Aquarium fish keeping hobby is something dynamic as there are always fun and exciting new ways which you can explore and make the whole experience enjoyable. There are in fact endless new ideas and possibilities which you can try and experiment with, and the limit is your own imagination. Combining different choices and setups, the fun part of all these is actually seeing your piece of work turn into the perfect work of art. Over the years, the image of a simple childhood activity has turned into something big, complex, and highly advanced as you will soon discover as you continue to read on. Let’s look at some of the options which a hobbyist can play around to spruce things up.
1. Get different aquarium shapes and setups
Let’s face it; keeping fish does not necessarily mean having to confine your pets to live in an old boring square-shaped tank. If you are the creative type and would like to have something different, then why not opt for the round or even the odd-shaped fish tank? Not to be compared to a simple fish bowl, which is practically dull, these specially designed tanks that you can see sold in pet shops actually come from reputable brand names and they all have the necessary equipment like filter and lighting fixture combined into one single package. If you observe careful, the aim of the design is to make it compact; use of top quality acrylic material will create the high transparency glass-like appearance and overall, is also created for ease of maintenance in mind. Nowadays there is also a range of specially-designed aquarium forming the term “unique aquariums” which are actually constructed to blend and fit in nicely into your modern living room concept like for example, the coffee table fish tank, kitchen aquarium cabinet and some others, all beyond simple imagination. Even nowadays round or odd-shaped aquariums are preferred over conventional square tanks, as it is considered the most convenient setup for keeping small pet fish like neon tetra, platy and is also suitable to house the tiny freshwater shrimps.
How about getting a round shape biorb or even try out with different plant layout? The possibilities are endless…
2. Decorate the tank
Having an empty bare-bottom fish tank might sound like a good idea especially for those cleaning freak. You don’t have the gravel that can accumulate dirt, it is easy to scrape off the algae growing at the corners and overall you can significantly cut down the time to do a complete tank cleaning. However, the downside to all these is you will end up having a plain boring aquarium. Not many will agree with this, but do you realize that decorating the tank with plants and other decorative items actually offers its own benefits? Take for example the aquarium plants. The living flora growing in the water can actually serve as biological filtration to absorb harmful chemical buildup in the water and in turn improves the water quality. The layer of gravel which forms the base of the tank can actually become the filter media for a type of filter system call the “undergravel filter”. Having decorative materials like shells also serve as hiding spot for certain type of fish like cichlids and the list goes on and on. Overall, depends on how you manage, there are certainly pros and cons involved but definitely the benefits outweighs the negative impact.
3. Mix and create a community aquarium
One of the challenges to aquarium fish keeping is how to create a community setup whereby you can have different species of fishes, all living together in the same tank and interact with one another without showing any hostile behavior. The benefit when having different types of fish that co-exist together is that it will turn the aquarium towards having a more natural look, and with all the different shapes and colors contributed by the variety of species, this will help portray a more vibrant and lively surrounding. Most of the time spent will be on experimenting which type of fish will go along well with the other and overall this involves some research, some trial and error before you come up with the perfect setup. Trust me; this is all worth the effort.
4. Transform it to saltwater
While freshwater is fun, turning your aquarium into saltwater tank opens up new possibilities. There are species that only thrive in marine environment like colorful giant saltwater clams, living corals, anemones, feather duster worm, starfishes, seahorses and to the more exotic unicorn fish which you can consider. Also another point to take note is that when comparing between freshwater and saltwater species, those from the marine fish families tend to be more colorful. Maintaining a saltwater tank also presents new challenges because the water that you intend to mix in has to be first tested for the correct salinity. Sometimes you will also need to invest on new equipment like wave makers to keep certain types of marine fish and overall, all these will involve some reading to understand that particular species behavior. The marine field is often reserved for those advanced aquarists who has mastered the skills and brought together their knowledge from freshwater aquariums. Also you might be interested to read up on basic saltwater aquarium maintenance and troubleshooting before you take the giant step.
5. And finally....Turn it into Aquaponics!
Lately aquaponics is becoming the recent trend in aquarium fish keeping. Aquaponic is actually a different concept which combines both fish keeping and vegetable planting into one single standalone independent system. Instead of having just the fish tank alone or the plant bed lying around in your garden, you can actually utilize the waste generated from your pets and in return, whatever worms growing in the plant bed can be used to feed your fish, up to the point whereby it is self-sustainable by its own. Most of the advanced systems have been upgraded to be fully automated which means that once you have really fine-tuned the setup, such as tank capacity, flow rate, timer, the rest of the daily maintenance will require very little intervention. Read more about aquaponic and how you can actually build a simple setup despite having space constraint. Related fishkeeping topic: Guide on upgrading to new fish tank.
