no-no. Unless your aquarium is very large and has massive drifts of plants and other places to hide, the aggressors will either, eat your peaceable fish, pester them til they die or make them so scared you'll never see them.

Make proof-positive that you research each and every fish before you buy it. I'm telling you, the ones you have to get rid of are always the ones you want to keep. Save yourself some sadness and money; research, research, research!

Fake Plants- In order to have a really low-maintenance aquarium you need live plants. Sounds like a silly thing to say; plants require feeding, pruning and looking after, right? Well yes, but we'll come to this later in the article. Live plants help to stabilize the entire eco-system, they provide food and shelter, not to mention, pure enjoyment.

Not Cycling The Aquarium - In order to have a healthy and truly Low-Maintenance aquarium, the system itself has to do most of the work. That is, the "Bio-Crew", these are the guys you do not see, the real blue collar workers of the tank. They break down ammonia and just about every other "bad" thing there is to be had in a tank.

In order to cycle the tank to get a good "Bio-Crew" you should set the aquarium up fully- minus fish -for about three weeks. Now you treat the tank like it has fish, "feed" it by adding a bit of fish food and maybe a few drops of ammonia. With a Water testing Kit you can check the tanks stats until the finally stabilize.

Then, and ONLY then, are you ready for fish! If you fail to cycle the tank before adding fish, you stand the chance of killing your new (sometimes expensive) babies.

-Feeding-

One of the biggest and easiest mistakes people make when keeping fish is to overfeed. It is easy to do, those little stinkers love to follow you around their tank, swimming back and forth, up and down- some even doing tricks! All because they are pigs. Yes, fish are pigs.

When you overfeed, the fish can not eat all the food, much of it falls to the substrate (gravel/sand) where it starts to rot, thus breaking down into an even more harmful waste. Now, in a tank that is not overstocked and is very heavily planted; a bit of excess food rotting won't harm a thing. Your plants and the "Bio-Crew" take care of this pretty easily.

Instead of one big meal, try feeding your fish several small meals a day. This helps to mimic their natural eating behaviors as well as cutting down on wasted food and possible sick fish.

-Co2-

The addition of Co2 in the aquarium has

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• ...
• 7
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about How to set up a low-maintenance aquarium?
We want to hear your view. Write now!