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Maintaining Your African Cichlid Fish Tank

By: Adrian Donaldson


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Cleaning your Malawi cichlid freshwater aquarium may be a big job at the best of times. Even with the very best mechanical filtration device on the planet your freshwater aquarium water will turn out to be stale and because of this, every week you should replace a minimum of 25% of the water with clean. I am lucky enough merely to be able to make use of common tap water that I treat by way of an item named Aquasafe. This eliminates the metals present in faucet water and makes it safe for the cichlids. Depending on the species of fish you might have you may need to add a little bit aquarium salt to the fresh water.

Using a siphon you must remove the discarded water to a big container. For best results the bell-end of this siphon should be dragged backwards through the substrate to take up any unused garbage lying on the surface. This will likely assist cleaning the substrate and take away uneaten fish food from your tank. This water should be then used to scrub any items from within the freshwater tank, for instance rocks, caves, plastic vegetation etc. To wash this stuff in new running water would wreck the friendly micro organism and effectively involve the tropical aquarium to cycle again.

Every week the filter also needs to be cleaned. This is normally done by means of removing the filter media from within the filtration system and rinsing it out in the old water you've a moment ago removed from the tropical aquarium. This allows you to eliminate african cichlids waste from the filtration system media whilst not destroying the friendly microorganisms necessary to process that same waste. Every now and then the extremely fine filter media may have to be replaced with new media to maintain effectiveness. On my own 5ft malawi cichlid freshwater tank We have used two exterior filters because of the quantity of mess that the Lake Malawi cichlids made. While I cleaned the tank weekly I only cleaned one filter on each alternating week to minimise the bacterial disruption.

My very own first choice has always been in favor of an Eheim Canister Filter. We've always been delighted in the functioning and clarity of my tropical tank water. An external container filtration system is way a lot easier to clean because you can actually detach it from the aquarium system and relocate it to a better scene for cleaning. Interior filters however offer the opportunity of fish waste falling back within the aquarium.

The tropical tank glass should be also cleaned every week using a blade edged scraper or a plastic scourer. I notice magnetic cleaners are more of a gimmick than any practicable use so, yes, you have to get your fingers wet. It is very important meticulously clean the glass seeing that any smattering of algae will provide it a foot-hold and reappear faster next time.

I ought to indicate that algae on the freshwater tank glass is only a display issue. It doesn't look good but makes absolutely no difference to your cichlid. Certain fish even like to nibble over the algae but providing you are usually learning to feed them properly they could cope without it.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

We now have an entertaining video on how to clean an aquarium just here should you wish to look at it.

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