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The Dead Fish Scrolls

1 Comments | Rating: (5 rates)

Intro

Research

Philosophy

Setting up

Heaters

pH

Nitrogen cycle

Buying fish and equipment

Fish tips

Fish Food

Water change

Cleaning the tank

Breeding fish

Catching fish

Malawi cichlids

Plants and Algae

Snails

Filters

Marine

Skimmers

DIY

Problem prevention

Fish Problem

Fun

Rules

Goodbye!

Credits

ContentsIntro Fish Food Marine

Research Water change Skimmers

Philosophy Cleaning the tank DIY

Setting up Breeding fish Problem prevention

Heaters Catching fish Fish Problem

pH Malawi cichlids Fun

Nitrogen cycle Plants and Algae Rules

Buying fish and equipment Snails Goodbye!

Fish tips Filters And Credits

Gday! My names Donny, you may know me here as 'Dead Fish Floating'. I have kept fish for a while now. At first I found them tricky. This was hard as I like fish and I dont like seeing them die. But bit by bit I started having more and more success. Eventually I began breeding more than I killed. This made me VERY happy. So happy infact that I told everyone. It was not long before I had infiltrated fish tanks into most of my friends houses. It was also not long before people started to try to change the topic of conversation away from fish. The problem of course is that keeping fish is such a huge varied topic that it was easy to get the conversation back on track. Eventually I got a job in a pet shop. I truly loved this job and soon had some great customers that drove me to learn more and more. My boss Kim encouraged my fish fixation and I began to interact with the many parts of the aquarium industry. No day ever passed without me learning something new. I began to understand almost everyone keeps fish and they all have unique experiences and techniques. My favorite part of the job however was passing on those things that I had learnt that worked to new fish keepers. I didnt want them to experience my stuff ups and perhaps get put off the hobby before I had the chance to get them hooked. I certainly didn t want them killing any of my beautiful fish they bought! This however meant a lot of talking. I like to talk, so that was no problem. for me! In some cases though people would suffer an information overload and barely be able to remember how to turn their car on or the way back home. As my main plan was to build up every betta or goldfish customer until they had a full reef tank in their house I had to learn how to drip feed them information. Not easy on a slow day when you re doing anything to stay out of the dog and cat area that needs a clean. At the moment I work on a building site. So talking about fish is not part of my working day. However I still manage to hook the odd person after showing them my aquariums. A little while back while trying to cram a decades worth of fish data into some ones head in an afternoon, I thought why not try write some of this down. You know save yourself repeating it all at lightning speed before they manage to chew through their arm and escape. So I started writing this. It s not meant to be all you ever need to know about fish. It s more just a few things that I think might help you keep your fish alive. I have nothing to sell you and no reason to lie. I m sure I have made mistakes; I am after all just a monkey. If however, you struggle through this and one less fish dies because of that it will have all been worth it. The art of keeping fish out of their waterways, is an ancient one. Many a fish has died, and many a lesson learnt.The secrets, are all really common sense. I hope I can explain a few of them here, and inspire you to find out more. The more you know, the more you will understand. Once you understand, difficult things become easy, easy things become cheap and rules become vague guidelines. To be successful with fish you only need a few things. Dechlorinator, test kits, the internet, patience, manners and common sense. Most days you will be lacking in one of these ingredients. That s ok, just try to alternate which one it is and it should all even out in the end. I have tried to write this as a flowing read, but I realise its a lot to take in at once. While the contents section will be handy to jump around to points of interest, to get the full value I do reccomend you read it all. For now though, enough intro. Lets jump into this beast!

All the best aquariums start with research and so should yours! Google.com knows more about fish than anyone else, EVER! You just have to know the right question to ask. One of the best ways to begin a new tank is to

search for experiences others had doing it. Research filter models, wild water conditions and common problems. Google has united the fish keeping community and their data in a way no club or newsletter has before. Combinedwith test kits, electricity and de-chlorinator, Google gives the modern fish keeper several hundred times the fish

keeping firepower of the 18th century aquarist. The google language tools can be used to translate foreign websites into almost readable gibberish. You can get the gist anyway. This opens up much of the fishweb previously closed to English only speakers. Using the group searches will often find personal experiences with species. While the scholar searches may find more scientific

references. Searching for aquaponics or aquaculture and your topic can also yield less obvious information to the hobbyist aquarist. For example if you keep native Australian species check the DPI site out for aquaculture data

on them. Find forums populated with people who would know the answer you seek, and see if you can get it in the simple

what do I do? format using flattery and manners. Unless its an emergency it is worth lurking for a bit and checking your answer has not been given a thousand times already. A search through the forum archives first foryour unique thoughts is often a good idea. People can put ideas to hundreds of peers on forums. Ideas can jumpacross several forums in a day and change the way the world keeps fish. So many people thinking about an idea

from so many different angles results in many problems being solved by very simple clever means. Some forums can quickly descend into flame war central if you offend the wrong crazy. Be nice, get in, get ya

answer and get out if it looks like its all going to get a bit manic. Plenty of more important things in life to enjoy than getting trapped in circular arguments with trolls. Dont waste time feeding them, just ignore. Sometimes theymay have a good reason to tell you off however, and there s nothing like a run in with the tang police on a dark

and stormy night to put you in your place.So research your own questions as well as others advice. Some people may know a hell of a lot about fish but

their job may be to sell you a certain product anyway. So look for yourself. EVERY aquarium problem is a breeze to solve the SECOND time around. You pick up chicks flaunting your skill second time round! All those times you

read about a problem before you face it personally and then manage to avert your fishes suffering when you finally do face it, those are the victories you should be proud of. For this reason alone make Google your friend.

While there are many free monthly high quality internet aquarium magazines. You should never be afraid to buy a book instead of a fish. A good fish book can not only teach but inspire you to create ever more impressive fish

tanks. They are also handy to have on hand near the tank. Google may have more pictures but it's kinda tricky torun between rooms all the time. Do a search on the net, find the guru with the fish you keep and buy their book. It saves a lot of looking elsewhere. But never completely rely on one source of information, things change in the fish world and methods can become almost obsolete. That s life, buy a good fish book anyway. It will make you a

better fish keeper. The sheer amount of random fish data a n00b faces when starting this hobby is obscene. Let me add to this carnage with some random things to consider while you are in the research phase. That is after all what fish

keeping friends are for!You are a legend and should treat yourself. Buy the largest aquarium you can afford. This prevents having to

upgrade later, a double expense few need. I would say though that while smaller marine aquariums are usually a bit trickier to keep stable they are a lot cheaper. My advice would be to start large with freshwater because large

tanks are cheap enough and a lot easier. I d start small with salt water and work out what you would like in a larger tank while learning the ropes with a smaller less expensive one. Work hard to under stock smaller marine

tanks. Less is often more. The lessons you learn with a smaller tank help ensure you wont suffer the large scale drama of an epic reef wipe out. Marine tanks are easy, they are also easy to stuff up making beginner mistakes!

So big tanks are easier, but it s less painful to learn lessons in smaller tanks. Some fish come from water like a cup of tea, it is stained with tannins from leaves and wood and is acidic. Some

fish come from water like mineral water, there is lots of dissolved minerals and it is alkaline. Others come from creeks swollen with rain that are filled with neutral/slightly acidic rainwater. Then of course there are marine fish.Not many fish are at home in all of these different water types and some are very specific about the water they

will survive in. These waters exert different osmotic pressures on fish and often take thousands or millions of yearto adapt to. Fish will be happiest in the water they evolved in and it is the very first step in creating a bio-type

aquarium. The rest comes with ornaments, plants and fish from that area. Barbs and 'barb shaped tetra' will nip betta, guppy and fancy goldfish fins. Fish like silver dollars, scats, goby and puffers are also known fin nippers. Fighter fish will attack fish with big fins, mistaking them for other fighter fish.

Fighters may also attack and kill other fish trying to get them out of their territory or to eat them. Sometimes thereason fighter fish are kept separate from other fish is they have been raised separate to other fish and have no

resistance to any diseases they are carrying.Fish like Oscars are a BIG commitment. They need big tanks, lots of food and lots of water changes/filter cleans. It's like getting a dog. Don't buy one if it's going to live its entire live in a 2 foot tank. Really try to know exactly how big any fish will grow before buying it. Try hard not to impulse buy without double checking, salesmen sell stuff, it's what they do. Make a serious effort to only buy fish that will be happy in your aquarium as full size

adults. This will save serious physical effort water changing the tank every other day. The salesman is just happyhe no longer has to water change the thing.

Keep little fish in big tanks and they will act more natural. Place tanks with timid fish away from the busiest spotsin your house. The fish will hide less. Keep schooling fish like clown loaches, monos, silver dollars and silver sharksin large groups, they will hide less. Some times all that s needed is one or 2 fish swimming around for the rest to

feel that all is well and come out of hiding. Only 1 school of 1 schooling species per tank is a technique than can create good looking community fish

displays. Having fish of too many species creates a jumbled look. Keeping fish that occupy the top, middle and bottom layers of the tank gives a busy looking aquarium. Most catfish only tanks appear empty most of the time. Get your power bill; write down your filters and pumps that run 24/7. It's important for filters to run all (24 hours!)

day. They are you fishes life support system. Anyway write down what draws what watt wise. Look at the bill and see how much a unit of electricity is in watts and how much it costs. From this info you can see how much itcosts a day/month/year to run equipment. Some more expensive to purchase equipment may be more efficient. For things like big pond pumps, these simple sums can save you hundreds of dollars over a year. 1 Central air

pump is very efficient as are many sumped systems. Not being a fan of maths I type electricity calculator into Google and use premade power calculators to check just how much everything is costing to run. Then I get

drunk, erase that file from memory and continue in a blissfully ignorant way to do the same thing. You can often find power details of equipment with a quick Google if you know the brand and model name. Working out what

they cost to run is a good thing to consider before just buying. You may have to spend now to save later. The more you can learn about how others keep fish the better you yourself will be able to keep them. I am sure there will be some things here you will disagree on, and maybe you are right. Forums are a good place to discuss a subject in detail. I am self taught myself, and make no claim to know all. I have learnt a lot from others in the hobby, the trade and on the internet. My advice is however just that, the advice of one man. End of the day it s your aquarium! And with that its time to leave research and move onto philosophy. As a tank god it is imperative

you stay sane to prevent Nero style purges. I am probably not the best person to discuss this subject but I m going have a bash at it anyway!

Many people burn out with fish, often taking a break is all you need. Try to find what you don't enjoy about fish keeping and then aim to make that painless. If its water changes try rig up an auto water change system, if you

need to feed too often get larger fish that can go a few days between feeds. Keep a tank that matches your laziness level. Buy a nitrate test kit and work out how often you need to water change to dilute nitrates below 20ppm. Complicated planted, breeding or reef setups do take time and daily tinkering. Tanks are also a pain to

move. It can be easier to just sell your tanks and buy new ones if you are moving far away. A few boxes of fish are easier than a display tank and stand. Worst case is a wipeout situation but keep in mind that the fish keepersyou have met on your wacky venture through fish keeper land will often be happy to give you a few fish to help

ya restock. No one likes to see a comrade leave the hobby.The most important thing with a fish tank is too look at it. Place it near the TV and you can have one eye on it and the other on the TV. If you can, have a couch or chair you can relax in in comfort, rather than just turning over a 20L bucket. Have a camera on hand (digital if at all possible) to record cool stuff, you just never know.

Help out someone new to the hobby and they will help out others later on. It's a ripple effect and in a hobby so based on information very important.

Don't try to keep everything at once. Keeping a few fish tanks really well is better than keeping dozens of them 'average'. This is a hobby to last your life; you re not going to run out of species to try anytime soon.

Sometimes it helps to think of your fish tank like a spaceship. Having 2 of everything is handy, as when one breaks you don't all just suddenly die. Having 2 filters also means you can alternate cleaning. Having 2 less

powerful heaters means you won't have to rush to the lfs if one packs it in. It may be expensive but having a replacement bit on hand is very... handy.

Each tank is a unique experiment to achieve roughly the same aim; its complexity is shown by the variety in peoples setups and experiences

Im not a fan of UVC or UVS. Really just have no use for them. Plenty of other toys I want though. That said replace UV bulbs regularly and flow water slowly through them to achieve better kill rates. Not using something

means you dont get much experience with them. There are many people who would never put a fish they would be upset to lose in a tank without a UVS running on it. To each their own. You will never be able to get your

granddad to stop using under gravel filters. So dont bother. Just accept that people do different stuff and their fish still live.

Try to respect the environment. If you can make something rather than pillaging from the wild do it. Buy fish/marine goodies from responsible collectors; buy captive bred fish where ever possible. They are stronger and

better. Don't take rocks or driftwood that are fishes homes in the wild for your tank at home. They can often bring unwanted nasties with them, but really its about re-creating nature not imprisoning it. Aquariums are not the slices of nature they appear to be, they are simulations. We as fish keepers get blamed for a lot of stuff.

Sure much live rock is stripped from reefs but much, much more is used in construction where cement would haveworked. That said we should do what we can to support a sustainable hobby. One day the oceans may die and itwill be fish keepers who will keep alive the fish species. Already aquarists have helped maintain captive stocks of

endangered cichlids. Wild caught fish are always a thrill but vote with your wallet when you can and support hobby breeding. A good book to read is the Conscientious Marine Aquarist. It deserves a plug as it has been key

in changing how aquarists go about the hobby. It can be a daunting task setting up a dream display tank. The hardest bit is starting. Once you begin an

aquarium, thats it. It's no longer a thought it's a reality, often the rest follows easy enough. The important thing is to start. Even a bare tank with bubbling filter is strangely mesmerizing. If nothing else it will get other people

around you excited as well. The quicker you start the faster you will have it. Take your time making a list of things to do, do things right. Remember the foam between tank and stand. Remove obstacles in your way before

moving around the tank. If it gets too much or you lose zest for the mission reflect on how good it will be to finally have it finished. 1 task at a time, chip away at it. It's easy to exaggerate just how complex or much of a

mission a display is going to be. Don't set a time limit, fish missions have a way of dragging out a bit and patienceis oh so valuable. Can't rush bacteria growing may as well have a cuppa and watch toons instead. If you get

stuck on something, visit other people s fish rooms, or fish shops and try and get inspired. You can get a lot of ideas looking at a few hundred filter setups in one day. Don't feel you can't do something just because you have no experience, that just means it's something to work up to. Go get some! As Ziglar says Failure is often the line of least persistence . With aquariums you are the limiting factor. Think things through, break it into stages and

begin.

Starting to get to the good stuff now! Let s talk about setting up your aquarium. This is usually a confusing and exciting moment for everyone. There will be drama! You cannot escape that, so take it in your stride and keep grinning. This is all going to be oh so worth it once its done. I dont have the patience to go through a setup

every single step by step which is lucky as I doubt you have the patience to read it! I will however try cover a few of the more important bits.

First of all, keep a tank journal. Not only will all that recorded data let you track deaths like a CSI team but they make great mementos of the stuff you did right too! With a tank journal and ammonia/nitrite/nitrate test kits you can track any tank nitrate cycle. Then work out exactly how lazy you can be with water changes while keeping nitrates diluted enough. A journal can be a note pad or a fancy computer program. What ever, use it to log test results, water changes, breeding activity, fish breeder information/contacts, new fish additions, deaths, adding salt and medications for starters. Even having your tank size/volume and species list recorded in one place is

handy. Other handy data is how much electricity equipment costs to run, where it was purchased and for how much. I stick in receipts, lfs cards and in some cases even printed digital camera pictures.

A ground fault interrupter switch can save your life working with fish. It's easy to knock a light in a tank, spray water over your xbox, lawn mower a pond filter cable, break a glass heater, flood a power board or something.

Create 'drip loops' on all electrical plugs. Do this by creating a lower point before the plug meets the socket, that way water drops will drip off before making it up hill to the socket. With electricity one flash and your ash. Be

safe. It s more fun than being dead, or so I hear anyway. If you want to drill holes in your aquarium for your filter plumbing do it before you fill the aquarium with water! In

fact it s easiest to get it done by the tank maker before you even bring it home. The sound of running water can make some people wet the bed or fall asleep. Be mindful of filter types in kids bedrooms and studies. Sunlight can cause algae to grow faster, that s not always a bad thing. But it can also raise the tank temperature so it s worth thinking about how much sunlight will hit the tank. Even if down that

thought path lays an ingenious scheme to focus the sunlight from every window with mirrors onto a super sun lit tank.

Make sure all tanks have a layer of Styrofoam between the tank base and stand. Colour it black with a magic marker if your stand is black to help it blend in. Make sure your fish tank stand can handle a bit of water without swelling up and falling apart. If your fish tank area has a drain in the middle of the floor your laughing, otherwise spread old towels over carpet while water changing to avoid wrath over spills. Stand legs can be put in plastic

protectors (or on plastic chopping boards) to cut back on rusting. Wash new sand and gravel in a bucket outside by overflowing the bucket with a hose until it overflows clear.

Cleaning it in the tank is a lot more fiddly! Dark gravel will make cardinal and neon tetra have darker more vibrant colour, lighter gravels and sands will make most fish paler. This is an attempt to camouflage the fish against the

bottom and hide it from potential air attack. A heater has a thermostat not a thermometer! Don't trust it too know the aquarium temperature. Heaters go

rogue all the time so ensure you have a separate thermometer away from the heater somewhere easy to see. If in doubt most fish can handle 25 deg C water. If your fish break heaters, make or buy heater guards for them.

Better yet sump the tank and put all equipment out of sight in the sump. Or you could buy a stainless steel heater.

'Shop' style 4 foot fluro lights can really be the affordable solution to lighting tanks in your fish room. Experiment buying different tubes from supermarkets and see which one gives the look you like. Sure aquarium tubes may be superior, but with mixing and matching you can get a rough spectral match for much less money. Their low cost ensures less drama to replace tubes if they cause algae or are wrong colour. Buy some new starters for them if

they need. If they have no switch, I usually just buy an appliance timer for them and use that as same cost less work. Serious reefers or planted setup people can ignore this and go back to your cold fusion lighting setups.

With freshwater tanks, a technique I have found handy is to have 1 large volume display say a 6x2x2 and then maybe some 2X1s. The smaller 2x1s can be water changed and then topped up from the larger display. Once the

larger display gets down far enough it is refilled. This may sound strange but often my smaller tanks have more delicate fish in them, they enjoy aged water. The large display is in effect my water ager barrel, filled with a few tougher fish that can handle 50% water changes usually breeders or an oddball. Keeping the larger tank under stocked, well filtered and with nice low nitrates from all the water changes it is a nice aesthetic version of the usual water ager reservoir. Having water always available, at same pH and temperature makes it a lot easier to

get growth out of tanks full of different sized fish. It s almost like having a nice big central sump filter or perhapsmore like having a nice big mothership tank in support of the fleet. Just as long as mothership is healthy all is well!

Id like to turn now to aquarium heaters. Heating fish tanks is one of my least favorite things. This is unfortunate as fish from warm waters are some of my favorite things. In particular I hate paying to heat tanks through winter.

If you have lots of tanks to heat it can be cheaper to seal the area and heat the room. Newer central air is hot/cold and enables perfect climate control summer or winter. This also applies to chillers on marine tanks.

Outdoor fish are difficult or expensive to heat through winter. Large amounts of water are more stable but will stillneed very good insulation if you wish to keep them warmer than the surrounding environment. Saltwater ponds are difficult to control regarding evaporation and rain. Weather plays a huge part in deciding what you can and

can t keep outside. Either insulate the base and sides and build a greenhouse over the top or use a climate controlled shed. In the end it s certainly a lot easy to keep fish that are happy with your local temperatures

outside. You may still be able to give some of your tropicals a summer pond vacation though. Heaters are only draining power while heating, in many brands a light will be on.. Having a heater at each end canquickly heat an aquarium and give you more 'off time'. Remember larger volumes of water will hold heat for longer.

Smaller volume tanks with large surface areas have potential to change temperature rapidly. You can attach Styrofoam sheets to the sides of containers and aquariums to slow down temperature drops in drastic times. Worse comes to worst, bag the fish and put them in an esky. Fish can handle lower temperatures

than you expect if the temperature drops slowly. Using heaters in small containers with no water flow is dangerous be careful not too cook your fish. At the same time, the water temperature in small containers can drop very quickly on a cold day, test the temperature before changing them over to warmer water suddenly.

Reduce dangerously high tank temperatures by removing lids and blowing air across the water surface with a fan.If fish are jumpers mounting computer fans in light hoods may be necessary or use eggcrate for lids. You can cover the eggcrate with plastic canvas if your fish are small and jumpers. You can also float bottles of frozen

water (don't fill right to top BEFORE freezing) or plastic bags can be filled with ice cubes and hung in tanks if you have no frozen bottles handy. Add a drop of dechlorinator if you are concerned about chlorine in ice melt.

Powerheads may produce excess heat. If your tank is running hot, switch off lights (especially spot lights), checkpump temperatures and remove lids/ add fans. Small water changes can be used to drop temperature if tap water

is cooler. Be careful not to chill fish. A pump that runs hot is not going to be fun in summer if you have a reef tank.

I want to have a few quick words on pH now. I find most fish keepers have an unnatural fixation with pH. Most would be best to trade it in for a fixation with partial water changes. If you are going to get into reef or serious planted tanks it is well worth reading up on how CO2, KH, GH and pH all interact together. The rest of us can

usually get away with nodding and saying yea when the topic comes up in conversation. That pH of water in creeks, rivers and even coral reefs alters and swings through out the day. Plants remove CO2from water during the day and release it at night. Measure your pH through out the day, many aquariums exhibit this. A bucket of fresh tap water will often change in pH if left to sit overnight. To discuss pH and related stuff isbeyond the scope of this. But I just wanted to point out that everything doesn't rely on you keeping the water

perfect at pH 7. In fact, long term it's easier to keep fish that like your tap water, certainly makes them easier towater change. Like everything else in fish keeping pH becomes more complicated the more you learn about it. A handful of shell grit ends most pH drama in tanks; others like to aim at a bulls eye. Myself, I believe an ammonia

and nitrite test kit is more important to have on hand. As long as pH is stable it s normally fine. If pH is high ammonia is more toxic. If pH is low nitrite is more toxic. Swinging pH to help out with ammonia or

nitrite poisoning is almost always doomed to fail. Best to keep a stable pH than swing it up and down. A stable pHlets filter bacteria operate closer to optimum level and they are the best way of getting ammonia and nitrite to

safe levels. Coral, shellgrit, marble, limestone, calcium carbonate, even aged concrete/cement... will usually keep your tank pH around the 7.6 mark. This is handy if your fish is happy at that range and most are. Calcium carbonate is for

people who can t be bothered messing around with pH up and down. The problem is that this limits the amount ofco2 you can dissolve in the water in planted setups.

When you move onto breeding your fish, you may need to play with pH a bit more closely as eggs can be very delicate to a pH different to the one they spent millions of years evolving in. Fish on the other hand are much

more adaptable. You can make 'black water' by soaking peat, leaves (dead Indian almond and banana leaves are good ones),

driftwood or even teabags in water while it ages. With a lot of care acids can be used as a cheap way to removebuffers from the water. This is not something for the beginner to try, but for the serious fish keeper a trip to the

pool supply store can save some serious cash.

So pH, is yea a bit over rated. Now let s move to the mother of all aquarium topics. The nitrogen cycle. Those seasoned salts among you are already skim reading down to where this subject ends. The rest of ya pay

attention! You need to understand this so you can use common sense in your day to day aquarium keeping. It is important to understand that aquariums remain simulations of nature. They are a test tube river, lake or

ocean. Lacking the immense dilution abilities and massive available surface areas that natural environments enjoy.Nature is a mind numbing web of chaos that somehow works. On the other hand an aquarium is a closed system and can be controlled or manipulated. Infact an aquarium will need help from YOU to remain a stable ecosystem. Nature usually does better without human help. But for your aquarium to stay perfect in your eyes will require

scheming on your part. You need to learn how to help out the good guys and let them fight most of the problemsfor you. Divide and conquer as it were.

No fish really eats poo, that s the filter bacteria's job. Filter bacteria break down fish poo into much less toxic chemicals. With water changes it's easy to keep these less toxic chemicals in the water at levels safe for fish. Most fish tank filters are based on ones used to treat human poo. Icky as that sounds, they work very well. As

long as the filter has a healthy population of good bacteria, it is unlikely to be colonized by dangerous ones. The new aquarium starts out with very few of the sticky "good-guy" bacteria, so the new aquarist needs to startout with a much less fish than what they wish to keep once the tank is mature. Care must be taken to increase the good guy bacteria numbers over about a month. At the end of this filter/aquarium break-in period you will have grown a living filter that will help you greatly to keep any fish alive. You can water change while growing this filter, as long as you leave the filter and gravel undisturbed the benefits out weigh the risks. Keeping pH

stable and ammonia and nitrite levels low at all times is important if there are fish in there. Giving a new fish keeper a chunk of your filter sponge/media, a handful of your gravel/sand and some of your

water to kick start their tank is the best start you can give them. It's important they feed their aquarium a bit of fish food everyday (or ammonia if you want to be fancy) so that the bacteria can build up in numbers to handle the future fish waste load. Once some ones filter is cycled the aquarium becomes very low maintenance. It is

important to tell them to never clean the filter out under a tap or they will kill the helpful bacteria. Then you haveweeks of bad water while you wait for the bacteria to breed back up.

When choosing the main filter for your tank try to aim to turn your tank water volume over twice an hour. Generally you aim for more flow than this in marine tanks and less in heavily planted ones. Brackish tanks take even longer than marine tanks to cycle. Marine tanks take longer than freshwater. Of course your mileage may vary and there is not really an accurate answer to the question, 'How long until it's cycled?' Bacteria that eat

ammonia reproduce faster than those that eat nitrite. So the nitrite spike is a common chokepoint in the cycle. High ammonia levels may slow nitrite eaters breeding. Ammonia and nitrite are usually though good to grow fast

filter bacteria, just bad for fish. I always water change to minimalise damage done to fish, but Id much prefer no fish were in the tank until it was cycled. Put a mature filter on a new tank to almost instantly cycle it. This is

another good reason to use 2 filters in each tank, it makes setting up a new tank painless. Once you have one healthy cycled tank you can use bacteria from it to jump start as many other tanks as you need to. Getting that

first filter cycled is often the biggest challenge most fish keepers ever face. You can cycle a tank with no fish. A bare tank with a running filter can be just fed fish food (or pure ammonia)

until ammonia and nitrite peak and then fall to 0ppm. Do a big water change and begin to stock the tank. The aimis to match the growth rate of the bacteria with the addition of extra poo machines (fish) and to stop adding fish

before they will be too much effort to water change (to dilute nitrates) when adults. Space out your fish purchases to allow bacteria to catch up to the waste load. Adding new fish always adds lots of excitement to the

tank and that s something you want to drag out as long as possible. Waiting for a fish tank to cycle, feeding up the bacteria and getting all the needed equipment setup before you bring home fish saves all the lame daily water changes, smelly cloudy water and diseases or dying fish that just

setting up a new tank and throwing in fish involves. Often the first step in a new tank for me, begins with feedinga filter in a bucket a bit of fish food (or some ammonia) each day for 2 weeks. When I finally have the tank filled and good to go I have a partially mature filter ready to rip from the bucket and throw in. Rush it all. add poo

producing fish BEFORE you have bacteria colonies grown and you re asking for lame drama. You can smell if a filteris healthy. It has a smell like freshly disturbed dirt after rain. Not unpleasant at all. A filter that smells bad is not

healthy at all. Cloudy water is often caused by floating bacteria multiplying at enormous rates; it usually goes away in a few

days with no need for action. It is common in the first month or two and any time when the filter bacteria colony is unable to keep up with the fish waste load. This is very common in tanks where the filter sponge bacteria havebeen killed after being cleaned in tap water. A floaty bacteria bloom will sometimes also follow removal of gravel or ornament if they were heavily colonized by the helpful sticky bacteria. Or you may just be plain overfeeding or have dead fish or snails in the aquarium. Try increasing water aeration as helpful bacteria may have slowed down due to low oxygen levels in the water. Bacteria growth will also slow down due to low temperature or pH in some cases. Large pH, temperature or oxygen fluctuations may kill many helpful filter bacteria. Try to treat your filter

bacteria as nicely as your fish. When sponge media needs to be changed as it is falling apart. Add the new sponge to your aquarium to seed

with helpful bacteria around 2 weeks before you plan to swap it over. Place the new sponge in the running filter inyour aquarium, or use it as a prefilter or elastic band it to the outside of the filter. I kick start sponges for about 14 days to really get them well colonized. At the very least rub some brown sludge off the old filter media and onto the new stuff before you swap over. Try very hard not to use disposable filter media, it makes keeping a

stable bacteria population both difficult and expensive. If you do not have time to seed the new filter media for afew weeks in the tank first then replace no more than half the filter media with new stuff to prevent throwing out

your whole bacteria colony. Replace the next half in a few weeks. Bacteria need lots of oxygen to transform toxic fish waste to less dangerous nitrate. The amount of oxygen

entering the water is related to the surface area of the aquarium. Where the air meets the water is where it all happens. If the surface is rough with popping bubbles and swirling filter/powerhead current it will have a much

greater surface area. Ensure the surface of the aquarium is rippled and disturbed to ensure good water oxygenation. The last thing you want is filter bacteria competing with fish for oxygen! During milky/cloudy water

bacteria blooms, the bacteria in the water will be consuming even more oxygen. Reduce feeding and increase aquarium oxygenation.

The water coming out of a filter may not contain much oxygen if it has passed through lots of bacteria. These low oxygen outputs are best directed across the surface of the water where they can release carbon dioxide and

dissolve more oxygen. Returning it too the tank via a spray bar can also be effective. If you only ever DIY one aquarium mod, do a spray bar. Its a pipe with a few holes and one end closed off or even plugged with a bit of

cork. Easy. Also effective at reducing the carnage an oversized filter does to a small tank. Remove annoying air venturies on power head filters. You can tie a knot to reduce the airflow/noise or use

valves.... but I just rip them off. They are not needed in most cases though, put annoying microbubbles in fishs gills, reduce water clarity and make a nasty sound. I hates the things.

Teaching people about the nitrate cycle is not an easy task to do over and over. If that sounds like your job, try to prepare a hand out to preserve your sanity. A picture is also worth a thousand words.... something I would

have to remember only after writing those thousand words of course.

Ok you made it through the nitrate cycle talk. Well done! As a reward lets talk about something that s not going to make your brain bleed. Buying fish and fish stuff! Everyone loves buying fish and fish stuff. Fish keeping is the worlds biggest hobby and fish related products make up more than half of all pet sales. Lot of people trying to

make money with fish. So look around and reward good service. You can get very impressive complete second-hand setups by looking at classifieds and online forums like here. When people have to sell you can get really good value. People who are moving or students finishing up courses

will often sell tank setups off for cheap. Little things thrown in are all things you dont need to buy later, and withluck and a mature filter you might just skip the cycle period new tanks endure.

Once a glass tank has left the store its value decreases a lot. Don't move tanks with objects like lids or ornaments still inside. They can move around and crack the glass.

The aquarium market is a niche market. If you can find the same product marketed for industrial/human/agricultural it will usually be much cheaper. If everybody in a hobby wants it, it will be

expensive. Chemicals like sodium thiosulphate de-chlorinator and sodium chloride aquarium salt are much cheaper from a swimming pool shop than local pet shop. Likewise aquaculture fish food is cheaper per kg than pet

fish food. Going in with someone and buying bulk fish, equipment, fish food or chemicals can be a good way to save cash long term.

Wholesale prices are only cheap compared to retail and good fish are always worth what you pay. No regrets! Buying fish is like buying computers. The next day the market will be flooded with cheaper ones. Such is life.

When most people measure fish they include the fins. Keep it in mind when they mention the size. Condition of fish is actually more important than fish size. Healthy fish are easy to grow big but the buyer doesn t often see

the bright side of the deal if fish look smaller than expected. Don't mercy buy pathetic looking fish at pet shops in the hope of nursing them back to health. If you buy it they

will order in more and probably kill those as well. Make an impact on their future choice by voting with your wallet.A sick fish can often cost a lot more (in meds or if it spreads disease to other tanks) than you had originally

factored in. Shops that sell obviously sick fish are no good. Its just not cool, avoid them Fish/pet shops can often order in far more species than they have in stock. You may have to make a deposit andyou may lose it if you change your mind. Try to meet the boxes when they arrive at the store, you will probably

get a discount and avoid exposing them to shop tanks. There is a dark side to this technique unfortunately though. Shipping can often be very stressful for fish and in their weakened state they can easily contract things like whitespot. If you dont have a quarantine tank it s often best to let fish settle for a week or so at the lfs just

to see if any disease is going to make itself known. Things like whitespot infestations may not have visible symptoms for a few days so best they first appear in a lfs tank than your pride and joy display. If you never see the item you are chasing try posting a WTB (where to buy) thread in forums. Someone may just know and you

never know if you don't ask. It is ok to ask a fish store employee to net a fish against the front glass so you can have a closer look at it, IF

you fully intend to buy it if it's ok. In a similar vein you can ask to see axolotl s being fed, as well as fussier marines. I'm happy to buy something a feeder if I have to to watch a fish feed and be convinced it's a good buy. It's a toss up as it may then poo in the bag, but you get that buying fish. Some shops have no guarantee on fish

but may hold a purchased fish for you for a few days so you can see that it is healthy. Bring a bucket and battery powered aerator to pickup larger or spiny fish such as catfish. Bags will usually not be

suitable. As they say, a good display for shows and good buckets for pros. Write the scientific names of your fish on a card and keep it in your wallet, that way fish shop people know what you have, better yet remember their names and better still take a photo of them on your mobile phone. A picture

is worth a thousand words and can help people decide what medicine you need or fish/equipment would be suitable. People may say Latin is easier to ID fish but considering its kinda hard for the average person to know how to pronounce the old dead language, let alone remember the name common names have there use, but a

picture just makes it easy for all. Be polite to breeders, lfs/pet shop staff, forum members and others in the pet industry. Most are in it because

they like animals. They may not agree with you on certain things, but many have good reasons for reaching that viewpoint. They may be a plumber/doctor/scientist/kiwi as well as a fish keeper, you just never know. They are

part of the fish brotherhood, whether they are part of the local fish club, attend auctions, read forums, work in apet shop/lfs or elsewhere in the industry it's handy to know them. Every connection makes the job of keeping happy fish that much easier. We are where we are in the hobby today because of all the countless aquarium

ideas that have mish mashed together. So yea, if you see something good, tell someone it is. If staff give you good service, reward that and shop there. Don't ask questions and then go buy online. And really unless you

know the shop people well, don't take canister filters you bought online in there to get them to 'get it too work'. If you need that service, buy it from them. If you get good service and you re stoked write their boss a letter andsay so. If you buy fish from a breeder that are just A grade fish recommend them to others, if it's a forum member

vouch for them. Good publicity encourages those doing the right thing to keep it up, and gives them a bit of a deserved ego boost. Competition is good but working together actually creates results. It s all about win/win situations. So don t be rude. You wouldn t be rude at a Japanese koi farm so dont be rude buying someones

guppies. If you have a problem with a fish store, call them up and sort it out like mature adults talking on the telephone. Defaming them on the internet will only make things worse; reputations are valuable in this industry. People get emotional but its best to be a grownup and sort things out face to face or on the phone. I don t mean go be an

idiot, I mean use a bit of rational and try work out a win-win situation. No shop likes to lose a customer and everyone has a bad day every now and again. Once again if you really have a problem with a shop just don t shop

there. Use mail order instead. Ok so lets just say everything went sweet and you re on your way home with your fish. Hopefully they have been

bagged well 2/3 oxygen and 1/3 water. You have them in your Styrofoam box or esky to keep the temperature nice and stable. All is hunky dory! Now lets get these things in your tank!

Floating new bags of fish in the aquarium to let the temperature equalize is a good start, but there are other important things you should do to if you have time. When you open the bag roll the sides down, this will stop the bag closing up and suffocating the fish! I prefer to move the fish to a bucket but it can be done in the tank. Take

your time, the pH has probably dropped in the bag water and bringing the pH back up quickly is usually more dangerous than dropping it. Add water from the aquarium to the fish bag or bucket. I like to slowly add water over 20 minutes or more, a bucket is good as I can slowly add aquarium water by siphoning it down thru an air hose line, or drip it in with another bucket sitting on top with a small hole in the bottom. These methods break the water surface a bit but adding an air stone anyway is always a good idea. When I am satisfied the fish is

happy with my tank water I net it out and add it to the tank. The fish bag water, unless it is a just setup new tank is discarded. Too many risks to add it. Sometimes I will give new fish a dip in fresh (for marine fish) or

saltwater (for freshwater fish) first to cull parasites. Ideally the fish will go into a quarantine tank to be wormed and observed for a while first.

When adding new fish to a tank with territorial fish in it try to add a few fish at a time to share out aggression. Move the rocks and ornaments around to 'reset the battleground'. This way fish will be too busy fighting over new

territory to bother the new comer. Turning off the lights can help, as can a distracting feed. Less stocked aquariums are a lot less work. The fish live longer in blackouts when filters stop. You do less water changes. Buy less food, feed less and fish have more individual personalities. Sometimes though with aggressive

fish keeping more spreads out the aggression. Overstocking requires very good filtration and frequent partial water changes. It also pays to 'over rock' that is ensure you have enough ornaments in the tank that every fish can find itself a little spot to call home. Out of sight is often out of mind. A fish constantly chased will stress and

often get sick from something a healthy fish shouldn't. Be sure to check the normal male to female ratio if you want to breed. Remove fish that interrupt spawns. The lesson is don t buy too many fish if you don t want to buyanother tank to solve drama that WILL occur. MTS is the logical outcome of an overstocked tank combined with a

conscientious aquarist.

OK now we are making some headway! Lets talk a bit about fish! Im not going to go too overboard here as thereare plenty of specialist websites and books that can devote all their space to one species. So lets talk Betta,

which despite having a reputation for being easy is responsible for massive fish medication sales. Fighter fish or 'betta' are very tough fish. They do much better in filtered heated fish tanks with soft flowing filtration than bowls though. Bettas do not handle sudden changes in temperature very well, and this is what happens in most bowls. If you prefer the bowl, try keeping it in a room in the house with a stable temperature

rather than the warmest or coldest one. Placing a lid can help trap humid air which is better for the fish to breath. Live mosquito larvae is LOVED by betta. If you live somewhere that gets cold consider a single paradise

fish. They may not have the solid neon colours of betta but they are perhaps the perfect bowl fish. Their aggression makes them friendly to humans, and they are not too fussy about water conditions or food. An

effective way to keep bowl fish is to empty out one cup of bowl water and replace it with a fresh cup of de-chlorinated water daily. This continual dilution keeps water conditions good. Be aware there is a lot of chatter

around at the moment about the potential dangers of using tea tree medications with betta, gourami and paradisefish. It may just be worth a quick google before you treat.

Fighter fish food is usually more expensive than the fish over time because of the small containers it is sold in. Unless it is going to spoil before you use it a good quality community protein pellet can be used. You may need to

crumble it up a bit to make it small enough for the fighters. If you are going to breed betta, ensure you get a good fancy dad and mum. It's a lot of effort production line raising a betta spawn, make sure they are worth it. Abit of cash spent on awesome parents can ensure even the more average in the spawn can be sold to fish shops.

The best looking fish can give you good kudos in breeding betta in 1 spawn. I like to turn betta breeding into a construction line. You really need to get feeding 100+ containers each day down to the minimum time possible. Some tricks like feeding with turkey basters can save hours. Other tricks such as cutting slits in containers 1/3 down from the top, so you can just top it up and it drains back down to 2/3 full, can save you days in overall

time in water changes. Siamese fighters do well with a leaf of Indian Almond in their aquarium. This tree is more common in northern Australia, but its around if you know what to look for. Now let s mix it up a bit with some random fish tips!

If you keep brackish fish like mollies, scats, bream, archers, monos, salmon cattys, puffers etc they often prefer the addition of good quality marine salt, rather than a handful of pool salt. Marine mixes create more comfortable

water for brackish fish.If a catfish is built for speed like a shark and has long whiskers, then it's a type that comes out at night and hunts sleeping fishes. These catfish have big mouths and often grow large. If the catfish is armored or built

strangely with small/short whiskers, then it's a type that comes out at night and scavenges or eats algae. The planet catfish website can tell you almost anything else you need to know about catfish.

Just to keep the random nature of this write up consistent lets move now to feeding your fish. First up are fish pellets. Fish pellets come in a zillion varieties these days. Some may have lots of cereals and make great goldfish food. Then there are ones high in DL-methionine, or others to improve oranda brain head growth. However just because a food is the best most expensive goldfish pellet on the market does not mean all types of fish will do

well on it! In general most other fish do best on higher protein ingredients. Check those first three ingredients youwant fish or prawn products and those cheap bulk out cereals and grains way down the list.

If you buy bulk fish food pellets, store most in the freezer. It will stay fresher longer. Don't feed fish food that hasgotten wet or gone bad. Fish get food poisoning too. Cats and dogs love to eat fish food. It can be an expensive

treat for them. Cockroaches and rats seem to prefer algae wafers. If you buy pellet food that is too large for your fish either crumble it smaller yourself with a rolling pin or pepper grinder or soak it first in aquarium water for a bit first so it's soft enough to be broken up by fish. Choking on

pellets is not cool. As an added bonus you can add liquid vitamins or medications to dry food and it will soak it upallowing you to orally medicate fish. Use a clean pepper grinder to crush up mixed fish food pellets for baby fish toeat. A 'magic bullet' or similar blender can also pulverize a mix of feeds in seconds. This can be mixed with water and target fed with a turkey blaster or large needless syringe. Target feeding like this is handy for feeding marine inverts too. Once empty of food the turkey blaster can be used to blow debris off live rock and corals. Fill with

boiling de-chlorinated water for apista assassination missions. To get a barramundi to eat pellets after being fed only live feeders, try to first get it to take strips of fish fillet orprawns. Once it is taking prawns try to squeeze prawn juice onto dry pellets, and then feed the pellets. If this works a few more feeds and you should be able to stop adding the juice. The same approach can wean fighter

fish off mosquito larva or bloodworm and back onto pellets. Dont throw sinking pellets for pond fish into pond plants as fish will dig around and dig them up! Lillys look better

while they are rooted in their pots. Speaking of plants lets now look at feeding fish green stuff. Attach vegetables and chunks prawn/fish to rocks with elastic bands or skewer it on stainless steel forks to

provide something for fish to nibble on. Remove before it rots and clouds the water. By tying a piece of fishing line to it you can retrieve without wetting a hand. A skewer of varied chunks vegetable is a good way to find out

what your pleco or Africans prefer, what s gone in the morning is what they like. Duckweed is a very good food for scats, silver dollars, koi and goldfish. Kale is another one that is enjoyed by

many fish. Zucchini, cucumber, squash, pumpkin, shelled frozen peas make good vegetarian pleco foods. Try blending them, then drying into wafers for an easy way to store and feed. Water change to match volume of feeding and have

marble/shellgrit/limestone/coral to buffer against pH crashes. Shelled frozen green peas are a good medicine for constipated fish. You can also use duckweed to give fish guts a good clean out. Green peas are a fair bit easier to find in most freezers than duckweed though. You can also

feed your goldfish a tiny bit of orange for a treat once a fortnight. It's like candy to them. Spirulina is as close to the perfect fish food as I have ever seen. Feed it to feeder fish before giving them to

predator fish to ensure your pride and joy gets his veggies. A pinch of spirulina powder added to home made foodcan give the whole batch a bit of kick and green colour. It can usually be found at health food shops in powder

form. Tang/surgeon fishes love it (and nori!), as do cichlid fry and even tadpoles. While it is expensive, it really is an amazing food. Feed quality concentrated foods, do less water changes. Or it can be used to supplement

another staple flake/pellet food that may be lacking in something or to fortify home made foods. Beef heart is a good staple discus food. Chopped (or whole!) whitebait or prawns are a good feed for large

carnivore fish. You can add calcium powder to homemade fish food to simulate the bones your fish would eat in the wild.

Garlic is a powerful attractant to add to foods and is also probably going to make nasty gut bacteria s lives a bit uncomfortable. I like to crush a few cloves, put them in cheese cloth and twist until a few drops of garlic juice lands on dry pellet/flake and then feed nice and fresh. When garlic cells are crushed, 2 chemicals mix together creating a powerful anti-bacterial /anti-fungal chemical to defend the garlic clove. Feeding fresh means these

chemicals are active and can do their job. Discus seem to enjoy garlic added to their food as do many marine fish.

Fish will eat straight paprika, it makes them colourful and is a nice final pinch to add to a home made food mix. A fresh capsicum is good for colour. Extracts can be made out of flowers for yellow pigments. Crustacean shells andspirulina are good sources of pigments as well. By providing these pigment rich foods in their diet it gives fish the

building blocks they need to produce their natural colours. Pure astaxanthin or canthaxanthin (synthetic astaxanthin) may be added to fish feed to enhance fish colours.

More natural results can be had feeding spirulina and crustaceans shells. astax can prematurely colour up African cichlids and cause females to develop male characteristics. It is not really suitable for many breeding setups but

can make a display tank more vibrant. If you buy a fish saturated with astax and do not continue to feed it a food containing it, the fish may lose some of its enhanced colour.

Make your own frozen food with gelatin or agar-agar. If you mix a batch once a month and freeze it, that s the fish food taken care of. Research European shrimp mix for a starter recipe.

Feeding live feeders can introduce diseases. So can adding any new fish to your setup without quarantine. If youhave the perfect tank consider avoiding adding any fish. But if you quarantine the feeders and treat them

yourself this risk can be reduced. Get a bit of control over the food chain, fatten them up a bit first even. Many shops sell trustworthy feeders. Breeding your own is also an option. Many fish can be bred for feeders although

some do need heaters. Rosy barbs, china barbs, golden barbs, paradise fish, danios, goldfish, white clouds, gudgeons, convicts, rainbow cichlids, mongrel Africans, guppys, platys, swordtails any easy to spawn fish, with

large numbers of young that are quick to mature and breed. Earthworms are a great fish food. If you have a compost heap and can farm them they make a healthy and cheapfish food. For smaller fish freeze the worms in cups, chop fine with scissors , mix with aquarium water and add to tank in small amounts at a time. Earthworms are good for conditioning female tetra and big cichlids like oscars.

They can be purged of the dirt inside by water dunking or fed full of dirt, I feed full. Feeding fresh full of dirt doesnot cloud water and only increases the amount I have to squeeze out filter sponges a small amount.

Many bugs can be fed to fish, avoid things sitting on poisonous stuff like rhubarb or oleander. Anything sprayed with chemicals is also not a good idea. Fish like to eat bugs. Be aware that large fish will jump to try eat

cockroaches or moths crawling on tank lids. Fish that do this should be given egg crate or Perspex lids. This behavior is a good reason not to encourage your fish to jump for food while young. Most lake Victorians like bugs as do gouramis. Some fish like archers are often kept just for their bug eating shows. It will soon be more common

as fishmeal becomes more expensive to see things like bugs making up fish food. Its almost as logical as the comic talking about mouse flavored cat food!

Feeding live food can make fish more aggressive and more likely to follow the 'what fits in my mouth is food' rule. High protein pellets can also make fish more aggressive than more vegetarian based foods. Mbuna fed on baby

guppies are more likely to attack your new electric blue than mbuna fed on spirulina flake. An oscar fed on goldfish is more likely to eat a mbuna than an oscar fed on pellets.

One mans pet is anothers dinner. Before you start feeding an octopus prawns, an African cichlid brine shrimp, an Oscar goldfish or even a sponge to angel fish consider for a second if anyone in the room perhaps keeps and

likes said feeder creature. What is nothing to you can be distressing to others. Humans can be brutal creatures ina very off hand way. I know that s life hey but to illustrate the point So this couple finally sets up their dreamtank right, nice 8 foot by 3 foot wide and more than 1 foot high. Anyway stocked with a pair of freshwater rays, with intention to breed. So their kid is wrapped up in this right, luvs the rays. I came over to see how it was all

going and have a few beers, and while there catch the end bit of this documentary they are watching. Just standing there and this guy on TV just happens to catch a ray, cut off it s stinger and then throw it back to be eaten by piranha. The look on their faces said it all. Once you keep a species, get to know it a bit, it s gets hard

to watch it casually killed. While people may not mind me telling them I feed the bullrouts live worms I know theres many a person who would take offence if I wandered into their garden and dug up some of their pet

worms to feed to me fishy. The solution is to respect the feeder. Treat them like kings. A feeder tank should be the healthiest tank in the place. Gut load them with the finest foods, lavish water changes on them and allow noteven a tap to interrupt their care free lives. Stress toughens the meat, we want our Buddhist creature happy to meet its maker. Breed your own feeders at home create the food chain. There s nothing wrong with establishingyour own feeder bloodline either, grin. So ummm yea to a certain percentage of people a fish is not just a fish

and these people could be anyone. Would you feed a rogue demasoni colony to a mangrove jack in front of konning? Some things are just bad taste and should be avoided. Outta sight, outta mind.

Keep fish with the same diet together. That makes them a lot easier to feed. Keeping fish from the same water type together is also a good idea. Fish can adapt to different water better than they usually can to a different

diet. If your fish is fat feed less, if it's skinny or has a sunken belly feed more often. Another good method is to look at

the meat around the fishes back, if it has a 'knife edge' its underweight and if its nicely rounded its in good condition. You can check armored catfish like bristlenose's condition by looking at their stomach. Fish that have been starved often seem to have big eyes, these fish are older than they look and do not make good breeding

stock. An average feeding regime may be something like feeding what the fish will consume (or around the size of their eye each) in a few minutes twice per day Check the ingredients, and buy the best one for the fish. Some of the quality ingredients you want in top three ingredients listed : spirulina, whole fish meal, white fish meal , fish meal,freeze dried brine shrimp, shrimp meal, Vitamin C & E, lobster/crab shell. Fish is usually better than shrimp as an

ingredient. Feed a variety of foods at once and at different ends so that one fish doesn't eat it all. It's often easyto sneak a feed to other fish while the dominant fish is occupied up the other end having a feed. Having differentsized pellets lets everyone get some. Dissolve frozen cubes of food in a cup of aquarium water before adding to

the tank. This way one big fish doesn t get all the food. Beware of clownfish dragging the whole cube of food intoanemone too!

Count fish off at feeding time, if some ones missing look for a body. 1 dead fish can quickly rot and overpower a filter causing fish to die in a domino fashion. Check under rocks and in caves for fish. If you find a fish caught in

an ornament, break the ornament and save the fish. Yes I know a certain shell may be pretty but just do it, don twait - save the fish! Likewise if a fish like a pictus catfish gets caught in a fish net cut the net NOT THE FISH. Get fish back in the water so you can then go get something to get the net cut off with out hurting the fish. If you like a feeding frenzy or just want to motivate less keen fish to eat food add some fish that are absolute

guts. Black widows, mollies, scats, zebras and many catfish will trigger a tank wide feeding frenzy. In most cases,if it eats its healthy.

Healthy fish are usually always hungry. Don't feed more at one time than the filter can handle in poo load. In many cases it's easy to feed fish tanks an amount the filter can handle rather than an amount based on the

number of fish. If fish are not hungry, CHECK THE WATER FIRST! - temperature, ammonia, nitrite and pH levels. Check if food has

spoiled, if so discard. Does fish have a mouthful of eggs or swollen belly? Is the fish being picked on and too stressed to eat?

Feed fish in the morning, to power them through the day. Fish in tanks with fast water flow and warmer water willneed to be fed more frequently as they will be burning more energy. Slow water flow is best for young fish. Somemarine fish or fry may need 3 or more feeds a day. Raising fry can be a full time job. Generally fish that graze in

the wild need to be fed more often. Fish eaters can go a bit longer between meals and not lose condition. If getting someone to feed your fish, break the food into daily portions in a divided pill/tackle box with

instructions. Hide the rest of the food. If your fish are fussy about their food, maybe you are over feeding. There is nothing wrong with only feeding 6

days a week. Most large fish can go at least a few days without food. Large goldfish can last weeks. Fish will losecondition and get more aggressive but good water quality is more important than food every day. Just build the food level back up slowly over next few days to ensure you don't overload the filter bacteria colony which may have shrunk a bit. Female African cichlids will hold fry for a month without eating. Don't feel too guilty if your

adult display fish go a day or 2 without a feed. Sometimes fat can build up around female fishes ovaries. A bit of a fast can often result in breeding activity, a most welcome site on returning home. Vacation feeder blocks are okfor smaller fish or younger ones but I would get a good auto feeder and good quality feed instead. If you get the amount right, not too much to foul the water - a floating bit of zucchini/cucumber/squash/etc, or some pumpkin rubber banded to a rock can provide a good hold over feed while you re away. The veggies will certainly clear outthe fish anyway. Test before you go away so you can see effect on water quality when you get back. Things like

this take a bit of trial and error. It may be best to try it out while your at home first just to be sure. The most common reason for automatic fish feeders failing in my experience is wet food. Don't touch the food

with wet hands and try getting one with a fan if possible. Bury food like bloodworm just beneath the sand or gravel to target feed skinny young salmon tail catfish or clown

loaches if you are keeping them with marauding hungry cichlids. Fish fed the same cheap food their whole lives often develop problems. Variety can be key to healthy fish, so if your fish food isn't really a complete food, spice it up with another packet flake/pellet/frozen/veggie every now and again. Quality modern pellets can easily provide a complete nutritional diet. Still dice a bit of raw fish/prawn and chop up a few shelled frozen peas and throw it in. Always helps the old guts to clear out fresh food does.

This is not to say that expensive foods are always better nutrition wise. Check ingredients.

Now you feed your fish and they are gonna poop. This is the way of the world. You cannot stop it. Once you start feeding youre going to have to start partial water changing. I know feeding fish is a lot more fun. In fact its

one of the great things in life. But ya let s get on with our penance. Everything dissolves into the fish soup. Control the levels of dissolved random stuff by water changing. What evergoes in stays in, unless it s diluted out with water changes. Just because we only measure nitrate doesn't mean there are not other reasons to water change. Nitrate is just a good marker post. Water changes bring new trace elements and trigger spawning. They also speed fish growth and reduce algae and disease. Water changes are

the ritual every fish keeper should perform, so have a good think and make them as painless as possible. A water change will solve most water problems. The solution to pollution is dilution. If you have aged de-

chlorinated water on hand, matched in temperature and pH/salinity to your aquarium you can do the always forbidden 95% water change with much less risk. A fast and nasty fix that has its occasional use. Aging water in containers for a few days with an air stone or pump makes the water much safer to use than sticking a garden

hose into the tank and just adding de-chlorinator. If you have a pump with sufficient head height you can pump itthrough a hose from the aging container into the aquarium saving bucket lifting. This hobby is all about keeping

water, frequent small dilutions are always best but if a toxin in the water is harming fish it needs to be diluted to safe levels with water changes quickly to prevent deaths.

Try to make everything you are going to do a lot of times as easy and safe as possible. Work smarter not harder!!Water can be pumped rather than carried in buckets. Use gravity, filters or pumps to move that stuff around. Get a good stool or ladder for the fish room. If you have high tanks and move around rocks make sure youre

standing on something stable and strong. If it breaks and your stomach lands on glass it can end very badly for you. Safety is important in a fish room. Glass, water and electricity is a hell of a mix. Your fuse box can save you.Sand sharp tank edges down with a bit of wet or dry sandpaper before someone gets a slit wrist cleaning algae

off, or better yet check for sharp edges before you buy.A gravel vacuum is an excellent way to remove concentrated waste from the gravel without the stress of

removing all the gravel and water. Done weekly with a 25% water change it provides a proven routine to keeping most freshwater fish. Avoid big clean outs if at all possible. Clean things in stages staggered a few days apart. Remember if you remove anything with a large surface area (all the gravel, filter sponge, rocks) it will throw the bacteria balance out for a while. Smaller more frequent water changes and tank cleans are the secret to tanks

that never look like they need a clean. However with some tanks no gravel vacuuming is performed. Water is simply siphoned out of the aquarium and

new water is carefully added back in. With a healthy growth of plants, good lighting, good biological filtration and a thin layer of sand this can be just as successful.

In mature marine setups worms will have constructed networks of burrows. As they move through them they pump oxygenated water through the sand bed. Where this is happening bacteria will live and eat fish waste,

converting it to nitrate. Deeper into the sand where no oxygen reaches you can grow bacteria that eat nitrate. This takes time and is not something to try in a tank you will be moving in 12 months. It's a task worth

researching though, enough people seem to rate it. If everything is working well dont destroy worms tunnels willynilly. You can destroy an effect that takes months to achieve in minutes.

Try very hard not to change more than 50% of the aquariums water during water changes. Any more and the riskof temperature or pH shock becomes much greater. 25% is much safer especially if the water is going to be

dechlorinated in the tank. When doing this more risky method add extra de-chlorinator. Be aware that ammonia already in the water will become more dangerous if the pH goes up as a result of the water change. A stable pH

from shellgrit/marble/coral in the aquarium makes this less of a problem. If you notice your pond has evaporated be sure to REMOVE MORE WATER before you top it up. By removing the

concentrated dirty water and then adding clean water you will dilute the dissolved stuff in the pond water. Water changes are a tricky topic. A sample water change might go as follows: change 10% to 30% of your aquariums volume every week, or 20% to 40% every 2 weeks. Use a gravel vacuum, so you do not need to

remove the fish while doing the water change. Only clean filter sponges in a bucket of aquarium water. Treat newwater with de-chlorinator before adding to the aquarium. Dont change more than 50% of water unless its an

emergency. If your water is bad no matter what you do, test the tap water. It just may be the problem. If youre really close to a pumping station or water treatment plant expect some wacky water every now and again. Consider filtering the water through a household water filter. It may also be an idea to treat it for a while in a container like a new plastic garbage bin before adding it. Aerate it, heat to same temperature as tank, treat with salt/pH buffers and

then pump into aquarium with a pump/powerhead with a hose on the output. Ensure the pump you buy has a large enough 'head height' as this is how high the pump can pump water. Best to go a little bit more powerful. During droughts water can be nasty as dam levels fall. If you run out of rainwater and have to get a truck of

water to top up consider it may be chlorinated before you do any usual water changes without dechlorinator. It can be worth testing distilled water to check test kits are working if results seem strange.

If you are using the garden hose to fill your tank, let it run outside for a while until it's nice and cool. No need to cook your fish.

If youre worried about heavy metals in tap water let taps flush for a few seconds. It sounds like wasting water but really you are flushing water that has been sitting in the pipes. This is a good thing to do in new houses with new plumbing, in time bacteria and algae coats the insides of the pipes and the sitting water will be much safer. Chlorine makes most tap water toxic to fish and super lethal to friendly fish tank filter bacteria. The antidote to

chlorine is Sodium thiosulphate and this is the ingredient in most de-chlorinators. Some de-chlorinators like amquel(Sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate) are able to bind ammonia freed during breaking down chloramine, these are

useful in areas that use chloramine. The only chemical you really need to buy is de-chlorinator and if youre on rainwater you don't need that. The

active ingredient in de-chlorinator liquid sodium thiosulfate (sodium thiosulphate) is easy enough with some help from wiki to turn into a bottle of dechlorinator. Just add water to the powder. It can be sourced in pure crystal form from camera supply shops (Hypo), pool shops, fabric stores (bleach stop) or chemical supply places. While perfect to remove chlorine it s not so perfect against chloramine. While sodium thiosulphate will break the bond

between ammonia and chlorine, and then remove the chlorine, it will leave the ammonia in your water. With small water changes your filter bacteria will consume the ammonia in a few hours. With large water changes or when shipping fish, if ammonia is going to be a problem use a treatment that binds it. Products that do this include safe, amquel and prime. You can also age water for a while. Only overnight is not always safe to get rid of

enough. Chloramine is stubborn stuff and can linger even after vigorously aerating for two weeks! Some householdwater filters will remove enough chlorine and chloramine but most will only remove to 'taste and smell' levels. Mosttap water filters will be unable to remove much chloramine, although they may remove chlorine very well. Contact

the company and see what they say. Always remember, dechlorinator is a CHEAP and SAFE chemical! Our tap water is toxic to fish without it and fish are expensive!

Ammonia is an invisible killer with fish. At 0.2ppm total ammonia in the water, it begins to change from water to poison. Many tough cichlids will die at 3.0 ppm. Expect to see most aquatic life begin to stress as it passes the

0.5 ppm mark. This is a serious problem and requires immediate attention. Either water change to dilute ammonia down to safe levels or add an ammonia binder. Zeolite and carbon are expensive, as is purigen and they vary in

use with fresh or salt water. I have learnt to not rely on them a 100%, rather they are useful in a drama or as anextra water improvement used to compliment existing biological filtration. Nothing beats an established biological

filter but additives like amquel are a handy stop gap to hold off immediate death when a water change is not possible. This is common practise during transport of fish.

Mix powdered salts, buffers, medicines with some aquarium water and then add to the aquarium by drips or in small amounts. Anything shifting pH, should be added slowly to avoid shocking fish and filter bacteria. Record how

much you dosed and when, this is handy to know when to re-treat and to know what you did right, if it works. There are recipes for rift lake buffers and livebearer salts that are not that difficult to make up. I find out

working what you need to add to a 20L bucket easiest as I use a lot of them. I add bicarb/Epsom/salts etc until Ireach the GH/KH/pH/salinity levels I need for the aquarium in the bucket. Whatever I added is my recipe for 20L

of aquarium water. Grind salt fine to make it dissolve a lot faster. Write 'FISH BUCKET ONLY' on your buckets. Chemicals are dangerous to fish. Wash your hands before putting them in the aquarium. Perfume, soap, petrol and many other products can be toxic to fish in small amounts.

Ensure no one uses any fish sponges for anything but the aquarium. If necessary cut cleaning sponges a fish shape with scissors

Good buckets are treasured by fish keepers, graffiti them to prevent them walking. Get ones with good handles that won't break, good lid seals that won't leak in your car and match your ability to lift and lug around. If you

borrow a nice bucket give it back or you will be cursed each time it's needed. Ensure heaters remain submerged during water changes. If they heat up out of the water and then cool down

rapidly they will crack and break. Just push them down into lower water before beginning a water change. I knowpeople have them in perfect diagonal suction capped glory. Mine are sometimes draped all over the place or layingdrunken somewhere. Sure make them look neat, but doesnt seem to matter too much, just keep them under the

water while plugged in! Or turn them off and let cool down for 10 minutes before you remove them.

If you partial water change and the fish are refreshed and swim around more happily.... then you need to partial water change more frequently. Dilute waste before the water becomes bad enough to effect fish behavior. A nitrate test kit is handy for this. If you water change because of pH dropping, add some chunks of calcium

carbonate to the tank to make it more stable. UGF using calcium carbonate gravel/grit/coral are excellent at maintaining high pH and biological filtration. Try using safe shade cloth or screen types instead of a gravel plate ifyou would like to use very fine gravel. Be sure to vacuum mulm build up under the UGF plate before it becomes a

problem. Even if pH is stable keep up water changes! Before going away on holidays ensure tanks and sumps will not evaporate enough to expose pumps/heaters that

need to remain submerged. Water cooled equipment may malfunction if exposed. Buy a nice thick bit of clear hose 3 meters long if you hate waiting for buckets to fill up. A fast water change is

an easy to schedule water change. Wide hose is expensive but handy. You can use 2L soft drink bottles to make oversize gravel vacs for them. Thicker hoses run faster but are more expensive. Standard garden hose and plumbing can work for many things. If you have a water change hose long enough to make it to the veggie

garden, it will appreciate it. Use a U shaped piece of hard pipe (or snorkel) to keep your hose in the tank and un-kinked. This saves you from having to stand there holding the hose. You can even put taps on your hoses.

When filling up, an electronic bath alarm is very handy, especially if the tank is in another room. Find them cheap at $2 shops, along with dog tennis ball throwers and Plastic storage boxes for sumps. Try hard not to suck up fish; it's easy to damage them. Consider holding a net over the end of the hose if they tend to suicide in. Be

careful not to chill your fish when filling back up, watch the temperature and if it gets too low stop. Wait a few hours and continue. This technique is handy if you take too much water out and need to refill without shocking

fish. It's no help if filters need water at a certain height to function though.Get good at water changes and filter cleans, that way you can impress female fish geeks with your skills on their tanks. Nothing impresses girls more than someone else doing the water changes if ya do it right. Also comes in

handy if you want to put tanks in shops, near computers or on expensive floors. But yea chick fish geeks rock thecazbar and should be wooed at every possibility. The next obvious chance to pick one up is actually cleaning the fish tank. This is the point where most mistakes are made that lead to fish deaths. So unless you want to tour lfs

by yourself until your 80 its probably a good idea to read this next bit. Dont get too lazy with your tank. While not messing with stuff is what brings success in many cases (benign

negligence) don't let too much nitrates build up in the system. A good clean up of mulm prevents nutrients being leached back into the system after a water change. This is known in aquaria as 'old tank syndrome' or OTS. It was made famous by UGF (under gravel filters) where the bottom plate has a habit of trapping a layer of mulm

(old/new bacteria colonies and organic crud) that rots and releases nitrates back into the water. This can result in many frustrating water changes with no detectable dilution of nitrates. The solution is to lift the plate and

vacuum the crud at more regular intervals. Some tanks will have certain ornaments that trap crud under them, these can be a good place to lift and vacuum clean. Removing large chunks of mulm will not throw out the

biological filtration as much as you would expect. Only the very outta layer of the mulm is alive. Bacteria coloniesgrow over there dead, so a good squeeze out of sponges has the effect of invigorating the colony. Just keep

them away from tapwater or it will be a genocide instead!

If you have an old reef consider 'cooking' some of the live rock to purge it. Cooking is far from an exact science but shows promise in treating OTS is old reef tanks. Worth a Google, and try it on only one bit of live rock first.Use algae eating fish, snails, crabs and shrimp to keep algae under control in your marine aquarium. If you grow

just enough for your tank life to graze on it can supplement their diet nicely. Be super careful not to get a bit of gravel or sand on magnetic algae scrapers. They will scratch your glass to fogin no time! Algae on glass near the sand or gravel can look dirty. Stir up the sand or gravel with a chopstick for an instant visual improvement. A credit card is handy to scrape algae off the sides of plastic tanks. Super gluing

it into a groove cut in a bit of pvc pipe will allow you to reach awkward tank spots with it. A razor can be used onglass tanks instead if the algae has gotten really caked on but be sure to wear eye protection and be very

careful. Barley straw can be used to control algae problems in ponds, but it needs time to work. Natural cures are like that. Using chemicals to control algae is usually a bad idea. Barley requires prior planning and cunning to slow release a continual algaecide. Best to have water conditions that don't promote green water in the first place.

That said goldfish from green water ponds are often extra beautiful and deep golden. Filter sponges and media should be washed with water drawn from the aquarium not tap water. Give sponges a good squeeze out, the idea is to free sponge pores of blockages to allow water to flow through. Bacteria live all

through the sponge. Water flow through more sponge means the bacteria colony can be larger. You don't want toclean off the bacteria that live on the sponge with too savage a scrubbing just cull back their numbers to keep the water flowing with some good squeezing out. Keeping the balance between life supporting bacteria colonies and good water flow is the secret to filter optimization. Slowed water flow on a filter is often a sign it needs a

clean. Beware of glass shards in filter sponges if tank lids ever chip and the glass goes in the tank. Nothing quite as unpleasant as squeezing glass where you expect soft foam. Cleaning filter sponges under the tap is second

only to forgetting to add de-chlorinator in number of fish kills in the hobby. If your waterfall (hang on back type) filter is not flowing check the O-ring around the flow control. If this is worn it will be sucking in air and not have much suction power. Simply turn to full and seal it. To test if it is this a bit of

blu-tac will work until you can get a replacement rubber O ring. Be careful removing air hose from air stones, they are designed to break. I find using a finger nail to scrape the airline off works well. Airstones can be cleaned of algae to improve air flow. A light wipe or dip in hot water can clear algae well. Sometimes that impossible to find air tube fitting can be found in the garden water sprinkler

system area of a hardware store.Canister filters can also build up with mulm, a high nitrate reading can sometimes be taken as a cue to give the filter media a good clean out in buckets of water from that aquarium. Don't be too thorough though; leave some media that won't slow water flow untouched. If you have a habit of over cleaning, save some brown sludge at

the start and put it back in at the end. Adding this sludge will make the water clean not dirty. THEY are the true keepers of aquariums. We humans look after them and they look after our tanks. Bacteria farming is the essence of fish keeping, ju