Aquarium the easy way

Aquarium, biotype, flowers, moss aquarium, river aquarium, shellfish, brook aquarium, greening, filtering, water quality, fishfood,

Another thing is that we can never be sure that our methods are the best. Do we need expensive pumps and filters and so on. In the beginning I was mad with these things and bought three aquaria in the middle class. Under the period with a shop I could sell my fishes or change to a new sort whenever I needed. So in a few years I tried many species.

Now we have no shops since three years. I have my Princesses of Burundi in two variants as the main inhabitants in 350 and 180 litres. In some small pots I have those living in shells and of two species.

"You must have a plan" ... are flying words we learn our children. It is good to have a plan whenever we have a project with many moments and aspects. Then it is near to think in biotypes as we se them in nature. For normal sweet water we can make three categories.

The Brook has often sections with smooth water or stony places were the small fishes or smolt hide and live on what the stream give. There can also be small lagoons besides with much vegetation and suitable places for specialised species. It is simply amazing how nature fills out every niche with life and that the species specialise and change shape and behaviour to fit their environment.

Downstream comes the River where the small fishes normally are near the shores and in small lagoons. Only bigger and strong fish can live in the stream and they usually "stand" behind a stone and watch for coming food. In the river the water is usually deeper than in the brook. The vegetation follows in size the environment.

The Sea has two or three types with intensive life. One is near the shore, another on stony bottoms and thirdly just under a steep where the water circulation brings food. From angling we can learn that there are not fishes everywhere in the seas. In brooks and rivers it is easier because we can see where it must be a suitable place. We can look out for outlets from smaller brooks where the fishes stand with their mouth open so to speak. The nursing places are smooth waters with much vegetation and often sand bottom and perhaps some predators sneaking round. Near the shore there can be some roots living or dead depending on the place. Often the sea eats land.

That is in short our possibilities and we have to imagine that a little aquarium is a brook. Many species prefer a water level less than 25 centimetres and can then be treated like a brook fish. The little bigger pot is normally 60 centimetre long 30 centimetres high with place for air and wide 35 to 40 centimetre and then 50 to 60 litres. We give them to our children as the first or use them for smaller fish and smolt. About the small sizes for steady use I have a separate section.

Suitable for making a sea looking aquarium are the sizes from 350 litres and more and you need a room that is fitted also in size. It would look odd if you set a thousand litre of water in a small room

There are many thumb rules, but they should never be rigid. I buy fish told to be very moving but they stand at a place. I buy fish told to live in flock and when they come into my aquarium they seek a standing place and defend it. That is why I am sceptic in these maters too.

Part of the plan is the size of room and the size of the aquarium. Only nerds like me have several pots in a room. Next step is to decide what sort of fish and if you have a bigger aquarium I recommend to read as much as you can about the sorts you want. Some help there is in it and you will know how big they ca be.

Do not think you can make big money by breeding fish. The Zoo-store needs large margins and it is better to support it than that it maybe closes next week. Then I speak generally about places like mine of course.

A little food some day an exchange another day may be what you need. Other try to breed expensive fish, but the price law is that high prices means fever buyers and perhaps they are not on your location. The aquarium business is simply very mall in most places. Then it is better to have fishes solely for fun. For me it has often been a question of space.

The problem is if you have good conditions the fishes will breed much more than in nature and they have no enemies in the aquarium ... and you protect them. On a little place there are limits how much you can sell of one sort. That is why I changed fish often when we had our store. So I could breed something new. I got too many fishes and gave away them for almost nothing. Now with no zoo dealer I let my Princesses live their own life. They control their breed by themselves such as it is in nature

But let us have a look on some real aquaria.

The only fault is that the stand is too low. However then I had always many plants and seldom I saw the back wall. Now when I have no plants I do not see the fine background I made by photographing a brown cliff and made an enlarging for the background. I have brown stones gathered from Lake Vaenern.

It was often a quest of patience to see some fish except the small preferring open water in the middle. However some of them would rather stay at their place. In the corner we see one Papilochromis ramirezi I got one breed of. Then the female died and I got no new.

In this pair the female is the active and she shows instantly her red belly "pick here" when she is ready. Then she tried to get him to her nest. My male had longer fens and brighter colours, but there are many variants of these. Same counts for many aquarium fishes caused by long time of commercialism.

Then followed the Pelviachromis pulcher and filled the whole place for a long time. I had to change to something else. I love especially when the female shows the belly. Some may say they are too easy to breed and too common. I do not think that way. Fish as fish and if you love them you will have fun with every kind.

I had fish resistant down to pH 5,6 and then it did no harm when I put autumn leaves on the bottom. It is seldom a problem to get acid water. The pH lowers by itself and roots and plant rests do the rest. But my lesson came when a fresh water mussel died. The cause was that the acid water eroded the shell.

Small fish of this kind do not live for long in nature. For instance the guppy can make three breeds in a year and the law of nature is just to keep the population in balance with access of food.

So I had simply to make room at home. The scalare is living in the river biotype. But these are hybrids while the natural dress is grey with dark stripes. I figured a "river biotope" which is simply some root and there should be reeds too, but something like that was not available. I had to use the old receipt "take what you have".

The echinodorus sword grow fast and wide and. To that some normal fast growing winding plants.

Some of my fished live long. The oldest was a labeo bicolor which died 14 years old and his brother 12. These brothers became 11 respective 10. They all became a part of me. When you have aquarium for a long time you just feel if something is wrong.

In fact after the scalare I made a moss hole out of the pot for a couple of years. It was my simplest arrangement. I bought normal bog earth for the garden and poured into the cleaned aquarium with water. It took a couple of weeks before the water was clear. Then I furnished it with two big floating plants from my other aquaria.

Then I bought a pair of colissa lalia the little labyrinth fish and had much fun out of it. To start with he wanted to breed at once, however the water was not smooth enough to make bubbles. Then I happened to see when he stood and looked at the bubbles from the air pump I used for the circulation. Then he began to transport bubbles from the outlet to his nest. It was funny since he lost some of the bubbles on his way and he looked as an under water jet. Do not say that they are without intelligence ... and will to preserve. Then he made a new breed every second week for three months.

I bartered his breed to the betta splendens and got plenty of them

But then we got a zoo-dealer and he offered these. I read something about their natural biotope the Malavi Sea. Someone warned me that they are difficult to breed.

I had my expensive roots in the other pots and decided to make these stony labyrinths and set in plants afterwards. The fishes simply loved the stony building. Immediately they swam around and into every place. It was not only recognition since the expressed they loved it.

Later I got the advice to keep the temperature low and my plants loved that. The plants tell by their colour and growth if everything is OK. Here I have a picture of a sea biotype as background.

The secret behind keeping algae away is fish eating algae and fast growing plants. Fast growing plants ask for the correct iron balance. However the normal commercial products are very expensive. My solution was to use what the gardener use. I bought a kilo and was furnished for many years.

I thought I should have the shellfish in my big aquarium on the bottom. But the Princess did not like them and I had to make some small pots from spare parts. They do not need more than about 25 litres and it need not be more than 15 centimetres deep.

Then I recommend using Malavi-water and putting some lime in the filter. A little air driven filter is enough. Then you avoid that the shell is eaten by acid water. I bought a basket with shells in many sizes so it fits the small as well as their parents.

If you are patient and make the best conditions in your aquarium you need no special food for the breed. I think it is not good to search for natural food. That way you can get unwanted guest to your aquarium. You can use the small food you buy in stores and that is normally clean.

In everyday use it a compromise to see that you do not clean the aquarium too much. Take a looking glass or better and look at for instance the place were rests from your foddering lies on the bottom. Within an hour or so you see an intensive microscopic life in an old aquarium. Those small things feed the tiny fishes besides small algae and beings.

I think I have killed more small fishes by my trials than I have saved. Let the fishes be and have their freedom. Then some day you will see them with many small ones. In the well-controlled aquarium they have much better conditions than in wildlife. Many of the fishes are breed in artificial conditions and would not live a day in wildlife.

I have also been breeding artemia to full size 1 - 1,5 cm in two weeks and it is just a living food as delicatessen for the fishes. Else I have so many fishes that I make my own food using my household mixer for grinding and mixing it. I put it in the deep freezer and have for a month or two. I use the same recipe as in flings and add some liver.

To say it short I use no chemicals. The only addition is 0,02 % sea-salt when I change 1/3 of the water twice a month for normal sweet water fish. For Malavi fish I double the salt and add one teaspoon bicarbonate to ten litres. I have calcium oxide in the filter ... see that.

A little more salt may be added if you have worked much with the bottom and got the water polluted.

Sea-salt contends about 70 of our most common elements and substances. Other needed substances come with the food. The salt is simply disinfecting and most of us civilised people get it in our drinking water. I just ad a little more. The growth of bacteria and other small being is proportional to the temperature. So do not keep the aquarium warmer than necessary.

If only the water is kept fresh there will be no diseases and problems ... and as I said do not keep higher temperature than necessary. Indoors they get the necessary amount of warmth by the constant temperature. In nature it varies very much. In my apartment the changes in temperature comes natural with the year. It means breeding in summer when I have higher temperature indoor

During the years I have used two kinds of water depending on the fishes. The Malavi-water I have described and I keep it around pH 8 partly with the lime and bicarbonate, but also the regular water shifts that keep a quality that varies very little.

In that water you can keep African chiklids from Malavi and Tanganyika. But it fits even guppy poecilia reticulata, molly poecilia spenops, swordtail xiphophorus helleri, platy xiphophorus maculatus. They all request clean water and the salt is a cleanser. They can stand ten times more than the recommended 0,02 % seasalt, but then they have to be accustomed. However the water shifts of 1/3 of the water, sufficient plants and light keep the aquarium fresh and minimises the problem. The biggest threat is when buying fish or plants that can bring disease to the aquarium.

In that water you can keep most of the normal aquarium plants. The only difference is that some of them will not be as big as in neutral water. Do not keep the temperature higher than necessary. Most of the plants prefer less than 25 degrees Celsius and often near 20 degrees. So a normal temperature about 22 --- 23 degrees is preferable.

The other water is slightly acid around 6,8 pH and your water supply gives the hardness. In my case from Lake Vaenern dH 2,8 and the distributor use a little normal salt as cleanser. If the pH is kept lower than pH 7 there is no risk for the nitrite-process that drive out oxygen of the water. Normally there are two cases. One is when new fresh water is added and gets pH to 7 and then the nitrogen react. The same maybe the case a short while after you has feed the fishes. It causes that the fishes leave their excrements and also that forage rest are increasing the nitrogen in the water.

Do not be angry if you see the blue skin of blue nitrite algae. Alter your foddering and try to minimise the protein rests. More open water may be a solution. But remember you do not get it away by increasing the water swallow in the surface. Once you get too much nitrogen in it must either be transformed to algae or taken away with the water.

This is the water for most of the other fishes in trade. With roots, leaves and rests in the water it will become acid. But water exchange will keep it on a tolerable level.

Most of the plants like this water. The only problem is to keep the FE =iron-level in the water. It is a good investment to buy a test set and make routine out of preparing the water for the plants. In Sweden the FE-product for aquariums is very to expensive if you have a big aquarium or two.

Instead I used a product for gardens called EDTA and made a 2,8 % solution. Then I add one teaspoon or 5 millilitres to 50 litres fresh water once I have reached the right level in the entire aquarium. The right level must be reached by experience since it depends on kind of plants and how many. The fishes can not stand too much of the FE so the pure solution must not reach them.

The rule for addition of plant fertiliser is also to reach the level by experience. I use the commercial product for home flowers and add 2 --3 millilitres per 100 litres. The colour of the normal plants tells about how they feel. If they are brighter than normal they have got to little nitrogen and/or light. Are they bluish green they get too much nitrogen and/or light are the thumb rules.

The zoo dealers love to sell expensive pumps and filters. I had the money in the beginning and bought the famous Eheim pump suitable for the size of mine big pot. Never mind it lasted for 18 years so it was not the big issue compared with time.

Worst of all in the need it was not the optimal solution. Good biological filtering asks several steps in the process. The first is getting air into the water. In nature it happens when it flow over stony places and waterfalls. Next is the lagoon and slow running place with biological use of the nutriment in the water. Then it is good to give it air again and blow out some ammoniac. Then more biological growth and as finish a waterfall.

They use this technique speeded up in the water cleaning establishments. I let my glazier make a glass case long as the aquarium and about half the width. In one end I pump up water and let it stream as much as possible before the filtering stuff. Then follows an open area with some lime for my Malavi water. Another pieces of filtering stuff and in the other end the fresh water drop down.

The filter can run for about two years without cleaning it with the fishes I have now. It is good to have a little light on it so that the algae grow. If I get much of the blue I now I give too much food. Last winter the big pump was worn out and I bought a little cheap pump. In a filter it is better if the water flow slowly. I have no nee for stream in the aquarium so I got the cheapest possible solution.

The thumb rule for these is simply to be more cautious about everything. It is difficult to keep all the factors at right level in a little aquarium. It is easier to feed too much. Exchange the water regularly and keep clean for all kind of rests and it will all make it good for fishes and plants.

Discus Page Holland has this linkpage contending other specialities than discus.

Aqua-Max is a bilingual site English/Swedish with a very big linkpage

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