Aquarium Care

The hobby of keeping cichlids can be a very enjoyable and rewarding experience. Most people just getting started in keeping these very intelligent aquarium fish have lots of questions. Even as an experienced aquarist, I seem to learn something new everyday. Here are some tips to get you started.

The single most important thing that you need to do is to consider how big your cichlid fish will be when they reach their adult size. Oscars and some of the largest and most intelligent of the cichlids and they need a lot of room. The are simple going to need a very large tank. But don’t let that discourage you.

Oscars need at least a 55 gallon tank, and that’s just for a pair of these big guys. And guess what, if your cichlids are smaller, then a smaller tank will do. Couldn’t be any simpler than thay.

Next, the salinity of the water and proper ph levels, among other levels, can vary widely between the very diverse types of cichlids. More specifically, they can vary widely among the various American Cichlid varieties. This goes for African Cichlids also. Proper salinity and ph level is very important if you are keeping African Cichlids, so do your research wisely.

Temperature and water chemistry are very important if your cichlids are going to thrive. These levels must be monitored for African or American cichlids.

Keeping these beautiful and intelligent fish with plant life can be very challenging. Having plant in your cichlid tank may be impossible with certain varieties of cichlids. Again, research is very important.

African varieties of cichlids simply don’t do very well with plants. South American cichlids seem to have a better tolerance for plant life. But if you have Oscars, don’t bother. They love to dig plants up. Angels, however love plants and will thrive in a fully planted aquarium.

Angel fish can be some of the most enjoyable cichlids in my opinion. They even do very well in community tanks because they are generally docile and tolerate plants very well.

Visit cichlid care to learn how to keep cichlids healthy, colorful and happy. And visit keeping cichlids to learn how to keep your cichlids stress free.

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Each component that makes up your aquarium environment plays a significant role in successful aquarium maintenance. However, before you go and buy fish tank materials, there are three key elements that you should look into if you want to achieve a beautiful aquarium. These include aquarium flooring, water, and plants.

Putting gravel or sand at the bottom of your tank is not always necessary, unless you are using rooted aquarium plants. If you find gravel more appealing than a sandy bottom, make sure to buy fish tank gravel that is the same size as-or slightly larger than-bird gravel to achieve the best results. Wash the gravel thoroughly before placing them inside your aquarium. Gravel works great with live plants, but if you prefer to use sand, choose a coarser variety. Fine sand is packed too tightly when wet, and this hinders the growth of underwater plants.

Ensuring the quality of water is among the most crucial tasks of an aquarist. You need to buy fish tank accessories that will make the water suitable for fishkeeping. As much as possible, use conditioned water, which refers to water that fish have already lived in. A strange fact about fish is that their own waste products, or “clean dirt,” make the water more habitable for them. If you plan to buy fish tank cleaning tools, this information will help you save more. Instead of purchasing all those expensive aquarium gadgets for frequent water replacement, you can simply opt for algae scrapers and tools for scooping out only “dirty dirt,” such as uneaten food, dead fish, and foreign particles.

If it’s your first time to set up an aquarium, be sure to let chlorine-treated tap water stand before exposing your fish to it. Chlorine is toxic to fish, and waiting for the water to be at room temperature gives you time to allow the chlorine to dissipate. Buy fish tank thermometers to keep an eye on water temperature, as this is critical in fishkeeping. Newly filled aquariums are normally murky. To provide clear water for your fish, give them a modest amount of food in the first two weeks.

Contrary to popular belief, fish don’t need live plants for oxygen supply and carbon dioxide release. This doesn’t make plants less important, though. If you wish for a more natural setting for your fish, a well-planted aquarium is a good playground for the fish. In terms of aesthetics, it doesn’t really matter much if you want to purchase plastic or live plants, rooted or not. However, live plants in good condition do keep the water from turning green.

Sunlight enables photosynthesis to take place. Hence, direct exposure to it also causes rapid algae growth. As an alternative, buy fish tank lighting, which is just as suitable for fish as sunlight. You must set the timer and keep the light on for eight to nine hours only.

The type of lighting needed by your tank will depend on the kind of plants you use. Fanwort and water thyme are examples of plants that need a lot of lighting. Arrowhead and floating fern can survive with minimal light.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to decorate a home aquarium. If you examine the most important elements of an aquarium, you’ll know which accessories are really necessary and which items you can do without for now.

Grant Smith is a featured member and guest speaker at lots aquarium clubs, as well as having a few very large tanks of his own. If you are planning to buy a fish tank, please go to marinedepot.com to learn more about Current USA aquariums.

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People have owned home aquariums for centuries, and arguably, their fish and aquatic setups got along very well without aid from the modern contraptions you would find at any self-respecting aquarium supplies dealer today. These new devices available today, the aquariums chiller, the powerful lighting or the protein skimmer, were not just thought up by bright marketing departments to part you from that last dollar; these were made for the true aquarium enthusiast, one who tries to expand his aquarist’s horizons delving into areas of aquarium-building heretofore unexplored: raising saltwater coral reefs, or raising exotic fish from cooler climes.

Building a coral reef in your home is no easy matter; these reefs occur naturally close to the water surface out in the sea, and are accustomed to receiving the full benefit of a day’s sunshine. There is no way you could keep these at home illuminated with just a couple of florescent lighting fixtures. Successfully raising coral reefs and the life forms dependent on them requires that you invest in lighting technology that’s really out there- metal halides, Very High Output fluorescents and so on. These do solve your lighting issues raising corals and other tropical life, but not without raising a problem or two of their own. Intense light will always come with intense heat. In the ocean, the heat, as much of it as the sun is able to supply, is pretty much lost in the vast volumes of the ocean’s waters.

An aquarium tank has just so much water, and can be heated up a degree or three with just a few hours of intense artificial lighting. When you switch off the lights at night, the small body of water that the aquarium is, it can hold the heat for only a couple of hours before the temperature in the tank plunges. The temperature swings can be distressing to your aquarium’s inhabitants, for the discomfort they cause and also for the amount of oxygen that warm water will quickly lose. And here enters the aquarium chiller.

Aquarium chillers can be quite expensive, running into hundreds of dollars for a reliable unit. You might think that using a fan would cool your tank adequately: there is a little added wrinkle to the problem though. To have a fan constantly playing on the top of the water will certainly cool it a couple of degrees; the fan will also hasten evaporation. It won’t be easy to top up the water levels either. In some cases you will need to spring for a special reverse osmosis filterto easily do this all the time.

It’s not really difficult buying a chiller; you just measure your tank for volume, and you buy a unit in proportion to the size. If you don’t live in a particularly hot desert-like area, a midsize 30 gallon tank will require a 600 BTU aquarium chiller and a large tank will require as much as 4000 BTU. Think of an aquarium chiller as an air-conditioner for your aquatic friends. Aquarium chillers can often be quite noisy, and can turn out to be stress contributors themselves. Check out online forums for the best brands to buy, and the best feature-choices to make.

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Making up an aquarium at home used to be so simple; any hopeful aquarist who could put together a reasonable arrangement of aquatic plants, a few funny pebbles and a little plastic castle in a glass box could end up looking like a sensitive guy for his trouble. If you have ever seen the ethereal and exquisite effects of Japanese aquarium decor though, you know how real the artistry involved in aquascaping is. The organic and harmonious look achieved in Japanese aquarium decor principles often makes people imagine that these are actual attempts at re-creating a biotope, the habitat of an actual ecological community. As tempting as it is to imagine that, these are as man-made as anything you would see in any modern aquarium, and sometimes they are inspired by landscapes you would see above water to boot.

There is something about a living environment: the harder you try to artificially replicate it in your own aquarium, the more elusive it becomes. But if you are lucky and if you try, you may end up with aquarium decor that you find more beautiful than the original. The Japanese aquarium styles sees the fish and the environment they live in as equally contributors to the final effect, after the philosophy that the frame can sometimes be considered to be as important as the painting itself.

The first step to designing your Japanese aquarium would be to pick the general shape of the landscape you want within the tank; popular landscape shapes include arranging for a generally concave look, where the surface rises all around a central valley, and a convex look where the landscape rises from the peripheries of the aquarium to a central prominence. The ideal aquarium decor layout would place before the viewer no more than one or two areas of focus, of something good and catchy to look at. There shouldn’t be lot of stuff thrown in there, each piece competing for attention.

Japanese aquarium decor philosophy places some value in imbuing tank designs with a sense of depth. The most popular way to do this is to use lowrise aquarium plants and not bushy ones. The larger shapes in the aquarium need to be the rocks and the driftwood you bring in, and not the plants. Riccia and hairgrass are great choices; for a neat look with excellent depth, try using contrast – plants of different colors, some close-cropped and tidy, others that hang a little more free, and so on.

A natural underwater vista would include a number of rocks and pebbles of the same type. It might be tempting on your visit to an aquarium supplies store to pick a couple of all the best-looking rocks around for a Technicolor effect; while that might be the way to go for Vegas-like glamor, you must remember that you are going for the natural look, for Oriental restraint. Try to pick all your aquarium rocks, as many as you get, to belong to the same geological type, more or less. When you arrange them around the bottom of your tank, the placement that should work best is usually where the action of water currents would kick them around. The natural look is best achieved by rolling the rocks around and letting them rest where their center of gravity dictates.

Of course the aquarium you dream up can never be precisely to your standards; an aquarium is a living environment, and is a place of free biological growth. If you can somehow factor that into your core philosophy, you should be ahead of most first-time designers and perhaps you could say something grand to people who come in to admire your handiwork, like “According to ancient Japanese wisdom, the earth that supports life and the life that lives on it must all be free”.

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