It’s been quite some time I have been maintaining a 5-foot
Natural Planted Aquarium. Every aspect (expect a few) of this aquarium is DIY (Do/Build
it Yourself).
Maintaining a Natural Planted Aquarium is not that
time-consuming as most people think. But this all comes from their prior bad
experiences.
The Prejudice
Most people think that maintaining an aquarium is a time
consuming job. This belief has been prevalent for quite some time and this
problem boils down to the shop keepers who sell them.
Most aquarium shop keepers are great sales man. Their
objective is to keep selling stuff to their customers.
The First Time Buyer:
Most First time Buyers are novice and have hardly any clue
about what they are getting into.
Most of them just like the fact of having
some adorable pet in their living room. The Pet won’t be bothersome (by making
noise) but still be adorable. Also it gives a magnificent view in your Living
Room. Also not to forget its cheaper than buying and maintaining a pup or
kitten or some bird.
The shop keepers are well aware of this and their first
attempt is to sell
- The
Tank/Bowl
- Some Fancy Fishes.
- The
Costliest Fish food.
- Air
pump.
- Some
chemical products (Chlorine remover, Water Clearing solution, some green/blue liquid to keep
fish healthy)
- Some
decoration items.
- Filter
(optional).
All these items should easily cost you
around Rs 1000 bucks. The customer is happy and he is gone.
A few Days Later:
The customer is happy for a few days but soon realizes that
the water is getting cloudy or the fishes are unexpectedly dying.
The Shop Keeper’s Solution:
The customer goes back to the shop keeper to find out why aquarium
water is cloudy and why my fishes are dying. The shop keep recommends changing
the water every 2-3 days add this "XYZ" solution to your aquarium to keep the
water clean.
He also ask the person to get water filter (of course the costliest
one) to keep the water clean.
Also take these XYZ fishes they are good and will last
longer. Of course these are the
costliest one, But don’t worry they will try to sell it at a lower cost to keep
you happy.
The Actual Solution:
Most of the time (if you are NOT having a planted aquarium)
the cloudy water is due to excess food that you are dropping into the tank. The
some food particles sink to the bottom after some time and it starts rotting. Soon
the water gets cloudy. This cloudy water then gives out ammonia and most fishes
die due to ammonia poisoning. Angel fishes are highly suspected to Ammonia.
So how much should I feed the fishes?
Most folks will says
that feed them the amount the fishes can have in 5-10 minutes. Hmm!! how much is
this amount?? :)
As a general thumb rule, you need to feed the amount of food
equal to the fish eye size. Just consider that the size of their stomach is
almost equal to their eye size.
Knowing this fact, try to get a small spoon (one you generally
use for eating ice cream from ice cream cups) and use that to shell out the fish food. The advantage of
this is even if you ask a small boy to just add 1 spoon of fish food he won’t
be able to error on that.
Feed the fishes twice daily.
This small change in procedure will help you a lot in a keep
your Aquarium Clean.
