Home Fish Aquarium Guide

With a Tropical Fish Aquarium there are few accessories as important as a heater. Of course, the filter system is the number one priority, but if you cannot maintain a good temperature you will put your fish through a fair amount of stress. Our Zebra Danio tends to like things in the 74-76 degree Fahrenheit range and each type of fish may have it’s own requirements. Be sure to research and if necessary ask for advice from your local fish store. If you have multiple species in the same tank you will want to be careful to select species that can tolerate the same range of temperatures (or at least have a good range of overlap.) The heater itself though can be tricky. If room temperature is 70 degrees vs. 65 degree room temperature you will need more power to maintain a 74-76 degree range.

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I have to report a follow up to the LAST confessional I had about our fish tank being very dirty. It seems every time I do a water change we will get an algae bloom within a couple days. Algae collects on the tank surfaces and then the water clears. I’ve pretty much left it when it does this until the next cleaning as our fish seems happy and content. The basic water parameters (ammonia/nitrite/nitrates) all seem at negligible levels. I’m still surprised that the nitrates are staying near zero and still assuming that the plant growth we have (and yes algae too likely) are keeping it that low. I can’t help but wonder if our well water is responsible for the algae blooms (phosphates?). So… how do you go about cleaning a VERY dirty tank?

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The Friday before Christmas it snowed, and snowed and snowed. Most of Friday we expected power to go out. It finally did Friday evening. We have a danio (currently just one) in a 5 gallon tank (yes a bit small.) He has been in the tank for almost a full year now. (We got him around the New Year of 2009.) The tank usually stays near the comfortable 72-76 degree Fahrenheit range. However, I was very concerned about an extended power outage. We have a fireplace that I spent some time last fall cleaning out, but we still don’t know for certain that our chimney is safe and so with an extended outage in cold weather we’ve evacuated across the road to my parents who have a wood stove in their basement. (And one other thing we don’t have which is a good load of wood….) I wrapped the tank up with bathroom towels/blankets and hoped for the best.

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I have a confession to make with regards to our fishtank/aquarium. I’ve been a bad fish pet owner! It’s been easily 2 months (maybe 3) since I cleaned the fishtank / aquarium. I know frequent water changes and cleaning are important. It’s been busy and frankly where we have it placed it’s not the easiest to get at for cleaning. Plus, we have a toddler and getting the testing chemicals out is best done when he’s in the crib/playpen and well…. yes there are a lot of excuses, but it just hasn’t been done. Amazingly! EVERYTHING tested at 0. Ammonia is at zero, nitrites at zero, even nitrates are at their lowest level the chart reads which is 0 mg/l. I guess there could be a tinge of orange coloring so it’s below 12.5 mg/l. I really credit our plants for that. In fact, some of the plants are starting to lose their green leaves and I had to start by cleaning out some of those dead leaves.

Continue Reading “Fishtank Aquarium Cleaning Time”

I’ve added several new pages which you can find in the left sidebar related to putting together your new aquarium and just getting started with a home aquarium.

I’ve added in the log of cycling our 5 gallon tank along with a good number of other things that will hopefully help you get started as you try to figure out just how you will be going about keeping fish.

Continue Reading “Several New Pages on Getting Started with a New Aquarium”