Tips to Keep Your Tropical Fish Healthy

Taking care of your pet tropical fish is a big responsibility. You’ve to take extreme care of its environment, surroundings, and food to keep it healthy and alive. Here are some expert tips on how to take care of and keep your tropical fish healthy. ~ Ed.

Tropical fish are for the delicate individuals who express their love in a caring and highly attentive way.

That’s because tropical fish are delicate on their own; they need a highly customized environment in order to live and thrive. Any slight changes in their habitat can not only be detrimental to their health, but it can also be deadly.

Taking care of your tropical fish can be done by following these tips.

Adjust the Environment

First things first, your tropical fish needs a highly customized habitat that covers all of its needs. While preparing its aquarium, take good care of providing the following factors:

Sufficient Room

Tropical fish love to be free. They can easily feel suffocated if they don’t have enough room to swim around, play, or even just relax.

If you’re shopping for a tank or an aquarium, then the least acceptable volume is 7 times the size of your fish.

Optimum Location

Tropical fish are easily stressed, and this stress can emanate from the surrounding environment of the tank.

They don’t like sensing strong light, hearing extremely loud noises, being subjected to high traffic, or feeling bare. They’ll need some hiding places in their tank to relax whenever they feel danger, which they can feel in case of a stressful location.

Ideal Water

The quality of the water is of utmost importance. After all, for your tropical fish, water is literally like the air you breathe.

To make sure the water environment is ideal for your fish, you should ensure that the water meets the following criteria:

High Quality

The quality of the water depends on many factors; the most important of which is being clean and devoid of chemicals.

Tap water, no matter how clean, will always have a certain percentage of hard substances, which is why installing an aquarium filter is crucial.

Aquarium filters come with a variety of features and benefits, but you can read this guide to choose from the top 29 reviewed aquarium filters in 2019. The filter will make sure that the nitrogen cycle is constantly maintained, and it will keep any hard substances at bay.

Adequate Temperature

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to tropical fish. Each species loves its water in a certain way and at a certain temperature.

You need to make sure that you’re providing the optimum temperature for your own tropical fish.

Suitable pH

You also need to provide optimum pH, which can quickly change if the nitrogen cycle is not well-maintained or if there are huge changes in the aquarium water.

For instance, changing all the water suddenly can shock the fish and possibly kill it.

Maintain the Aquarium

Preparing the right environment for your fish is not a one-time job. It takes constant care, follow up, and maintenance to ensure that the environment remains at an optimum level. Your maintenance routine will include the following:

Water Testing

During your testing, you need to keep optimum levels of nitrates while ensuring that the pH and KH levels remain stable.

You’ll also test for the presence of nitrites, which shouldn’t be detectable. In case there are traces of nitrites, you’ll need to test for ammonia as well.

Filter Maintenance

The filter is the main guard that removes all waste materials and harmful substances from the aquarium, preventing them from accumulating and killing the fish.

You’ll need to clean the filter at least once a month or more if the aquarium holds many fish.

Aquarium Maintenance

Your aquarium as a whole will need maintenance as well.

You’ll need to change filters, check for any dead fish, clean its walls, and inspect the expiration date of various aquarium supplies you use.

Feed It Well

Finally, the nutrition you provide for your fish should also be well-taken care of. For starters, make sure of the quality of the food you’re providing. Check the nutritional labels and ensure that it offers a well-balanced diet for your fish.

You should never overfeed your fish—remaining food can poison the water and be deadly for the fish. It’s usually adequate to feed it once or twice a day without any extra portions.

Wrapping It Up

Having a tropical fish can be mesmerizing, but it takes a lot of care to keep it healthy, active, and, well, alive.

You should make sure that the tank you’re setting is ideally prepared to welcome your new friend. You’ll need to prepare an ideal environment that has enough room, optimum location, and a high-quality water environment.

Keep good maintenance of the aquarium to ensure that the environment remains stable and ideal.

Finally, choose nutritional sources that are well-balanced, and avoid overfeeding your fish.

Over to you

Do you keep tropical fish? Share your thoughts and more tips on taking care of and keeping them healthy in the comments.