In order to ensure that your community fish tank stays healthy, there must be a proper routine schedule and checklist that is set up for one to follow every week. Unlike normal aquarium cleaning, community fish tank maintenance usually requires more tedious tasks because basically you need to maintain tight water parameters in order to accommodate every living species in the natural surrounding. As always, it is not necessary to remove all the fish and plants during maintenance because this will disrupt the ecosystem but what is more important is that every control and monitoring needs to be carried out at present interval without fail.Let’s look at some of the basic tasks involved for any community fish tank maintenance. I would recommend you use the aquarium checklist here.
pH and temperature check. Every fish in community aquarium has different requirements. Find out more about individual species preferences and use pH test kit for the adjustment.removing algae by scrapping the sides of aquarium and hard to reach cornerssiphon and clear off any waste material including dead leaves from plantsconfirm nitrite nitrate level (basically the frequency of checking for newly-established aquarium is almost everyday but once it stabilizes, weekly confirmation should be sufficient)vacuuming the gravel bed at least once a week by using gravel cleanerservicing and changing the filter media for aquarium filter so that it won’t choked uptopping up the salt and check salinity for saltwater community tank only (you might be interested to find out more about how to change water for saltwater aquarium)check aquarium lighting to see whether the fluorescent tubes still emit the same intensity of light (usually the tubes need replacement roughly every 6 months)cleaning of protein skimmer (for saltwater aquarium) to ensure no accumulation of debris and hardened material at the chamber surfaceweed out presence of pests especially aquarium snails (if any)That’s it. Hopefully the list here can be used as a guide to properly maintain and ensure successful propagation of your community tank.
