, the more water changes you carry out the better the quality on your tank water.
Any uneaten food and fish waste decomposes in your tank to produce ammonia, high levels of ammonia will kill your fish. Your mature filter will convert the ammonia into nitrite, but nitrite is also posionous to your fish and high levels will have the same consequence. Your mature filter will convert nitrite to nitrate, this is harmless to your fish, but if you do not carry out regular water changes eventually nitrate levels will grow and have an adverse effect on your fishes growth rate. This is called the “nitrogen cycle” and needs to be monitored when your setting up a new aquarium, you must allow your filters to mature and your filter colonies to grow before you introduce fish to a new aquarium, I would recommend allowing a newly set up aquarium at least 10 days before introducing any fish, then only introduce a few fish at a time, you can purchase kits or get your local pet shop to carry out a test on your water should you experience any problems. Some tropical fish are more hardy than others, introduce the more hardy species first.
What you place in your tank is your choice. But you should be aware, some rocks can leach unwanted chemicals into your tank and new bogwood will have a staining effect on your tank water. Place rocks in your tank in such a way to prevent them falling onto the glass sides, be carefull not to scratch the insides of your tank when placing or removing rocks in the tank, and use them to create caves and hiding places in your tank. Some rocks can effect ph and are used for this reason, ie “tuffa” rock is used in a “malawi” set up to buffer the water to create a ph around 8.5, this is obviously not suitable for use in a tropical aquarium were the desirable ph range will be 6.0 - 7.0.
If your thinking of using plants as part of the tank décor consider using plastic plants, they do not die and decompose, large fish won’t damage them and they look nearly as good as the real thing!