It’s all very well to hear people talking about the beauties of an aquarium, how to maintain adequate pH, keeping nitrate and phosphate levels adequately balanced, and so on there seems to be plenty of technical detail available!

But what about the actual fish? How do you choose which ones you want? How do you know whether they’ll be too big for the tank when they grow up, or whether they’ll be compatible with your other fish? How do you find out how to stock your tank?

Here is a quick rundown of the things you’ll need to bear in mind when choosing fish for your tank, as well as a brief look at a couple of the more common types of tropical fish. Hopefully it’ll give you a good idea of where to get started!

White spot is usually introduced to a tank along with new, infected fish or plants. It can also break out seemingly without warning in an undisturbed tank. When this happens, it means that the organism has been present for some time, but has been dormant (hibernating), and that some new stimulus - stress, or a change in water temperature - has caused it to awaken and become active.

Limiting the light available won’t make any difference to this type of algae, since it’s perfectly capable of growing at low-lighting levels. Instead, you need to cut right back on the nutrients available for sustaining its growth - which means feeding your fish less. High protein levels in the tank, derived from fish food, will fuel this algae’s growth.

It will then form a capsule around itself (called a cyst) and will remain dormant - at least, outwardly - for about a week. During this period of time, the cell within the capsule is furiously dividing: by the time that those seven days are up, that one cell has become approximately 1,000 new single-celled organisms.

These “daughter cells” will then break loose and swim freely about the tank, attaching themselves to new fish - and beginning the cycle all over again. White spot is highly contagious and progresses very rapidly. 100% mortality is to be expected unless something is done about it.

Green algae will appear in just about any tank with plenty of light. Fortunately, it’s easy to remove (it doesn’t cling to the glass too much) and most algae-eaters will consume it with gusto.

Tags: Aquariums

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am and is filed under Aquariums. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.