PH, Alkalinity, and Nirtrates
Did you know, that when ammonia is digested by your aquarium, and turned into nitrite, then nitrates, it produces acids?  It produces hydrogen ions, which without something to combine with, will acidify your water. Which means it'll make the ph in your aquarium will become softer, or lower, or more acidic. However you prefer to look at it, this is hard on all fish. Luckily most water comes out of the tap with something to help with this. This is the measurement of alkalinity, or buffer.  This number on your test kit, shows you how much buffer is currently in  your water.  The buffer is the other part of the equation, mix your acids, with the buffer, and they cancel each other out.

So let's recap, our fish goes to the bathroom, and it turns into nitrates, which during that process made some acids. Our water neutralizes that hopefully. What happens when you produce more acids than your water can neutralize? Our PH will start to drop. Which we've established is very hard on our fish. There is no bottom to how acidic the water will get. Once you're out of buffer, every time you feed, you'll be lowering the PH slightly.

A great way to think about this process, is to use a bank account as an example. You have $100 in the bank, this is your buffer(alkalinity). Every time you eat lunch(nitrates) it'll cost you $5 dollars. With this example, we can see that we can have lunch 20 times, then we'll be out of buffer, and then every day after that, we'll be going into negative numbers.(lowering PH) We need to get more money(buffer) so we can keep eating!

To regain buffer in an aquarium it's easy. All we have to do is do a water change. We'll continue to use our 100 buffer example. If we have 0 buffer left, and change 30% of the water. We'll then have $30 to spend on lunches. 6 more days of eating. As you can see with this example, we'll be changing water roughly once a week to keep up. This is would be a fairly heavy stocked aquarium.

Tips to maintain the balance:
1. Control the food, big fish, or many fish, will result in more waste. If you can eat for $1 every day, You'd only have to do a water change once a month to maintain a nice balance.
2. Quality of food, $3 in potato chips, will not last nearly as long as a $3 sandwich. A high quality food, will take less food, to give the fish the same amount of nutrients. Higher quality foods, have less fillers. Fillers tend go through a fish with no benefit.
3. Maintain a water change schedule. Don't go into the negative. If you make $30 from a water change, and your account is overdrawn by $60 dollars, it'll take you 3 water changes just to catch back up. All the while, your fish will be under very heavy stress, it may result in some losses.
4. Ph buffer, when used correctly can help. This will temporarily alter your buffer. Think of it like a loan.  Many buffers only last for a few days to a week.  In most cases, if you need a PH buffer product in the aquarium, it is a lack of maintenance. We can keep taking loans, to eat every day. However, nitrates in the aquarium will build up, until they overwhelm us.
5. If your tap water has very little buffer to start out with, crushed coral can be used effectively to add some buffer to the water. It will dissolve slowly, with each water change.

Water changes are a good thing, however there is too much of a good thing. If your fish are not used to it, gradually increase the frequency of water changes. 30% is always safest. Some people will change more water each time, it can cause stress, we find that 30% works well for us. Don't rush out and change 80% of your aquarium water today. Instead do 30%, each week for a month. Then observe your fish next month and see that they're more lively, have better colors, and may even be breeding now!

***This is a basic guide, there are other things that come into play, however once someone has mastered this maintenance routine, they will be able to keep healthy fish for a long time.  I know that eventually, even with this routine you'll fall behind,  because you're changing percentages of water. You only regain 30% of the buffer. if it's 30% of 30 dollars. Then you'd go from 70 buffer left in the aquarium to 80 buffer, from a 30% water change. Likewise, if you're in the negative. This basic guide is to help people realize it's a give and take system. In the aquarium it would always be better, to give more water changes, than needed.

Diet
A varied diet is best for your fish? I bet you did already know that, but do you know why it's best? There are more reasons than you'd think.

The first reason, the reason that enters everyone's mind is, nutrition! The more variety your fish consume, the healthier they will be and the better they will look. It is known that spirulina brings out colors in fish. But did you know that the shells that are on krill also enhance color? Did you know foods with higher fat contents will produce more eggs when spawning fish? Also foods with lots of veggies and high in fiber are recommended for fancy goldfish and other fish with long digestional tracts. Most people have a variety of fish in their aquarium, and it's hard to make sure everyone eats well! A variety can help.

Secondly, different foods act differently. Most people have fed freeze dried blood worms. They know that they float on the top of the water. If you were to feed frozen blood worms, they have more nutrients in them, but also they will go all throughout the aquarium. Once they're thawed they are heavier and will sink. This can be better, if you have catfish etc on the bottom of your tank, who will not feed from the top.

Flake food, remains on top of the water for a long period as well. This can work out nicely for top dwelling fish like danios. The problem is, some vitamins leech out of the flake food quickly. Vitamin C is reported to dilute into the water, after 15 seconds. So those loaches or corydoras or other catfish at the bottom, will never see any Vitamin C or assorted other vitamins by the time this food sinks. Often this is the culprit for people saying "I can't keep bottom dwellers alive, they always die after a few months".

Pelleted food, which has become the most popular type of food, has almost got it right. They hold their nutrients longer, and have a few different types, floating, sinking, slowly sinking. It still isn't a variety. Not every fish, likes a pellet, or a flake, or a worm, or a piece of algae. It gives a false sense of security. Just like, if a human was to eat a salad every day of their life, eventually they would develop deficiencies. Much like the pelleted food, while extremely healthy, it's still limited to the ingredients that went in to making it. Fats are hard to get enough into a pellet, due to fat being the thing that promotes mold, and lowers the shelf life of the product.

Next, you have fish with different feeding requirements. In our experience, angelfish tend to be a lot more aggressive if they don't have enough protein in their diet. At feeding time, their long fins can often hinder them, when competing with other faster swimmers in the tank. Feeding say, a cube of frozen blood worms, and some small floating pellets at the top, will allow the faster swimmers to feed at the top and the angelfish to get blood worms, and feed from the top.

There are other exotic fish that have a very strong preference towards live and frozen foods. Most can be taught to eat pellets, if they're fed the combination, of course it's nice to have other fish in the aquarium to eat the pellets, while the exotic fish is eating the frozen food. However many times they will convert almost by accident, grabbing a pellet instead.

Feeding a combination of floating and sinking food, can often help get food to tank mates who are shy or being bullied. If 30 pellets are on top of the water, the biggest and most active will swarm up there, it's the perfect time to have a couple sinking pellets drift down to the baby or shy fish hiding in the rocks.

A big factor people miss, when buying food for a fish. Buy the appropriate amount. Fish food, from the date of opening has a shelf life of roughly 3 months. Make sure to keep the container closed when you're not feeding. The more air or light that gets to the food, the faster vitamins lose their strength. As you'll notice, most packaging of fish food only has a small viewing window. So that light doesn't take it's toll on the food.

The end result of all this varied fresh diet, is a healthy aquarium. Your fish will have brighter colors, be more mild mannered, and have stronger immune systems. Also with the correct diet, fish will use more of the food taken in for energy, and as a result, less will end up as waste in your gravel. So a little more effort on the way in, will make for less work on the way out!

Water Evaporation
Get those aquariums covered! We're now heating up and your water evaporation will go into overdrive. One, this will make your house much more humid, which is uncomfortable. Two, it'll cause lots of excess noise from your tank as the water splashes down. Three it'll make your pumps work harder as they have to lift the water above the surface.

Also when you top off your aquarium from evaporation, make sure you take water out first! "huh"? you say. Let me explain, when water evaporates, only the water leaves the tank, leaving behind anything else. Such as nitrates, iron, magnesium, salts etc. Everything in  your water is left behind. Which causes things to build up. So if you go 2 months between cleaning your tank only topping off, you're building up the levels of elements in there. We can often tell this has been going on when we test water, and see it is super hard. It can be very hard on your fish, when you go to clean the tank etc. In extreme cases it can become lethal, when the trace elements are no longer trace!