Tag Archives: aquarium advice

Our freshwater aquarium 30.10.2010 – Or how I made my freshwater aquarium beautiful.

Posted by on October 30, 2010 No comments

Below in an image of our aquarium taken 30.10.2010.

Our freshwater aquarium - 30.10.2010At least to me the aquarium looks more or less like an aquarium I would like to have. Recently I have been more focusing on good plant growth since to me that is the basic for any good and beautiful aquarium. Good plant growth without algae shows immediately that the aquarium is healthy and to me at least showing nice looking, healthy plants is to show that I keep good care of my aquarium in the long run. Anyone can drop in a few fish and buy some plastic boats that will spit air bubbles, but having healthy plants requires some effort.

I have also had some troubles with the fish in the past, especially in the beginning of our new tank. I had some issues with the N-cycle but it is looking all better now. I haven’t changed the water in three weeks and my readings look good: pH: 7.0, NO2: <0.025 ppm and NO3: 10 ppm. To add to this, we are also having guppy babies in the tank. We got five of them and they are all still alive. They are now two weeks old and about 1-1.5cm long and it looks very promising for them to reach full growth. People say that this is not a big deal for guppies as they give birth so often, but to me this tells that my aquarium is healthy!
Especially people that are new to aquariums and getting their first tank, I think they start wondering shortly how they can achieve these results and a healthy looking aquarium. I will give you my advice below so you don’t need to wonder what are the secret to have a good looking aquarium. Read more »

Joined Aquarium Advice community

Posted by on October 16, 2010 No comments

I’ve been looking for sites on the Internet that would gather freshwater aquarium hobbyists together and also give advice to beginners. This hobby is so changing that you just can’t do it by only reading a book (but it of course helps a lot). Just as I have been writing about on this blog, there are many people giving different kinds of advice and in the end it all depends on your tank and what you have in it. So it is good to have someone to ask or share and exchange your own thoughts to others.

So today I today joined the Aquarium Advice community at http://www.aquariumadvice.com. I been a member for only a few hours, but already my initial post got many replies from people who really seem to understand this and know what they are saying. It feels nice to have a place to ask questions from and also share good moments. Already from this first day in the community I have to say that I changed again my opinion about water change frequency. It really makes sense to change the water quite often since in the nature the water is flowing and changing naturally, while in an aquarium it’s you who have to do the changes – so why not change it as it would in the nature. It really seems there is no harm in changing the water too often (that is, if you are not doing it daily – that would cause unnecessary stress to the fish :)) if you are careful with vacuuming the gravel too intensively. So I will probably follow the following pattern in water changes from now on: change 10-20% of the water weekly with light gravel vacuuming and once a month 30-40% water change with intense gravel vacuuming.