Consistent and intentional aquarium maintenance is the foundation of creating a beautiful and healthy aquarium. But many people new to the hobby skip over this crucial aspect … that is the biggest mistake you can make for your plants and fish. Keep reading to find out why.

This is your complete beginner’s guide to aquarium maintenance. In this article, you’ll discover:

• What Aquarium Maintenance is
• Why Aquarium Maintenance is Important
• Step-by-Step Guide to Aquarium Maintenance
• Equipment You’ll Need

First, let’s answer the question, “what is aquarium maintenance?”

What Aquarium Maintenance is

Aquarium maintenance is the process of keeping your aquarium clean, healthy, and safe for your fish and other critters that live in it. It involves regular monitoring and adjusting water conditions, cleaning the tank and equipment, and providing proper food and lighting.

“Regular” really depends on which part of maintenance you’re doing.

Today, I’ll be focusing on possibly one of the most important aspects of maintenance, and that’s cleaning your tank. Generally, this is what most people mean when they refer to “tank maintenance”.

It’s the water changes that can make or break your aquarium and I’m sure you’ve heard people say that. But why is replacing 30-50% of your water so vital?

Why Aquarium Maintenance is Important

Your fish tank is an ecosystem. As with every other ecosystem in the world, there’s a cycle of nutrients that goes on unseen … the fish create waste from the food they eat, the waste is converted into ammonia, ammonia into nitrite, and nitrite into nitrate.

That’s the simple version.

In the wild, those decaying organics are carried away by the current or broken down by the massive numbers of beneficial bacteria living there.

But since your fish tank is a closed ecosystem, everything remains within it unless it’s removed. So that means all the waste, toxic ammonia, and decomposing organic materials builds up over time.

The build-up of those organics could be lethal to all life in your aquarium.

That’s why we change the water in our aquariums weekly. It’s to get rid of and dilute those harmful materials in your tank so they don’t kill your fish or plants.

Step-by-Step Guide to Aquarium Maintenance

The time it takes to carry out weekly maintenance on your tank depends on the size and population of your tank.

As a general rule, you should be doing water changes at least once a week. The greatest factor to determine if you should increase this number is the population concentration of your aquarium.

What I mean by that is if you have a lot of fish in a small tank, then you’ll have to do more frequent water changes than someone with a large tank with fewer fish.

But regardless of the circumstances, this is what your aquarium maintenance should look like:

1. Take a second and look at your tank. Ask yourself, “what needs to be done today?”
2. Remove a little bit of water from your tank so you have some space to move around without splashing water over the sides
3. Clean the aquarium glass using a sponge or glass scraper (Amazon has some great products)
4. Drain 30-50% of the water in your tank into a bucket or outside using a plastic tube
5. Trim plants (only if necessary)
6. Fill your tank back up using dechlorinated water
7. Net out any plant trimmings on the water surface

Equipment You Will Need for Aquarium Maintenance

If you’re new to the hobby, you might not have all the equipment required to properly carry out your aquarium maintenance.

I started out using a tea pitcher and a 5-gallon Home Depot bucket to do my water changes. But that took a lot of time and I made a mess every time I tried.

It doesn’t need to be expensive, complicated, or messy, all you really need are the following:

• Aquarium siphon and gravel vacuum
• Aquarium glass cleaner
• 5-gallon bucket from your nearest hardware store

Siphon the water out of the tank into the bucket, dump the bucket outside, fill the bucket up with clean, dechlorinated water, and pour it carefully into your tank.

It’s as simple as that. You can put a TV show on while you do it or listen to a podcast and forget about the stress of life.

It can be a relaxing way to decompress if you don’t view it as a chore.

Thanks for reading and I hope it gave you a good foundation to one of the most crucial aspects of having an amazing aquarium.

You can find more information on this important process by watching this video:

Aquarium Maintenance by MJ Aquascaping

If you want to learn more about other aquarium topics, look at the other blogs on my website.

Thanks,

Dom Blank

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