Salt Water Fish Tank Maintenance

Once you get your tank established, regular maintenance only takes a few minutes a day. With salt water fish, invertebrates or live coral, any issues need to be worked on immediately or the whole tank can soon be in jeopardy. Since a tank is such a small environment, keeping a chemical balance is crucial to the well-being of your wet pets.

  1. Expert Insight

    • The best thing you can do is to be sure to watch your pets every day to see how they are acting. Get to know what their normal behaviors are for eating, sleeping and swimming. If they deviate from that, you have a clue to look deeper into the problem. It's best to keep a notebook of your observations and maintenance on the tank.

    Time Frame

    • Daily maintenance should include checking your salt water pets' behavior, checking for leaks and making sure all of the equipment is running. Also check that the temperature of the water is in the range recommended for the pets that you have, which, depending on the species can be anywhere from 72 to 92 degrees F for tropical species.

      Weekly maintenance includes partial water changes to keep the water clean. Don't replace all of the water at one time because this will be too much of a shock to the fish. Only change about 1/4 of the water in the tank. You should also check your stock of aquarium supplies to be sure you aren't running out of anything. Also test the water's acidity (pH) levels with a simple water test kit you can buy at a pet store. The pH needs to be between 7.6 and 8.4.

    Considerations

    • Don't overstock your tank because more fish or creatures will produce more waste and affect the water's chemistry in a negative way. The usual guideline for stocking a tank is 4 gallons of water per 1 inch of fish. This means in a 20-gallon tank, you can have no more than five 1-inch-long fish. If you have more, then you need to do maintenance at least twice a week--maybe even every other day.

    Function

    • Daily and weekly maintenance acts like preventative medicine to help prevent problems (like fish illness or chemcial imbalance) or get right on top of solving problems. For equipment like filters and chillers, use the manufacturer's suggestions for how often they should be checked or cleaned.

    Warning

    • You must keep up on the maintenance. If you go on vacation, then you will need to hire a friend or professional pet sitter to perform these maintenance tasks while you are away. Salt water pets die far more quickly than their fresh water cousins.

    Misconceptions

    • Algae scrapings are done about once a week if algae seems to be taking over the tank. Algae growth can get out of control fast and eat up all the oxygen in the water. Scrape most of the algae off the sides of the tank, rocks and decorations with a brush, algae scraper or by cleaning the gravel. When you do an algae scraping, do not get rid of all of it. Leave some algae in the tank, because it soaks up some of the nitrogen in the tank and gives off a little more oxygen.