Did you just build a new aquarium? Then, you’re probably wondering how to take care of a fish tank.
You must complete regular maintenance to keep your fish tank healthy and habitable. Cleaning your fish tank once every week or two will keep the water healthy and make cleaning easier.
Cleaning your tank consists of changing the water, scrubbing algae, replacing the filter media, and testing the water. Let’s jump in.
Fish Tank Maintenance
Routine maintenance of your aquarium is essential to the health of your fish, invertebrates, plants, and any other living thing you’re keeping in the aquarium.
Daily Maintenance
Keep your aquarium topped off. Water evaporates, so your tank will lose water between water changes. Tanks without a lid will lose water to evaporation especially quickly.
Adding water to your tank doesn’t necessarily need to be done daily, but it usually needs to be done every two to three days, especially without a lid. Simply keep an eye on your tank, and when the water level seems to be getting low, fill it up with some water.
Use Water Conditioner
When adding new water, remember to add a water conditioner. Many houses have tap water that contains chlorine and other heavy metals which are toxic to fish. Always add fish-safe water conditioner, like API Stress Coat, to any water before adding it to your tank. Water conditioners neutralize chlorine and heavy metals to prevent fish fatalities.
Match The Water Temperature
When adding fresh water, ensure that the new water is close in temperature to the water already in the tank. Avoid boiling or hot water at all costs — these temperatures will kill your fish.
The new water doesn’t need to match the tank temperature exactly, but it should be within one to two degrees. Adding water that is very different in temperature to the tank water will shock your fish. Fish don’t handle drastic changes well. Shock lowers their immune system, leading to sickness and even death.
To avoid shocking your fish, use a thermometer to measure the temperature of your tank’s water. Then, measure the temperature of the fresh water to ensure the temperature is close. Often, if the new water is too hot or cold, you can leave it to sit out for a while until it gets to room temperature.
Weekly Or Bi-Weekly Maintenance
Before beginning any aquarium cleaning, you’ll first want to clean yourself. Thoroughly scrub your hands and forearms — any part of your body that goes inside the tank. Doing so removes lotions, perfumes, bacteria, and anything else that may be harmful to your fish.
Turn Off Electronic Devices Like Filters & Heaters
Before scrubbing your tank, turn off your filter. Turning off your filter prevents electrocution and allows the debris you’re washing to settle on the substrate. Debris that’s settled on the substrate is easier to clean away than debris floating about the water column.
Unplug your heater, too, because it can overheat and break down when exposed to air.
Scrub Away Algae
Before doing a water change, you’ll want to eliminate algae in the tank. A bit of algae is okay, especially if you have fish or invertebrates that eat it. Too much algae is unsightly and can cause problems.
Avoid Algae In Your Tank
Algae growth is a sign of too many nutrients in the water for the algae to feed off. One of the most common problems of algae growth is too much natural or artificial light. It also grows more abundantly if too much leftover fish food in the aquarium or anything else causes the ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates to spike.
Never keep your aquarium by a window. Natural sunlight causes excess algae to grow and can cause harmful temperature fluctuations in the tank.
In the same way, artificial light that is too strong causes excess algae to grow. Algae feed off the light and can quickly overtake a tank with too much algae.
To avoid this, I recommend getting a light that has adjustable settings. Keeping your light on the lowest setting is easier on your fish’s eyes, avoids algae growth, and the lighting is sufficient for most live plants.
Also, your fish need a proper day-night cycle to maintain their health and stress levels. Avoid leaving your aquarium light on 24/7 because it will encourage algae growth, cause your fish stress, and may make them sick. I don’t recommend leaving your lamp on for more than 10 hours a day.
Cleaning The Algae
When you get algae in your tank, it’s usually easy to scrub away. Use a sponge specifically made for aquariums, so you avoid potential chemicals. Also, ensure you choose the right scrubber for your glass or acrylic aquarium. Scrubbers for glass aquariums are harder and may scratch your acrylic aquarium.
You can buy these as regular handheld sponges or on a handle, so you don’t have to get your hands wet. There are even magnetic scrubbers that you drag around the sides of the tank to remove algae without having to place your hands inside the tank.
You’ll also want to remove the algae from any decorations inside the aquarium. To avoid scrubbing the algae into the water column, you’ll want to remove the decorations from the tank and clean them in your sink or a bucket of warm water.
Only wash the decorations with water, and NEVER use soap or other cleaning products. Soap is lethal to fish and almost impossible to remove from decorations completely.
Remove & Replace Old Water
Your fish are constantly producing waste, so it’s not enough to top off the water as it evaporates. Removing some of the water is an essential part of aquarium maintenance.
To keep your aquarium clean, you should remove about 25-30% of the water once every one or two weeks.
Remember Water Conditioner & Temperature
Remember to use a water conditioner in your new water before adding it to the tank, and ensure that the temperature of the fresh water is close to that of the water in the new tank.
Maintain The Correct pH
You’ll also need to be cautious of the pH balance of your tank water and the fresh water you’re putting in it. pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity in your water. pH levels range from 0-14; levels below 7 are acidic, while levels above 7 are alkaline.
The pH levels you want in your aquarium depend on the fish you are keeping. Freshwater fish like their water slightly acidic, usually between 6.6-7.0. Saltwater fish and cichlids like their pH levels significantly higher. You’ll need to research what your fish like and adjust your water accordingly.
One of the most common ways to adjust the pH levels is to use pH-adjusting chemicals. These are not permanent solutions, though, as you’ll need to use the chemicals every time you do a water change.
Another option is to use natural pH adjusters. Peat moss and driftwood are excellent options for lowering pH and adding a natural aesthetic to your aquarium. Some decorative stones and substrates can get the job done if you need to raise your pH.
Test Your Water Parameters
You’ll also need to check your water parameters regularly. Most people check their water parameters once, either before or after a water change. I like to check mine twice if there is a problem; otherwise, once is enough.
Besides pH, these are the parameters your should test for in your water:
- Ammonia: 0ppm
- Nitrites: 0ppm
- Nitrates: <40ppm for fish, <20ppm for invertebrates
Ammonia and nitrites are incredibly toxic, so no amount should ever be present in your aquarium. Nitrates are only toxic in higher amounts but are harder on invertebrates than fish.
I test my parameters before doing a water change, but I still perform a water change, even if the parameters are perfect. Doing so eliminates waste and prevents the parameters from spiking in the future.
Immediately do a water change if the parameters are high and test the water a second time. If the parameters remain high, you may need to do more than one water change.
You’ll also want to test the parameters of your tap water or whatever water you use to fill your tank. For instance, my tap water has no ammonia or nitrites and has an ideal pH for my fish, but the water is very hard. So, I have to test the hardness of my aquarium after a water change and adjust it for my fish.
Use A Gravel Vacuum
The best way to get rid of old water is by using a gravel vacuum. Gravel vacuums are excellent for sucking up old waste and can be used with any substrate.
Gravel vacuums are exceptionally efficient with gravel substrates because the rocks are large, and the tubes can’t suck them up. I like to dig the vacuum into the gravel to remove any fish poop and old food that is hard to get otherwise.
You can still use gravel vacuums with finer substrates, like sand; you just need to be more cautious. Rather than pushing the vacuum into the substrate, hold the end of the tube one or two inches above the substrate. The vacuum will quickly suck up fish poop and other waste on the substrate.
Monthly Maintenance
You need to change your filter media about once a month, and it’s efficient to clean your filter during this time, too.
Most filters contain some type of sponge to collect large debris. Beneficial bacteria makes its home in these sponges, so you don’t want to use tap water to clean it as it will kill the bacteria. Instead, rinse the sponge in the old tank water you’ve just removed.
Scrub the inside and outside of the filter with your aquarium scrubber to remove debris. Make sure to rinse the intake tube to remove any debris that may be stuck.
Changing the filter media varies depending on the brand and type. Consult the packaging to know how to replace your filter media.
Keep An Aquarium Log Sheet And/Or An Aquarium Maintenance Checklist
Keeping your aquarium healthy and clean can be a lot of work. There are multiple steps that you have to do to keep the aquarium clean; there are some things you need to do every day, every week, or every month. Remembering when you’ve done routine maintenance can be challenging.
Minimize what you must remember by keeping a log sheet and a checklist. These sheets don’t need to be super detailed or complex. You can just write down your schedule in a simple notebook. The important thing is that the list(s) helps you remember what needs completing and when.
People who keep more than one fish tank often find log sheets and checklists especially helpful.
I’ve included an example of my log sheet below. Feel free to use it or something similar for your fish tanks.
| Aquarium Cleaning Schedule |
| Ammonia Levels | Nitrite Levels | Nitrate Levels | pH Levels | Hardness Levels | Filter Media Replaced | |
| Date: | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | Yes OR No |
| Date: | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | Yes OR No |
| Date: | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | Yes OR No |
| Date: | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | _____ ppm | Yes OR No |
Checklists are also fantastic if you prefer marking off when you’ve completed something. I’ve included an example of an aquarium checklist below:
| Weekly OR Bi-Weekly Aquarium-Cleaning Checklist | |
| Items Needed: An algae scrubber Old towels A bucket A gravel vacuum Water conditioner New filter media A water testing kit | What To Clean: Wash your hands/arms Scrub away algae Turn off filter & heaterClean filterReplace filter media (if needed)Vacuum gravel & remove old water Prepare new water Add new water Test water parameters |
Other Aquarium Care Tips
There are a few extra essential tips you can use to help keep your aquarium clean:
Don’t Remove Too Much Water
Avoid removing more than 25-30% of the water at once because it can shock your fish. There are times when you may need to remove more. For instance, maybe your fish are dealing with a severe infection, or you accidentally dropped a whole container of fish food into the aquarium.
When removing more than 25-30% of the water, use extreme caution. You’ll need to closely match the parameters of the original tank water as much as possible. Parameters you’ll need to match include water temperature, pH, and hardness at a minimum.
Don’t Overfeed Your Fish
Overfeeding your fish is the number one cause of a dirty tank and spiked water parameters. Only feed your fish as much as they can eat in about three minutes. You should remove any food left after that with a fine-meshed net. Leftover food quickly raises the ammonia and nitrites in your tank and can cause excess algae growth.
Clean The Outside Of The Tank
You’ll want to clean the outside of the tank to keep it looking fresh and clean. Be careful to use aquarium-safe cleaners; don’t use household glass cleaners as they often contain toxic chemicals.
Conclusion
Keeping your aquarium clean is essential to the health and happiness of the animals in your aquarium. Fish and invertebrates constantly produce waste that needs cleaning, and algae can make your tank look dirty and unappealing.
Cleaning your fish tank might seem like a lot, but if you keep up with regular maintenance, your tank will stay relatively clean, so that upkeep won’t take very long.
FAQs
How much it costs to maintain your tank depends on its size. Replacement filter media is generally the most costly item because it needs replacing every month. The gravel vacuum and algae scrubber last a long time and do not cost much. Water conditioner usually only costs $10-20, and a single bottle can last several months.
A “low-maintenance” fish tank doesn’t really exist. They’ll all need regular cleaning and care to keep your fish healthy.
Generally, saltwater tanks are higher maintenance than freshwater tanks because you have to monitor the salinity, and the inhabitants tend to be more sensitive to changes in the water parameters.
Larger tanks are also less maintenance than small tanks because they are less prone to water parameter fluctuations.
