How much work does it take to have a freshwater aquarium?
That's a fair question. And one you should be asking yourself before diving in. There is some work involved with having an aquarium, and it is a responsibility to take care of fish, because their lives are in our hands. Fortunately, once you get in the swing of things, taking care of your aquarium is quite relaxing and doesn’t have to be time consuming.
What kind of maintenance is associated with keeping freshwater aquariums?
Water changes
The most important routine maintenance that freshwater aquarium keepers should be doing is water changes. I like to do 50% water changes once a week on most tanks where I replace half the water in an aquarium with freshwater. Sometimes I do a water change every other week for simple tanks with few or tiny fishes.
For smaller tanks it's quickest to use buckets, but for larger tanks, a hose that attaches to your sink faucet will be much easier. It makes doing water changes on larger aquariums a breeze. Seriously, you won’t look back on lugging buckets around!
Scrubbing the glass
I think this is the image that pops into most people's heads when they think about cleaning aquariums. It’s nice to keep the glass clean so we can see our fish and plants, but dirty glass isn’t bad for fish. It’s usually just algae, and a lot of fish actually like to eat algae. However, if you want clean glass, you can clean it off with the rough side of a sponge. If you’re dealing with a really tough algae, a razor blade will be required. Don’t use a razor blade on an acrylic or plastic tank though because it will scratch everything up.
I usually clean the glass once a week. Even if it doesn’t look like there is any algae on the glass, a brief weekly scrub can prevent harder, tougher algaes from building up in the long term.
Filter cleaning
How often you will need to clean a filter depends on the type you have. Hang-on-back filters usually need to be cleaned out once a week. Canister filters need to be cleaned out every month or so. Depending on the amount of fish you have though, you may need to clean them a little more or a little less. Filters built into the back of an aquarium like the Fluval Flex should be cleaned out about once a month.
The best way to clean a sponge in the filter is to place it in the bucket of water you just drained from the tank and squeeze, release, squeeze, release. You should see a bunch of brown gunk kick up into the water - fish poop and plant debris.
How long will this all take?
On average, I’d say you can expect to spend a few minutes every day and one longer cleaning session a week, usually about a minute a gallon. The minute-a-gallon includes all the things I just mentioned above - routine and non-routine maintenance. The few minutes a day part includes feeding and looking at your fish (and shrimp) to make sure everyone looks healthy.
I look to spend about a minute a gallon on maintenance once a week. If I’m in a real hurry, then I just focus on doing the water change, which takes almost no time. It’s pretty normal to have a few quicker maintenance sessions and one longer one every month. The longer one is for trimming plants and siphoning in the really hard to reach spots in a tank.
If you really want an aquarium, but are worried about not having enough time, get a small aquarium. Watch me clean out this 15 gallon in no time!
The most important thing
The absolute, most important thing to remember is to have fun. When I get down on a serious maintenance session I usually like to have some background YouTube videos or music playing. Make sure to really enjoy the maintenance process. It’s part of the hobby and necessary to have a healthy, happy tank.
