Tips on Maintaining a Healthy Ecosystem in Your Freshwater Aquarium

When most people think about an aquarium, they think only of the fish in the tank.  A glass tank filled with water, fish, and maybe a plant or two.  However, successful aquarium hobbyists look at things a bit differently.

The people that have the most success with their tanks consider the whole ecosystem of a freshwater aquarium.  They understand that the aquarium is not just water, fish, and plants but rather the whole thing is one single living entity.

Approaching the set up and maintenance of a freshwater aquarium in this way requires you to treat each component like a part of the whole picture.  Each time you want to add something, stop and consider how that may affect the other fish, the plants, and the water quality.  Everything that changes in an established aquarium can have a compound effect that bears consideration.

A healthy aquatic ecosystem will have the right balance of fish and plants.  It will be getting the proper amount of light.  The filter will be doing its job and the all important nitrogen cycle will be operating smoothly.

The nitrogen cycle is an often overlooked but crucial aspect of any healthy aquarium.  The key to the cycle is the beneficial bacteria that live in the gravel substrate of the tank as well as in the filter.   These bacteria metabolize fish waste and leftover food converting harmful ammonia and nitrites into harmless nitrate that feeds the plants.  The plants use the nitrate as food and through photosynthesis, release oxygen into the water.  The fish use the oxygen to breathe and they in turn release carbon dioxide that the plants use in photosynthesis and the cycle continues.

Knowing about how the cycle works and the importance of balance can then help you decide what to add to the tank.  It should be obvious that adding too many fish at one time can be bad, it would create too much waste, the bacteria couldn’t metabolize it all and the ammonia levels in the water could spike.   A sudden rise in ammonia levels could kill both the new and the old fish so it is of utmost importance to do things slowly when it comes to adding more fish to the tank.

Every inhabitant in the tank uses one substance to create another that is in turn used by something else and so on through the cycle.  So with a healthy aquarium ecosystem, all organisms are in balance, the water chemicals are at proper levels, and the whole aquarium thrives as one.

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