Fish Aquarium Cleaning - Pet Care

28 Mar, 2012? Fish

Fish are the most low maintenance pets. These beautiful little creatures silently swim and add colour and natural beauty to our home d?cor. But however easy it is to maintain a fish pet, the fish aquarium cleaning is definitely a challenging job. If the fish tank cleaning is not done regularly and in a proper manner, the fish might die or start suffering skin disease.

Fish aquarium needs weekly or bi-weekly cleaning depending on the size and level of bacteria growth. You will come to know that the tank needs cleaning as it starts stinking and you can see dead leaves, growth of algae and unwanted plants. Cleaning a fish tank is the most important step in fish maintenance as feeding the fish is pretty simple and does not require much skill.

Dos and Don?ts of fish aquarium cleaning

• Keep tools like algae scrapper, algae magnet, siphon, etc handy when starting to clean the aquarium. Never use any other chemical or home-based cleaning agents for sanitizing the tank. This can threaten the health and life of the fish. Always buy the fish aquarium cleaning tools from a reputed pet shop.
• Fish owners are always wondering whether to take out whole water while cleaning the tank or clean by taking out half water only. Fish care experts believe that it is better to do the cleaning by taking out water partially. Use a siphon hose to pull out 15-20 percent of the tank?s water. Remove the unwanted plants, leftover food, and other garbage from the base of the tank. Partial cleaning of the tank ensures that some good bacteria still remains in the water that is important for the survival of the fish. A considerable amount of beneficial bacteria shall remain in the water for biological filtration.
• If you feel that the items inside the aquarium are too dirty then take out the decorative materials like stones, artificial plants, etc and clean them separately in mild bleach. This will avoid algae formation that takes place rapidly on these decorative materials. Take care to wash off the bleach properly before putting these inside the tank again. Many people prefer to keep algae eater fish like Pleco fish, Coral fish, etc that are natural algae eaters. However, just by adding algae eater fish into the aquarium does not mean that you never clean the check the algae formation inside the tank and take steps to control it.
• Refill the tank with fresh water that is free of chlorine. Take care to add water that is at room temperature rather than hot or too cold water. This can prove to be lethal for the fish.

Cleaning the fish aquarium in a proper manner is important because it ensures that fish live for a long time and stay healthy. Minor mistakes like using hard chemicals, detergent, injuring the fish, or removing all the water from the tank, can prove to be lethal for the fish. So fish owners should take extra care while cleaning the fish aquarium.

Source: http://www.petcaregt.com/blog/fish-aquarium-cleaning.html

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