Freshwater Aquarium Models: Recipes for Creating Beautiful Aquariums That Thrive - Softcover

Tullock, John H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 047004425X ISBN 13: 9780470044254

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2006

Synopsis

This book shows you step–by–step and fish–by–fish how to create a beautiful, harmonious aquarium that mimics a natural habitat and fosters healthy fish and plant life. It includes more than eighty detailed recipes for aquariums of different types and sizes, specific aquarium model designs, the basics of aquarium setup and maintenance, and a 16–page color catalog of fish and plant varieties.

About this title

About the Author

John Tullock, a lifetime aquarist, owned a retail and mail–order aquarium business for years.He founded the American Marinelife Dealer Association. Tullock has authored twelve books about aquariums, including Bring Me Home: Saltwater Aquariums Make a Great Hobby and Saltwater Aquarium Models (both from Howell Book House). He holds a master′s degree in zoology.

From the Back Cover

Living works of art, freshwater aquariums bring nature inside. They′re fascinating, soothing, and mesmerizing, but designing and creating an aquarium can be time–consuming. This book shows you step–by–step and fish–by–fish how to create a beautiful, harmonious aquarium that mimics a natural habitat and fosters healthy fish and plant life. It includes:

• More than 80 detailed recipes for aquariums of different types and sizes, depicting a variety of natural freshwater environments from five continents
• Specific aquarium model designs in which fish and plants flourish, maintenance is easy, and the aquarium enhances the home
• Design considerations, including space limitations, backgrounds, and aquascaping ideas
• A 16–page color insert that′s an inspiring catalog of fish and plant varieties
• The basics of aquarium setup and maintenance

With these model designs and this information, your fish and plants will coexist beautifully in their freshwater habitat and your aquarium will provide years of captivating, calming enjoyment.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Freshwater Aquarium Models

Recipes for Creating Beautiful Aquariums That ThriveBy John H. Tullock

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2007 John H. Tullock
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-04425-4

Chapter One

Caring For an Aquarium

Caring for an aquarium need not be a terrible chore, and anyone can learn how an aquarium works. Even if you consider yourself a rank amateur, you should have a good grasp of the basics by the end of this chapter. I'll cover basic aquarist skills you will need to develop in order to take proper care of your tank.

Water

Water is the most obvious component of any aquarium system. Aquarists of long experience sometimes make much ado about the chemistry of their aquarium water. Its degree of acidity or lack thereof, the concentration of dissolved minerals, the presence of disinfecting agents in municipal supplies, any or all of these can become the stuff of vigorous debate. From a practical standpoint, however, you will need to make do with whatever comes out of your tap unless you are prepared for a major effort. Commercial preparations for altering the two important water parameters, pH and hardness, abound, but using them to bring tap water in line with desired aquarium conditions becomes a never-ending proposition. Finding out the present condition of your tap water and choosing an aquarium habitat accordingly makes more sense. For example, suppose your water is hard and slightly alkaline. It will be great, as is, for the livebearing fishes of Central America such as swordtails and platies (Xiphophorus sp.). On the other hand, discus require soft, acidic water, and may not do as well for you unless you alter the tap water accordingly. Determining your water conditions involves no more than a phone call or a check of your utility company's Web site. Simply search the site or call and ask for information regarding the pH and hardness. With luck, your water will already test within a range that is acceptable to most common tropical fish species, that is, at or just above or below neutral in pH (6.5-7.5) and moderately hard (160-220 ppm).

Your local dealer may do nothing to alter tap water conditions, as this represents an ongoing operating expense. A quick check of the fish that look particularly vibrant in the dealer's tanks may provide clues to choices that will thrive in your local water. If your dealer does make the effort to adjust tap water conditions to meet the demands of certain species, ask for advice on how to do this most cost effectively at home.

The most common and popular tropical fish tolerate a range of water conditions. No doubt, this is one reason for their popularity. Some species, unfortunately, do not adapt so readily to captivity unless their demands for a particular kind of water are met. When this is the case, I include specific recommendations for water conditions. If you choose to create one of these habitats, be prepared to supply sufficient water of the appropriate kind, which may mean altering your tap water.

Altering water to suit tropical fish can be done at home, though the effort requires regular repetition. For example, if you need softer water, you can simply dilute tap water appropriately with distilled water from the grocery store. To reduce the hardness from 200 ppm to 100 ppm, you would mix equal parts of tap water and distilled water. If you have need for more than a few gallons of purified water at a time, you may find it more convenient to install a deionization tank or reverse osmosis unit. Removing something from water is always harder than adding something to it, hence the need to install special equipment to reduce hardness. Lowering the hardness of significant quantities of water imposes a considerable additional expense. For example, a reverse osmosis unit requires regular maintenance and replacement of filter media. Most units waste several gallons of water for each gallon of product. These costs add up.

Increasing the hardness, on the other hand, is easy. Simply add a measured quantity of the appropriate mineral salts. Commercial products abound for this purpose. Many contain common household chemicals, such as baking soda or Epsom salt. The cost per gallon of water treated is small, since these chemicals are cheap. Among aquarium fish, African cichlids in particular benefit from water treated to increase its hardness. No tap water is likely to be as hard and alkaline as these fish prefer. Similarly, fish from estuarine habitats, where seawater mixes with fresh water, do best with added salt. In this case, synthetic seawater mix, sold dry in plastic bags, serves the purpose well. Aquarium stores that stock saltwater fish will have one or more brands on hand. Additions of commercial hardness increasers or seawater mix will typically raise the pH to an alkaline (8.0-8.3) range. Therefore, you seldom need a second additive for pH maintenance.

Lowering the pH can be tricky. Because hard water may be difficult to adjust, beginning with soft water gives the best results. Distilled water or water from a deionization tank or reverse osmosis unit should have a pH close to neutral (7.0). To provide the slightly acidic (6.5) to strongly acidic (5.0) water that some fish insist upon necessitates adding acid. For this purpose, sodium phosphate often appears in a little bottle on the shelves of aquarium shops. Adjusting the pH by adding acid in chemical form is easily overdone, however, because a little of the chemical goes a long way. The added sodium probably does not do plants or fish much good, either, unless they come from an estuarine environment. A more natural method of pH reduction involves passing the water through a small amount of horticultural peat, or introducing commercial additives derived from peat. Organic acids leached from the peat reduce the pH gradually over a period of weeks. The mixture of organic compounds from the peat also confers a buffering effect. (Buffering refers to the ability of the aquarium to remain stable with regard to pH over a long period of time.) With time and regular maintenance, under peat filtration the aquarium water remains stable at the target range of pH 6.0. Some of the most exquisite small species require such soft, peaty water. Pencilfish (characins in the genera Nannobrycon and Nannostomus) provide but one example. I consider the brownish color imparted by the peat, giving the water the appearance of weak tea, a desirable, natural effect. If you insist on diamond-clear water, you may want to avoid species demanding soft, acidic water. You can also try removing the color by passing the water over activated carbon. This may thwart your pH control efforts, however, and will require experimentation with different brands of carbon. Then there is the matter of replacing the carbon regularly. I say stick with the natural look.

The necessity for chlorine removal, usually accomplished by adding a small amount of a product containing sodium thiosulfate, is (gasp!) questionable. The use of dechlorinator in aquarium water strikes me as somewhat like carving pumpkins for Halloween. We do it because of tradition, not because it serves any real purpose. Changing 50 percent of the water in my outdoor pond, for example, using replacement water straight from the garden hose and without any dechlorinator added, has never harmed my goldfish. Admittedly, goldfish durability is the stuff of legend, but many aquarium books would have you thinking fish will be dying left and right from the least whiff of chlorine. Were I betting, my money would lie with the following proposition: More fish die from lack of water changes than failure to use dechlorinator when a water change is finally carried out. I seldom use dechlorinator. If you feel more comfortable doing so, go ahead.

The bottom line for water quality: use what you have. Choose species of fish and plants that are naturally adapted to the water conditions found at the sink. Otherwise, prepare to invest time and money to correct those conditions for the needs of your fish. My personal preference is to select the tank's inhabitants with great care, putting the effort into designing a beautiful, natural aquarium that will not require more maintenance than I can comfortably handle.

Physical and Chemical Cycles

Every aquarium book devotes several pages to a discussion of the important physical and chemical cycles that govern the health of the closed aquarium system. All of this discussion can be summarized in four sentences:

Without a biological filter, an aquarium requires water changes so frequently as to be impractical. Life in an aquarium cannot exist without exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide at the surface. A proper initial design and regular maintenance takes care of both these requirements. The number of fish an aquarium can adequately support depends on factors beyond basic life support.

Biological Filtration

Fish excrete their wastes directly into the water. Under natural conditions fish population density, considering the total volume of water in a stream or lake, is much lower than that of even the largest aquarium. Dilution, therefore, immediately counters fish waste pollution in natural waters. Additionally, in a short time natural processes degrade the wastes into simple compounds that can be taken up by plants, or utilized in some other ecological process.

When we establish an aquarium system we harness these same natural processes to keep the water sufficiently unpolluted to promote the survival of our fish display. The totality of these processes as they occur in an aquarium is biological filtration. Biological filtration is the detoxification of wastes by beneficial bacteria known as nitrifiers or nitrifying bacteria. Coating every available surface that lies in contact with oxygenated water, these organisms chemically convert ammonia (the primary component of fish waste) into nitrate (a relatively harmless compound taken up by plants). Biological filtration, or biofiltration, readily develops in the aquarium. All that is required is an ammonia source (fish) and the right kinds of bacteria. The latter are automatically transferred along with fish or plants or any other item taken from natural waters or from a previously established aquarium (the dealer's inventory system, for example). Within a month, nitrifying bacteria will have colonized the aquarium system sufficiently to process a moderate amount of waste. This gradual development of biofiltration capacity prompts the widely offered recommendation always to stock the aquarium slowly, over a period of several months. Within six months to a year, the population of beneficial nitrifying bacteria will have matured completely and biofiltration will be adequate to permit fish to be stocked at full capacity indefinitely.

Though biofiltration is a totally natural process, most aquariums are outfitted with some kind of filtration system. If nothing else, a recirculating pump, such as the one in my outdoor pond, oxygenates the water and creates a modest current that causes debris to collect near the pump intake where it may be easily removed. Most filtration equipment is considerably more elaborate. Designed to maximize biofiltration capacity, aquarium filtration equipment may employ a variety of techniques to increase the surface area available for colonization by nitrifiers. The bacteria refuse to carry out the desired chemical transformations when they float freely; they need to be stuck to a solid surface. Thus we have rotating bio-wheel devices, wet-dry systems, and fluidized bed technology. All these filtration methods provide extremely efficient biofiltration, converting all the ammonia generated within the tank to nitrate in a short period of time. Aquarium system design sometimes focuses on biofiltration to the exclusion of other important factors, because the aquarist is often seen as trying to squeeze the maximum number of fish into the minimum number of gallons. Although you can buy a highly efficient filter system and have the tank teeming with fish, doing it that way invites disaster, nearly guarantees it, eventually, in fact, because you will have exceeded what I like to call the true carrying capacity of the system.

Carrying Capacity

We can debate all day about carrying capacity; that is, how many fish of what size a particular aquarium can support. If by support we simply mean "adequately detoxify the ammonia waste produced" we can bump up the number of fish to high population densities indeed. Consider how many fish might be packed into a dealer's inventory system, for a case in point. Fifty fish in a twenty-gallon tank would not be considered unusual. For the home aquarium display, on the other hand, biofiltration is not the whole story. We must think about the long-term success of an aquarium whose residents will be there for the rest of their lives. Fish and plants need what I like to call ecological space. A given species may need swimming room, or a minimum number of companions of its species, or a certain level of water movement, to really thrive. The ability of the aquarium to provide for these needs as well as waste removal is a measure of the true carrying capacity. Taking into account not only waste removal, but also the need for ample oxygen, swimming room, and benign social interactions, ecological space must be allotted in the process of designing the aquarium. Care must be taken not to exceed the true carrying capacity of the system. One test of carrying capacity being met appropriately has to do with fish spawning in a community tank.

For how many kinds of fish do you see in the aquarium literature advice to spawn them in a tank set up especially for the purpose? The answer is "most of them." Yet, fish successfully spawn in the wild, often when surrounded by numerous individuals of other species. Recently, I visited a public aquarium and observed Cichlasoma nicaraguense and Cichlasoma labiatum both tending healthy, free-swimming broods of young in a giant community tank. In the home aquarium, either of these would be considered far too aggressive to be housed with other species. Provided with a volume of space that roughly corresponds to the size of a natural territory, however, the fish remain preoccupied with their young and only show aggression when a tank mate strays too close. I have observed this same phenomenon in Everglades National Park. All along the Mahogany Hummock trail through the park, introduced cichlids, especially the Oscar, Astronotus ocellatus, inhabit the sluggish, blackwater slough traversed by the trail. When spawning, each fish hollows out a depression in the sandy bottom, and drives away anything approaching within about a meter of this spot. So do the math. If the aquarium tank provides less than a circular territory of about a meter in radius, an Oscar large enough to raise a family will sooner or later decide that the entire space should be rid of potential competitors. A smaller tank will not provide enough true carrying capacity for one Oscar and several other fish to live peaceably together indefinitely. On the other hand, even a large Oscar will survive (though likely not exhibit any inclination to breed) in a thirty-gallon tank with a suitably efficient biological filter.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Freshwater Aquarium Modelsby John H. Tullock Copyright © 2007 by John H. Tullock. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 047004425X
• ISBN 13: 9780470044254
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288