Common Mistakes To Avoid In Keeping An Aquarium
Aquariums look fabulous, can help you lower your blood pressure and provide a sense of accomplishment. But they can also raise your blood pressure if your fish keep floating on the surface of the water instead of happily among the waters. You can easily avoid the most common mistakes anyone (beginner or expert) can make when maintaining your aquarium.
Don't Overstock
The biggest temptation in keeping an aquarium is to cram as many fish in there as possible. Resist! This will save you cleaning time, money and the fish's lives. Although pet stores commonly overstock their tanks, they tend to have double the filtration systems needed 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 allot four gallons of your tank to each fish, assuming the fish are only an inch long each (excluding tail fins). The rule used to be one gallon per inch of fish, and that is still written in a lot of older aquarium care books, but it has since proved to be unreliable. 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 most five fish.
Don't Overfeed
Although there are many scientists that claim aquarium fish are stupid, they all possess the intelligence enough to beg - and they are really good at it. But eating too much is just as bad for your fish as it is for you. And a fish that eats too much will be a fish that passes out a lot of waste. 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.
Get The Biggest Tank You Can Afford
Another mistake is that people think smaller tanks and bowls are easier to take care of than larger tanks. Not so! Smaller tanks get dirty very fast and need daily maintenance. The bigger the tank (with the proper amount of fish in there) the less maintenance it needs.
