Image Provided By David Kinney
If you have a home aquarium already you already know that they look great, help you relax after a stressful day, and they can reducing your blood pressure by create a general feeling of well being.
When all is running well with your tank it can provided you with a feeling of accomplishment, but when things go wrong and you start seeing your beautiful fish floating instead of swimming around merrily in between the plants, your blood pressure rises and you feel like throwing the whole tank out. This does not have to be the case. Common mistakes made by beginner or even experts can be avoided when purchasing and maintaining your home aquarium tank.
Here are some points to keep in mind when setting up your home aquarium:
Do Not Place Too Many Fish In The Tank
Avoid the temptation in placing as many fish possible in your home aquarium. This will reduce the maintenance required, money and the fish's lives.
I know you are wondering how the pet shops are able to keep so many in one tank. Although pet stores generally overstock their aquariums, they tend to have double the filtration systems required and the fish move out of the tank once they are sold. You can't do the same thing if you want to keep your fish alive.
The safest rule to follow is allow four gallons of water in your tank for each fish, this is only if your fish are about an inch long each (excluding tail fins). The old rule of water to fish was one gallon per inch of fish, and that is still written in many home aquarium tanks care manuals, but it has since proved to be incorrect.
Besides, your 20 gallon tank doesn't hold 20 gallons of water - there's also gravel, plants and decorations. So, in a twenty gallon tank, you can have at the very most five fish.
Do Not Feed The Fish In Excess
There are many scientists that state that aquarium tanks fish are stupid, but these fish all possess the intelligence enough to beg – and they are really good at it. But just like us humans overeating is not a good thing it is also bad for fish . A fish that eats too much will pass out a lot of waste into the tank. This can all play havoc with not only your filtration system, but the chemical composition of the tank water.
The general rule is not to feed more than your fish can eat in about three minutes. If they are bottom feeding fish or shy fish, then give it ten or fifteen minutes. This is something you learn by doing. It will seem like you are hardly feeding your fish at all (and the fish will agree) but they have tiny stomachs and need only a little bit of food.
Purchase the Biggest Tank You Can Afford
Another mistake that people make often is thinking that the smaller the tank or bowl the quicker and easier it will be to clean and take care of compared to a larger aquarium. This is far from the truth! The smaller tanks will get dirtier faster and will require daily maintenance. The larger the home aquarium (with the proper amount of fish in there) the less maintenance it will require.