In my house, we have six fish tanks. We are constantly cleaning fish tanks and watching our fish to make sure that they are not sick and to make sure that they are eating. You will want to spend at least ten minutes a day watching your fish to make sure they are not sick. You will also need to spend about an hour and a half, once every two weeks, cleaning your saltwater fish tank. You will need a variety of items to clean your fish tank. You will need some type of siphoning tube which has a filter on the end so that you don’t accidently suck up a fish when you are cleaning the tank. I have sucked up a fish in my siphon tube that had an opened end and that way the day I purchased a new siphoning tube. If you have substrate or gravel in your aquarium that is very fine, you will want to purchase a cover to go over the end of the siphon tube. This is so that you don’t suck up all of your sand and get it stuck inside of the tube. You will need to keep cleaning off the bag in order to suck water through the tube. This is the only good way of getting deep down into the sand or substrate.
I use a different method of cleaning my saltwater tank. I will reach my hand into the tank and sift through all of the sand. I will move all of my live rock towards the front of the tank and sift through the sand under the tank. This is bringing all of the excess food and debris out of the sand. You will then notice that the water starts to turn a yellowish tint. You will then want to siphon out about 5% of the water. Keep doing this process until the sand looks as if it is free from any excess food. If you are noticing a lot of algae and excess food on the bottom of your tank, you are feeding your fish too much or too frequently. Add a little bit of food to your tank several times a day. Fish do not eat as much as you think they will. If you have a lot of algae on your glass you will want to buy a scrub brush which looks like it has a scraper on the end of it.
There are also soft brushes that you can use, but the hard scrapers work the best when it comes to removing algae. You will need to remove a total of 20% of the water. If your water is getting low enough where the cannister filter cannot suck up any water you will want to shut it off. You can then grab a bucket and start mixing your salt mix and your water.
Decholorinated water is the only water you will want to use. You will need a measuring cup, spoon and your hydrometer as well. You will usually mix about 1/2 cup of salt per gallon of water until your readings are somewhere between 1.021 and 1.025. The average that you will want to try to stick to is 1.023 to give you a safe end to both sides. You don’t want too much salt in your water and you don’t want to be low either. You will need to do this with each bucket of water until the tank is full again. Then, you can plug in the cannister filter and watch the water clear up.
