by Juliana Murris

Created on: July 09, 2008

The humble hobby of tropical fish keeping is addicting and a hobby easily kept for life. Tropical fish are energetic and loving animals and many species of fish like Mollies and Platys will actually swim up to the tank towards you to greet you.

Beginning, care for tropical fish is certainly harder than it looks. My fish are very needy and take advantage of my constant care for them. Feeding for tropical fish is generally simple, though, a heaping pinch of tropical flakes a couple times a day usually does the trick. When the fish get older, however, they need a varied diet - proteins are very important for them. Although the flakes provide plenty of protein for them, they need a little more than meets the eye with flakes. One snack that my fish love is lettuce - boiled for ten minutes in water (for easy chewing), then strained, and put in an ice cube tray to freeze. Once these tasty treats for our fishy friends are done, put some lettuce in and the fish will chew on it for a long while and the lettuce won't foul up the tank. Another important thing - though fasting for 24 hours once a week is helpful for fish, mine started eating each other because of the absence of their food.

Next, cleaning the tank is very important to keep the fish alive. A 10% water change is recommended for established tanks (tanks that have gone completely through the nitrogen cycle), meaning that if you're tank is ten gallons, take one gallon out and replace it with another gallon of clean water. Depending on how messy your fish are, you're going to need to vacuum the gravel to get the waste out - the fish poo, leftover uneaten food, etc. One tool that I think is essential for aquariums is something called a MagFloat (buy it at your pet store), an algae scraper that attaches to your tank with a strong magnet on the OUTSIDE of the tank. You simply move the magnet around and it moves your algae scraper and cleans your tank. These nifty gadgets run around $15 dollars for the large ones and $8 for the smaller ones. It's well worth the money because the other cheaper magnetic algae scrapers don't float, causing you to stick your arm in and reach down to get to your algae scraper, and depending on how big your tank is, this is a hassle.

Continuing on, your fish need chemical balance in the tank to keep them healthy. Different fish tolerate different levels of ammonia and high pH levels, etc. If your pH (how acidic your water is) is high, your alkalinity is high too. It's important to buy a water

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