Below in an image of our aquarium taken 30.10.2010.
At 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.
Start small
The first mistake you will probably make is to get too many fish in your tank too soon. I will not write here about the nitrogen cycle (or N-cycle) since there is plenty of material out there about this topic. But I encourage you to read about it and understand it. What I mean by start small is essentially managing the nitrogen cycle and when you add too many fish into the tank too soon, I bet you will kill most of them withing a few weeks – and this is all just because of a non-made nitrogen cycle. So read about it, understand it and be patient.
It is ok to have some enduring fish to start with, but don’t have too many. I have a 180 liter (45 gallon) tank and I have 10 guppies there and some other fish. This is about the same number of fish you would have in a tank half the size of my tank. I will get more fish later.
Give your plants CO2
Plants need three things to grow: sun, nutrition and CO2.
In your tank the plants will get the sun from your light tube(s). Just be sure to not get the cheapest ones and spend the extra 10€/10$ to get the better one(s). This will make your plants grow and have the algae away. Your plants will need nutrition so that is why you are giving them some fertilizer tabs or liquid, right. These are the things you would normally get from your local pet store once you start your aquarium.
But here comes the important part. In my experience, your local pet store would not tell you about the CO2! Since you start with a small amount of fish, your plants will not get enough CO2! The only source of CO2 for your plants in the aquarium is the CO2 your fish will put out, but since you don’t have many of those yet, you will need a CO2 dispenser. So get yourself a CO2 system that will deliver extra CO2 to the tank for your plants to grow. There are many this kind of products, but one cheap system I use and that I can recommend is the one from Jungle. For about 20$ you will see a real boost in the plant growth.
Don’t rush into water change
This depends to a great deal on your filtering system. Get a good filtering system to start with. But what I mean by this is that you will need to give some time for the aquarium to start and complete the N-cycle (you see, it’s here again. It’s important). In the beginning you will need to monitor your pH, nitrite (NO2) and nitrate (NO3) levels daily. Remember this: Keep your pH levels at 6.8 – 7.0 and don’t change the water if NO2 levels are not above 0.2 ppm. Let me explain.
If you keep your pH levels down, you don’t need to worry that much about toxic ammonia levels. This will explain you why: Ammonia Toxicity and the pH Relationship. So if you keep your pH levels down, you need to only monitor NO2 levels for when you need to change your water. The less often you change your water, the better your aquarium will thrive. This is because when you change the water you will affect the natural ecobalance in the tank which will affect your good bacteria (related to N-cycle).
As of today, I haven’t changed my water for three weeks and I have no intention to change it for another week. But this is probably thanks to my good filtering system in the Juwel tank so nobody can tell you how often you need to change the water. It all depends on your NO2 and pH levels – when pH goes below 6.8 or NO2 above 0.1, it’s time to change the water.
Last by not least; be patient. Completing the N-cycle will take some weeks, growing the plants will take some weeks and before all this is done, there is no point in adding more fish. You have plenty of time to enjoy your fish and when your fish live in a healthy tank, your fish will be healthy as well.
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