Observation, Maintenance Routines, & Feeding Amounts

New hobbyists often fall into the trap of believing that their tanks will require a guiding hand and onerous daily commitments in time by them to each tank each and every day. This is really not true at all. What your tanks will require from you each and every day is that you observe them, you feed the organisms inside of them, and that you take the time out of your day to appreciate the natural beauty that is contained in the part of your home we call an aquarium. There are many voices out there and there are a lot of confusing opinions on what procedure you will need to follow. Online personalities, from the present and ages long past each had their own idea of what maintenance routines you should follow. The one thing that most miss is that fish inside of our aquariums require first a clean environment. The second thing that they require is the one thing that most living things require, stability. The truth is most organisms that we encounter in the hobby do not need RO DI water, they don’t need matching pH, they don’t need a specific temperature, they don’t need lights that mimic the rhythms of nature to the extent that the day/night cycle is mimicked and they don’t need to be constantly changed. At the very heart of what makes a healthy internal ecosystem in the aquarium is two requirements. The first requirement is an ammonia free environment. The second requirement is stable parameters. Yes this means sometimes the less you do is in fact more.

Observation is at the heart of what you will do in your maintenance routine. You will need to carefully observe the lifeforms in your care both plant and animal because both will have very important things to tell you about the health of the ecosystems under your care. You will start off as a novice in both but if you pay attention, you will begin to recognize when things are off and this will suggest things that you will need to change. Let me give you a concrete animal example. On the Wet Floor Podcast on youtube, I was once asked a really important and interesting question regarding the species Geophagus sp. Alto Sinu. To paraphrase the question, it was in essence “how much do I feed them, they seem like they are always starving.” At the time we found that quite humorous because what this hobbyist had brought to our attention is in actuality a very common question in the hobby. It has even led to some myths that fish will actually “eat themselves to death.” Yet the heart of this question was not insignificant. The question was also not a very easy one to answer. The truth is there really is no answer to this question without observation. Let me explain this very clearly so that this statement has meaning. When you observe the animals in your care on a daily basis you will begin to notice things about them. If they are young, are they growing appropriately? Are the fish putting on weight? Do they seem healthy, or are they lethargic. Are their bodies filling out solidly? How do they interact with the environment and with each other. These are all very important observations that you as the hobbyist will make when you observe your tanks. If the young fish in your aquarium are growing and they are filling out in a way that looks like they are robust, there is not food left to rot on the floor of the tank, and their bodies look solid with filled out, healthy muscle tone then your feeding enough. If they look skinny, aren’t filling out in a healthy manner, or if they are young but aren’t growing steadily then this is data that tells you that you need to feed them more. You can’t tell this without daily observation. Observation of how their bodies are reacting informs us on whether or not we are feeding the animals in our care the correct amount and if they are flourishing in our aquariums.

I have given you in the previous example a concrete animal example, now let me share with you how observation can help us understand our tanks using a plant example. Plants have a lot to tell us about the nature of nutrient flow in our aquariums. They can tell us for instance if nutrients are being adequately taken up and they can also tell us if nutrients are not being metabolized correctly. This I must also confess has been the hardest part of the hobby for me as a hobbyist. I was primarily born with a brown thumb, I started with the innate ability to take healthy green plants and watch them shrivel up, disintegrate before my eyes, turn brown, and die. It wasn’t that I wanted to kill the plants in my care, it was that I didn’t understand what they needed an what they were telling me. Along the way I had to learn to read what they were telling me including reading what the pests were telling me. While I can help guide you through this here and I will, the truth is for your tanks and your stocking levels again the most important work you will do as a part of the maintenance each and every day is to observe your tanks. Observation here is indispensible and that observation informs you about a world you can’t see but is in fact very much there and has a lot to tell you if you just look. Now if your colorblind like I am, seeing some of these things can be problematic. Rely on the help of others in your house hold if you can’t see the colors that I mention later on. The first thing that you want to observe in your plants is the same thing that you will observe with animals. Are they growing, and are they filling out. Are the new leaves that come in healthy looking? Do they get as green as the older ones as the days go by. Are they large, do they look small? These are clues that tell you about nutrient uptake in your aquarium. Let me give you now some concrete examples. One of the most invisible things in our aquariums is the most important. They rate at which nutrients are metabolized by our plants is fundamental to the health and the outlook of our tanks. Tanks that have heavy growths of algae or unsightly, somewhat pungent cyanobacteria (a film that grows on plants and can usually be removed by brushing against it with your hand) is a huge warning sign that the rate at which nutrients are being taken up is insufficient to the rate at which it is being produced. If left unchecked the cyanobacteria especially can inhibit and even kill your plants blocking them from seeing the light. So what do you do? You need to remove as much of the cyanobacteria as you can when you change water and then you need to fertilize. Specifically what is usually lacking in tanks that have sufficient plant density is the one nutrient plants need to adequately photosynthesize. That nutrient is Carbon dioxide. Adding carbon dioxide on something like a carbon ladder will turbocharge growth, and nutrient uptake in your plants. Soon the cyanobacteria will become less and vanish entirely. The reason, the plants are metabolizing the nutrients faster then the pest is able to grab ahold of it. In essence the tables have turned and the plants are out competing it. If you need more help on observations regarding plants please see the article on plant observation.

Observation also has a lot to tell you regarding how your community is interacting with itself. When fish come of age, an abrupt change usually follows. Where there was harmony, now fish can be at the top, gasping for air, hiding behind objects trying to pretend like they aren’t there. They can bite at each other and chase each other. Soon it will become apparent that the ones that have been chased away are getting stressed out and will eventually die if left like this. Obviously this can’t continue, nor can you let it. Now you have a choice to make. Let me explain the situation this likely points to. You likely have pairs forming or colonies forming. The males and females are pairing up and their intention is to spawn. As a result they are chasing everything out of their “territory” to make conditions more “safe” for the fry they will raise. When this happens harmony won’t be restored in this tank as long as they intend to spawn. The hobbyist has a choice now to make. You can remove the fish that wish to spawn and give them a tank of their own. The other choice is that you can remove the ones who have “lost.” If you do nothing you will likely lose the fish. One option here can be to thin out your ranks and take the fish back to a pet store to turn in for store credit. You can also take the fish to a fish club and sell the subadults/adults to the club members who may want or need them. Which ever you choose harmony will once again be restored once the problem is overcome. Now what happens next depends on the choice you made.

Observation can also tell you about the state of your filtration. No matter what type of filtration you have, you will eventually need to maintain them. In the case of sponge filters, eventually the holes in the sponges become so clogged up that manual cleaning is in fact required. When this occurs the flow rate coming from the filter slows down to a trickle. If this lower flow rate is ignored, the filter will become more efficient but the volume it is able to clean will increasingly diminish until eventually it will stop altogether. So ignoring it is not really an option. Maintaining a sponge filter is now an necessity in order to restore flow and effectiveness. Maintenance here is again dictated by observation. Is the rate of flow strong, if so no maintenance is necessary. Does the sponge itself still look porous or does it look clogged. If it is porous, then flow can still occur and your fine to avoid maintaining it. If you see detritus clogging its pores, then you need to squeeze it out which expels the detritis into the waste water. A couple of squeezes is usually enough to restore the pours to a state that they can once again take in flow. The only other thing that one needs to do with a sponge is ensure that they air line itself is clear and free of things like snails. Fishing line can be helpful here as is both test tube cleaners and pipe cleaners. Simply sticking this in the whole and feeding it through can clear all obstructions. If you have a hang on the back or a cannister filter, or if you need more help in recognizing when filters need to be cleaned, please consult my filtration cleaning article.

Maintenance is also a confusing topic for many new hobbyists. When to change water is one that has no clear answer but here at least there is a useful guideline can in fact help. Here stability is the guiding principle. Routine then becomes more of the guiding light if you will then a word of wisdom. Here the goal is to create stable conditions over long periods of time. What constitutes long periods of time? Let observation here be your guide. The first thing you must observe isn’t visual. Properly cycled and healthy water should have either no smell or an earthy type of smell to it. If you smell something bad, acrid, or altogether unpleasant then you must investigate this immediately. If you have a single tank or a pair of tanks the investigation becomes easy. If on the other hand you have 16 tanks in a small fish room, well you have some investigating to do. The water should here be your guide. For most healthy ecosystems you can go as much as two weeks without needing to do a water change. Most hobbyists though elect to change out their water 10 - 30% of the volume every week. If you keep up with this type of routine, tanks begin to exhibit a resilience to them. This resilience allows for vacations without worry, being sick on occasion, exhibit a strength in the health of the fish that tends to resist abrupt short term changes, and an overall success that really only grit brings. Maintenance does not only take the form of water changes. Sometimes it also includes trimming plants that are overgrown. Starting new plants where the old plants are getting old. It can include recharging carbon reactors that supply plants with CO2, changing filter pads on piston driven air pumps, putting objects away that were inappropriately left during the week, and taking the time to clean your lids so that the maximum amount of light goes through.

What maintenance doesn’t usually include is test kit data. Do not get me wrong if you wish to do this, then a reliable test kit provides you with useful data that you can use as a baseline. It can also be incredibly useful if things go wrong in showing you trends that were measured over time. However the truth is these kits are expensive and most aquarists do not use them when things are going right. We use those kits when we think there is some reason to be alarmed. When we need more information to make informed decisions and thus testing of water is something that we really don’t do without need or cause.

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