Home Aquarium Care

When you take on the task of building a saltwater aquarium, you also take on the responsibility of taking care of that tank, often for many years. There are tasks that need to be done on a regular basis as part of basic home aquarium care. Setting them up carefully can minimize the amount of actual work you have to do, but you'll always have to keep an eye on things.

Taking the Time to Let Everything Get Settled

If you fight nature, it will fight back. In the case of saltwater aquariums, whether they're reef communities or just fish, you can't expect good results if you don't give the microbial members of the community time to catch up to what's happening on the larger scale. You should expect to wait at least a month after a final check and filling to make sure the colonies are well established and ready to begin filtering for larger creatures. Add the fish a few at at time, leaving days or weeks for the system to settle back down again, as determined by the nitrate readings you'll be taking every day.

Observation

Once you've selected all the fish, you'll need to pay careful attention to them, making sure they're all getting along peacefully. It is a good idea to get in the habit of just watching the aquarium every day to make sure all the animals are healthy and don't show signs of battle or stress. If you must, be ready to quarantine fish at the first sign of trouble to keep it from spreading to the others. Keep a very careful eye out for the first signs of salts encrusting the filter apparatus.

You'll also be taking measurements. It might not hurt to keep a little home aquarium care notebook of the readings, but mostly you're just making sure the water isn't going out of balance. You'll be keeping a particular eye on levels of salinity, nitrates, carbon dioxide, oxygen, pH and other solutes, such as calcium for corals. Take a peek at the temperature whenever you stroll by.

Cleaning and Maintenance

Depending upon the size and set-up of the aquarium, you'll be doing some sort of cleaning. Choose a combination of filters to rid the water of solids and keep you from having to replace water very often. Home aquarium care doesn't need to be a huge chore.