People were adopting to have dogs or cats as their pets. However, most people recently are considering to have no-interaction pets such as fish. According to the 2020 Survey on United States’ Household Survey, freshwater fish, in this case, fish are taken care of on a tank, ranked in number three, just below dogs and cats consecutively. There are some studies to show that fish are highly intelligent animals, in which they can remember the owner.
Though it is becoming more popular, most people still find it challenging, rather than difficult to take care of the fish in the tank. Before you build your fish tank, let’s get inspired from these aquarium designs.
Every beginner might find it tough. If you do it right, it can get really easy to have a fish tank to really brighten up your room and your day with little or no effort at all. Let’s get down below to the tips for your fish tank care!
- Choose the Right Fish
Obviously, everything starts with what you put inside the tank. There are billions of fish species in the world. Nonetheless, you can only put freshwater fish, such as a galactic purple shark or a goldfish.
Not only do they have beautiful colors (plus, they are super small), these fishes basically live in their natural habitat, which is freshwater. Speaking of freshwater fishes, let’s check out these gigantic freshwater fishes you might want to know.
Imagine if you put a random fish (just because you like the color) and turned out, these fish did not belong to freshwater. They will not survive. Since the water will be circulated in your household, it makes sense that the freshwater will come naturally from the earth (or fresh water), not directly from the sea. So choosing the right fish will make it last longer.
- Change the Water Regularly
It is a bit tricky to just leave the water unchanged for a few weeks or even months. Some chemicals (like ammonia) are good for the fish if it is in the right amount. However, if it gets too much, it can easily kill the fish.
You can just buy this cool water parameter to check the amount of water as well as the chemicals in the water itself. But then again, it will be too much work to just see the monitor on the parameter every single day.
Better, you can change the water regularly, let say around once in a week or two. It is basically the key to maintain a good life of your fish tank. Find the easiest ways to clean your fish tank.
As mentioned before, too many chemicals are the enemy inside the fish tank. By changing the water to cleaner water frequently, it will decrease the number of bad chemicals in the water. Make sure to just remove less than half of the water and change it to fresh water.
- The Amount of Food is the Key
You might want to overfeeding your fish, just to make it easier for them to grow bigger. Spoiler alert: don’t overfeed your fish. You should find ways to healthily feed your fishes.
Not only that it will lead the fish to get disease and sick, by overfeeding them, but it will also make your fish tank becomes dirty each time. There are some ways to know your fish are eating too much (Algone, 2019).
Believe it or not, fishes are easy to stick with the schedule you give to them when it comes to food they eat, plus it fishes are one of the unique animals to not hungry very frequently.
Just like humans, adapting to the eating schedule is the key. Feed them once or twice a day in a specific time schedule. Not only it is easier for you to remember the eating schedule, but also it will make the fish to not overeating.
Not only that you need to keep the eating time schedule but also you need to choose the right nutrition for your fish, let say you choose betta fish for your first type of animals to keep.
- Lighting is Good For your Fish, not only For Display
You may be wondering that the lighting is good for only aquatic plants. And yes, there are few different aquatic plants to keep in your fish tank and plants not to keep in your fish tank. However, like many other plants and living things.
But also it can get algae to live and nourish your fish. Algae itself is defined as a microscopic unicellular organism. This type of organism is highly important for a full range of nutrients in order for the fishes to survive. It is highly important to also maintain the algae.
One key to note in order for the algae to thrive and survive is through good lighting. Algae can only survive with a good amount of a ray of sunlight. But keep it really simple, put your fish tank less than 10 hours under the sun.
At the end of the day, the sun is not for the fish, but for the algae to live. If you cannot get direct sunlight, put the UV electric light is good enough for the algae to live.
The list might be really challenging for beginners. You will need to do every step frequently to keep your fishes alive. It is for sure you will lose some of your fishes along the way.
And yes, most people do and it is completely normal that some of your fishes die. In the end, every animal needs a good environment to survive. It will be quite stressful at first but it will be worth your time for sure.