Maintaining a successful aquarium

[laka]

I have been in this hobby for 14 years now and i would like to share with you what i feel is the secret to maintaining a healthy and stress free aquarium.
The first 5-6 years were a steep learning curve for me and as a result i suffered a lot of premature fish deaths from multiple causes such as incompatible fish stock, water quality problems and subsequent disease outbreaks.
The principal goal i set myself is to maintain a stress free aquarium and the only fish deaths i wanted to encounter were ones through natural attrition-ie. old age.

I have a 6*2*2 foot aquarium housing some peaceful cichlid species and catfish. In the last 4 years i experienced 3 fish deaths and i feel confident that they were all from old age-they were all 8 years or older. There was no outward sign of disease before hand and there was no communicable disease evident therafter. In the morning i would find the fish dead and give it a proper burial in my garden.

In those 4 years i can count how may times i tested my water quality on just one hand! Only after fish mortalities.

I consider my tank to have a high bioload so i do a weekly 80% water change. Do not be fooled into believing all the misconceived advice that such water changes are bad for the fish. Sure the physical parameters such as water temp pH and chlorine in water need to be considered but believe me there is no adverse influence on the "good" bacteria with such large water changes.
Your fish will love it. On the other hand if you have low bioload such as my planted tank i do a 10% water change every month. You yourself need to determine what is the correct volume of water changes required through trial and error and stick to it. IT IS NOT ONE ARBITRARY AMOUNT FOR ALL!
Going hand in hand with water quality is filtration and feeding. I have two external large cannister filters im my tank- i strongly believe in redundancy, and a large power filter attached to a pond sponge. I also have very little gravel in my fish tank to avoid in decomposition.
As for feeding i only feed once a day on every alternate or 3 rd day.

These above factors i believe is the main key to a successful aquarium-water quality, water quality water quality.
Finally make sure your fish are compatible with each other to minimise stress levels that will also lead to disease outbreak.

I hope the above was useful to all the fish hobbyist out there and happy fish keeping.

 

[amosf]

Well, I don't think it's a secret that a healthy biological filtration system is key to a healthy aquarium. And while I don't have a problem with 80% water changes (I have certainly done a few) I don't think it's all that necessary on a weekly basis. 30% per week, or even per month, is enough for most people and tanks, and many of those have kept fish a very long time. As you say, it depends on the bioload and how overstocked the tank is.

As for me, I live in a dry rural area. I don't have enough water for a 80% weekly change on all the tanks anyway

I've been keeping fish for some 30 years off and on, so certainly agree with the basic principles, as I'm sure many others here do as well who have been keeping a lot more fish for a lot longer than myself

But you learn all the time and there is always something new out there to try (or to get bitten by)...

 

[Mgamer20o0]

some good points that many other people have made over and over. i do weekly 50% water changes. i really dont like to do much more then that. i would do two 50% a week vs one 80%. there are times where major water changes are needed though.