The food

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.

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.

Water quality

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

Two kind of water

During the years I have used two kind 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.

Filtering

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 small aquarium

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.

Links

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

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