Beginner’s Guide to Fish Keeping and Building your first Aquarium (Part 2)
Fish Stocking
As a general rule of thumb for how many fish you can stock, conservatively think of 1.5 to 2 Gallon of water per 1-2 inch of fish up to about a 30 gallon tank. After that it gets complicated.
There is complexity when trying to accurately predict the amount and this statement above is far from accurate.
Here a list of things to consider when trying to figure out how many fish you can stock:
- How much Gallons per minute does your bio-filter process ?
- How big is your tank size
- How many live plants in your aquarium
- How much actual water is your tank holding in total (versus submersible decorations, substrate, etc)
- How big of fish are you planning on putting in the tank (Bigger fish require exponentially higher requirements and you can have less of them in one tank)
- How much swimming area do you fish have ? How much do they need ?
- How often do you plan to clean out your tank ?
- Water changes need to be done at regular intervals, the more fish you have the sooner and more often this needs to be done. usually once a week for heavy stocked tanks, every 2-3 weeks for lightly stocked tanks.
Here is a Web link to a really great Fish tank capacity calculator that I use when setting up a new tank. The calculator is on the conservative side and doesn’t much take into account for fine tuned equipment (like my canister filter that’s enhanced by using 3rd party filter media) but its the closest calculator I’ve found to take all of the variables into account and give you a nice little picture of how things when designing your aquarium set up.
Cleaning Your Tank, Water Changes and Tank Equipment Maintenance
As our last part to this Introduction to Freshwater Fish keep we look at all the Maintenance and Cleaning requirements to maintaining a healthy balanced Aquarium.
My advice to anyone is to start using a schedule and write down your maintenance logs. this way you can keep track of when and what was done to your tank. Also I recommend using a scheduling software like Outlook to keep reminder appointments of when your next water change or maintenance is due. You could even use your mobile phone and use google’s calendar .
Items that will need doing on a regular basis:
- Regular Water Changes and Tank Cleaning. 10% to 25% Water change is normal (no more than this however). I do 25% every 2 weeks. Depending on your stocking level and tank situation it will be more or less than this.
Cleaning out Gravel with a gravel vacuum is what I use to clean my gravel with. I prime the suction with a hand-held pump into a bucket and then proceed to scoop down gravel and suction the waste away all while keeping the gravel and fish in the tank. There are videos on YouTube of proper tank cleaning with a gravel vacuum. Check them out. - Filter change and maintenance – I use a canister filter and rebuild the filter every 6 to 8 weeks. recommended is every 3 weeks from manufacturer however with my set up I have been able to push this longer using other add on products. This will also be determined by how much fish waste is generated and being sucked up in your filter. Black Carbon typically needs to be changed 4-6 weeks although this can stretch to 2 months at the most. Just as an example, the water filter for your Brita drinking water can last up to 2 months, which is when I change mine.
- If you have a canister you will need to clean out the water lines using some type of pipe cleaner to get rid of the algae buildup. Generally I have to do this every 4 to 6 months or so.
In conclusion, I hope these tips and information have been helpful to you in your beginning Fresh Water Aquarium Project.
I’d love to hear about any experiences you’ve had or any other tips you’d like to share.
Please leave some comments (Registration and Log In required)
Until next time, Happy Aquascaping !
