How to Take Care of Your Fish (Tanks)

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Take-Care-of-Your-Fish-(Tanks)

Steps

1. 1
   Decide whether you want Tropical or Coldwater fish. Coldwater fish include goldfish and minnows. There are many types of tropical fish, from angelfish to corydoras catfish. Coldwater fish are usually a little more hardy, and will survive those first few mistakes, but they need more room.
• Start off with inexpensive fish, even if you can afford expensive ones. Inexpensive ones are inexpensive because they are very successful in their natural environments or so comfortable in captivity that they even breed regularly and, in either case, do not die easily on their way to and in pet stores.
• Do not start out with saltwater fish. They require techniques and understanding that are much more complex. Plus, the water you'll have to work with and that may leak is messy, slowly corrosive to metal, and conductive. If you believe you want a saltwater tank, get a medium sized tropical fish tank with some plants and see if you can keep that in perfect order first for a year or so.

1. 2
   Decide what kind and how many fish you want.
   • Research before putting species together. Some fish are compatible, others aren't. One might speculate that fish would enjoy some activity in their lives, so don't get just one. (The fish need not be the same species; for some territorial fish, it is best that it isn't. An armored catfish can be a good "companion" for such a beast.)
   • Make sure you can provide any specialized care the fish need. For example, different fish need different foods, and some fish require more frequent maintenance than others. Owning fish is a big responsibility.
   • Some fish are perfectly happy with flakes and can be fed with an automatic feeder, which makes it possible to leave the tank unattended for a week or two (assuming the fish are small so the water doesn't need very frequent changing).
2. 
   3
   Get an appropriately sized tank. Look up the minimum tank size for each fish.
   • For goldfish, buy a tank with 20 gallons for the first goldfish, and 10 gallons for each additional goldfish.
   • For freshwater fish, forget about one gallon per inch of adult fish. would you keep a 50 inch fish in a 50 gallon tank?
   • Bigger is better. Even if the fish looks small, it will thrive in a bigger tank.
3. 
   4
   Make sure you have all the proper equipment- filters, heaters (for tropical fish), water conditioner, test kit, etc.
4. 
   5
   Set up the tank and cycle it.
5. 
   6
   Put your fish in. Only add a few fish to start with, and slowly build up the population. Adding too many fish at once can overload your filtration system.
6. 
   7
   Perform partial water changes weekly. 20-30% is a good amount. To do a water change, get a gravel vacuum and siphon out any waste in the substrate. This will pull out water at the same time. Replace the water with water from your tap, but remember to treat it with a water conditioner.
7. 
   8
   Test the water regularly. Make sure you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and under 40 nitrate.
8. 
   9
   Feed your fish two or three times a day.
9. 
   10
   Monitor your fish. While they eat, sit and observe them. Check for anything strange: changing color, falling off fins, damaged tails, etc. Also, make sure all your fish are getting along.
10. 
    11
    Try not to stress out your fish. This includes putting your hand in the tank when you don't need to, touching them, or jumping near the tank.

Peter's Fish Tank - Episode 1 - 1350 Gallon Tank Overview

How to set up a Saltwater Aquarium

Aquarium Setup - Aquascape - Step by Step and Final Product - Live Planted Fish Tank

Aquarium Fish - Tank Maintenance

Source:  http://www.pethealth.com.au/Page/fish-tank-maintenance

Aquariums are not only for the home. Many businesses are now installing aquariums in their waiting rooms. The lazy, unhurried and fluid motions of fish relax waiting clients and are far more absorbing than the dog-eared and coffee stained lifestyle magazines that have been collecting dust for the last decade.

However, a green algae-contaminated tank with shabby plants, slimy gravel and fish performing a realistic mime of the last moments of the Titanic is not an asset to any office or home.

The difference is the attention given to the tank. An aquarium is easy to maintain, with some duties needed daily and others weekly or monthly.

Daily Duties

The first daily duty is to check the temperature of the tank. High and low temperatures can be deadly but, in Queensland, tanks near windows often get too warm, especially on weekends when the office is vacant and the air conditioners are off.

For goldfish, the tank temperature should about 20 to 22 degrees centigrade and for tropical fish, it should range between 24 and 27 degrees centigrade. The ideal temperature depends more on the type of fish kept. Seek further advice from your aquarium supplier.

Examine the tank daily for sick or dead fish and remove them immediately with a soft net. A sick fish should be placed into a small quarantine tank to prevent further transmission of its condition. You can then organise treatment of this fish and the mother tank accordingly.

Check that the pump and air outlets are functioning and that proper air and water flow through the tank is occurring.

Weekly Duties

The condition of the water is vital as fish in tanks have a small volume of water in which to swim when compared with their free-living counterparts.

Therefore, regular cleaning of the tank is a weekly task. You need to remove accumulated sediment from the plants and from the gravel surface. For this, use a siphon tube or an air-operated vacuum cleaner where air bubbles drive the water up a tube and then back to the tank again via a cloth filter.

The pH, ammonia and nitrite levels of the tank should also be checked weekly. Simple test kits are available for this purpose.

The pH of the water should be between 6.5 - 7.5 for most aquaria. Correcting the pH of a tank usually requires expert assistance but regular water changes will help and, sometimes, chemical buffers are needed.

Ammonia and nitrite levels relate to the quantity of waste that is accumulating in the tank. Excess levels will occur with overcrowding, overfeeding, and if a dead fish or two are in the tank. A dirty filter or faulty pump also cause a rapid rise in waste products and conversely, a fully functioning filter is essential if you are trying to remove the waste efficiently. Partial water changes will help to solve this problem. Refer to the next section.

The plants in the aquarium also need weekly attention. Remove dead leaves and clean excess sediment from the leaves. Some healthy surface plants may require thinning-out each week and you may need to prune vigorously growing rooted plants. New plant runners may need imbedding in the gravel and some plants could need replanting if the fish have uprooted them.

Snails are a nuisance. Lure them to a wilting lettuce leaf that you have floated on the surface of the tank. Scooping the assembled greedy mob with a net is then easy. Chemicals are also available to eliminate snails

Monthly Duties

Water changes clean the tank and freshen the water and are usually necessary every three to four weeks. If an ammonia or nitrite problem is present, it may need to be done more often. Replace about 20 - 25% of the water by using a siphon hose. Vacuum the tank at the same time.

Domestic tap water needs to be conditioned to remove chlorine and other heavy metals before being added to the aquarium. You can condition water by aerating it as it comes from the tap, or by leaving it to age for a few days. The ageing process can be hastened by placing an air diffuser, attached to an aquarium pump, in the water. Chemical water conditioners are also available.

Cleaning the filter is usually a monthly task. However, the frequency varies depending on the health of the tank, the type of filter used and the number of fish and plants in the tank. Filters usually contain a healthy handful of bacteria which help to remove nitrite wastes. So, with some filters, you only need to gently rinse the filter under the tap to remove the rubbish and not the bacteria.

Lastly, each month scrape any accumulated algae from the front surface of the aquarium. Use a razor blade scraper or a pair of magnetic scouring pads.

For information on aquarium management, look for the book Community Fishes by Dick Mills. For the knowledge junkies, the book Aquariology - The Science of Fish Health Management is a detailed reference book. These books are available from your local pet shop.

Getting Started in the Reef Aquarium Hobby

Source: http://www.tfhmagazine.com/saltwater-reef/feature-articles/getting-started-in-the-reef-aquarium-hobby.htm

Adding corals may be an intimidating endeavor, but our resident reefer breaks the process down so even novice fishkeepers can take on the challenge of keeping their own little patch of coral reef.

If you already have a marine fish-only system or are completely new to the marine aquarium hobby and want to jump right into reefs, there are obviously quite a few things to learn before you begin. A reef aquarium is by no means just a regular saltwater aquarium with some corals added in.

For one thing, you’ll have to pay much more attention to water quality than when dealing only with fish. You will also have to provide substantially more lighting as well as strong circulation, and providing foods suitable for corals can often make a big difference in how successful you are. I’d like to go over some basics here in order to give you an idea of what’s required to keep corals alive and healthy. While the details of setting up a reef aquarium and long-term maintenance can (and does) fill whole books, this should be enough to get you thinking and headed in the right direction.

Water Quality

Regardless of the type of aquarium you have or intend to set up, maintaining water quality is of the utmost importance. This includes such things as keeping the salinity, temperature, pH, and other parameters within acceptable ranges, which is vital to the survival of livestock. As mentioned, this is especially important if you want to keep living corals, as it will be absolutely imperative that you keep the water in an aquarium close enough in character to natural seawater to keep them alive and well. Mixing up some synthetic sea salt and water is definitely just the very beginning of water quality maintenance when it comes to reef aquariums.

Salinity

Maintaining an appropriate salinity means the water in a reef aquarium must contain an appropriate amount of dissolved salt, which means you must make sure that the right amount of synthetic salt mix is used when making up new seawater. This is typically checked by testing the density of the water, as it becomes increasingly dense as more salt mix is added. To do this, you’ll need a hydrometer (a device that measures the water density) of some sort to test the salinity and make sure it stays in the ideal range of 1.023 to 1.027. If it gets too far above or below this range, any corals in the tank will die no matter how perfect everything else may be. The same can also be said for many other aspects of water quality, for that matter.

Temperature

When it comes to temperature, you’ll have to make sure the water stays in the 72° to 84°F range and doesn’t change much from day to day or day to night. While temperatures may get a little higher or lower than this in reef environments, many corals will die if temperatures rise or fall a few degrees over or under this range; in fact, you’re even taking chances by letting temperatures reach either end of the suggested maximum range, so this is best avoided.

The optimal range is actually somewhere around 75° to 81°F, which is what you should really try for, as this range is perfectly suitable for corals. Temperatures around reefs also change very slowly, typically over periods of weeks or even months, and usually not very much from daytime to nighttime. Stability is important for keeping corals.

Nitrogenous Compounds

Fishes and other organisms in aquariums give off ammonia as a waste product, and it’s also produced by the decay of uneaten foods. It’s deadly to most organisms, even at low concentrations, so you will need enough live rock and/or live sand to be sure that your aquarium has adequate biofiltration—sufficient bacterial colonies that have the unique ability to use the ammonia as food.

This bacteria-based filtration can keep the concentration of ammonia at zero (or at least very close to that) via the metabolic activities of microorganisms that occur naturally in porous rocks and sand. Millions upon millions of different bacteria live in such places and will suck ammonia right out of the water about as fast as it is produced. It’s then converted to nitrite, which is then converted to relatively benign nitrate by yet another suite of beneficial bacteria, and the nitrate can then be removed in various ways such as regular water changes. This entails simply removing some of the old water from the aquarium and replacing it with new seawater made up with quality synthetic sea salt and filtered water.

Calcium and pH

The concentration of calcium, the pH, and the alkalinity of the aquarium’s water are particularly important for corals, too, especially those that produce hard skeletons. Thus, all three of these must be maintained at acceptable levels. Corals use calcium from seawater to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons or skeletal components, so you’ll have to make sure they have access to plenty of calcium if you expect them to stay healthy and to grow. Coral health and skeletal growth are also strongly affected by the water’s pH, and the pH is strongly affected by the water’s alkalinity.

Alkalinity is the ability (or lack of ability) of your aquarium water to resist notable changes in pH from day to night and day to day, which are unwanted because you must strive for stability. Each of these can be controlled through various means that you should research.

Keeping calcium concentrations in the range of 400 to 450 ppm is optimal, but they can be a bit lower or higher. The pH should optimally be kept around 8.2 to 8.4, and alkalinity should be kept in the range of 7 to 12 dKH, though these may often go a little higher or lower. There are several ways to accomplish all of this without too much trouble, though. You can choose from using limewater (typically called kalkwasser) or two-part liquid additives, or even a specialized device called a calcium reactor. Every method has its own pros and cons, so you’ll need to do some homework and decide which one best suits your budget and schedule.

Nutrients

And lastly (with respect to water quality), you’ll also need to keep waterborne nutrients, particularly phosphorus, at minimal levels. Most corals come from areas where nutrients are available in the form of plankton and other particulate foods, but not dissolved in the water itself. Therefore, the concentration of dissolved nutrients on reefs, including various phosphates, is very low. As with the factors covered above, the presence of phosphates can also affect the production of calcium carbonate skeletal material by stony corals, and elevated phosphate levels can shut down its production completely.

In addition, phosphates also act as great fertilizers, but for all the wrong things. Elevated phosphate concentrations can quickly lead to the rapid growth of unwanted algae, which can really muck up an aquarium and even overgrow and kill corals. Avoid overfeeding your fishes, corals, and other livestock, as fish foods are the primary source for phosphates. You’ll also need to perform regular water changes, use a specialized filter called a protein skimmer, and harvest and remove algae as fast as it grows in the aquarium. And again, there are various options at your disposal, each of which has its own pros and cons—you’ll have to decide which is best for you.

Lighting

Almost every coral available to hobbyists will require lighting of higher quality and intensity than what is used over fish-only tanks. This is due to the fact that they have a population of symbiotic single-celled algae living inside their bodies, and these algae require the right light in the right amount in order to stay alive and keep their host coral alive. You’ll need a powerful lighting system with bulbs designed for this purpose.

The four basic types of reef aquarium lighting systems utilize VHO (very high output) fluorescent bulbs, PC (power compact) fluorescent bulbs, T-5 fluorescent bulbs, or MH (metal halide) bulbs, and many systems use some combination of these.Various systems also have different numbers and arrangements of bulbs.

Different types of symbiotic corals will need different amounts of light, as some can live under relatively low-intensity illumination while others need high-intensity illumination. However, even the corals that can withstand low light levels still require hefty lighting. Of course, the same sort of setup might be considered moderate in intensity over a much shallower tank (like a 30-gallon), but totally unacceptable over a much wider/deeper tank (like a 150-gallon). This is because light intensity drops very quickly with increasing distance from the bulbs and with increasing water depth. Likewise, four VHO or PC bulbs over a 55-gallon tank could be considered moderate intensity but high intensity over a smaller tank and low intensity over a wider/deeper tank. Get the idea? Your requirements will ultimately depend on the tank size/depth and what types of corals you intend to keep.

Circulation/Current

Corals are animals and require oxygen to stay alive, but unlike fishes and such, they lack any sort of gills or blood and rely on the absorption of oxygen directly from the water to survive. This means they’ll need a constant supply of oxygenated seawater, which is brought to them by currents. They also rely on currents to bring them food, to keep sediment from settling on top of them and smothering them, and to blow away any wastes they may give off. Water movement is therefore very important in reef aquariums.

Some species of coral need much more or much less current than others, but in general they all require considerably more water motion than what is seen in typical non-reef aquariums. Fish aquariums may have nothing more than a couple of air stones to create currents, and/or some sort of power filter hanging off the back, but in a reef aquarium you’ll need to use pumps of some sort to keep the water churning and to produce turbulent currents.

In general, more than one pump is used, and these pumps should be positioned in such a way that their effluent streams intersect and create mixing currents that move around the tank, rather than always blowing a linear stream at a single point in the tank. You can also buy electronic devices that act like timers, switching different pumps on and off in sequences that create mixing currents, or you could get even fancier and use a surge device that periodically dumps water into the aquarium to create larger waves.

Feeding

Corals may occasionally capture a bit of fish food or some of the sparse plankton that can be found in healthy reef aquariums, and many hobbyists provide little or nothing else for their corals. However, providing food specifically for corals can certainly improve your chances of keeping them healthy and growing. There are three basic ways to do this—you can hand-feed them, you can add some sort of store-bought plankton substitute product, and/or you can set up your aquarium in a way that provides them with natural foods generated in a deep bed of sand within the tank itself or in a refugium.

Many corals, those with large mouths and/or feeding tentacles in particular, can actually be given food by hand. If provided, they’ll eat small-sized meaty foods such as bits of squid, crab, shrimp, clams, etc., and big corals can even take small fishes. They’ll also take smaller items like brine shrimp and bloodworms.

The easiest way to feed the smaller foods is to find a big syringe without a needle at a local drugstore and then fill it with some food and tank water. You can then direct a little squirt of food-laden water at a coral and let it capture the bits. If the end of the syringe happens to be too small in diameter to work with, you can always clip it down with some scissors to make the opening bigger. Also note that it’s a good idea to turn off all the pumps when you do this so the bits aren’t blown away too quickly.

If you try this, you’ll find that any coral with relatively large tentacles will quickly grab anything you squirt into them with your syringe, but many other animals will grab the food as well. Anemones, mushroom corals, button polyps, and even corals that have small tentacles will take what they can get when the opportunity arises. However, there are some exceptions, and it’s typically a matter of trial and error figuring out what foods a given coral will accept.

Likewise, you should occasionally provide other types of corals, those with small tentacles and mouths, with some sort of fine particulate food. Many such corals capture plankton of various sorts and sizes, and there are a number of products you can use to provide them with the real thing or a suitable substitute.

Or, if you want to provide your corals with a supply of live foods generated within the aquarium, you can set up the tank with a deep sand bed (DSB) that is full of organisms. This entails using at least 2 or 3 inches of fine aragonite sand to fill the bottom of the tank, and then stocking the sand with various sand-dwelling critters. The organisms that live in the sand bed can become a food source for your corals, but more importantly they can also produce eggs, larvae, etc., which are released into the water and can be captured and eaten by various corals. Another way to provide live foods is to add a refugium, which is basically a tank that is plumbed to (but separated from) the main tank, where live foods such as macroalgae and zooplankton can be cultured.

Summary

While this short article only provides a short overview, it’s clear that the successful caring for corals takes considerable know-how, equipment/supplies, and attention. Nevertheless, a reef aquarium can definitely be well worth the money and time spent when it comes to enjoyment—so long as you do things right. Do your homework, find out as much as you can about the various points I’ve brought up, and get started the right way if you choose to get into reef aquariums.