A few aquarium maintenance hacks

Owning and cultivating a new aquarium is an incredibly rewarding experience, but sometimes the day-to-day can be a little taxing. Things like maintenance, cleaning the tank – all of it – it takes time; time that many of us would like to spend doing other things. And much like all aspects of our lives – we need to get creative in terms of how we carve that time out and spend less time on those grindey activities.

As such, today’s post is going to be all about some fish tank hacks – cool ways you can save yourself a lot of time and hassle when maintaining an aquarium. Let’s jump right in!

Clamps

One of the best possible investments you can make is a couple of bucks into a class-safe clamp for your tank. You can use the clamp to hold hose or tubing security and it can help with a variety of things – whether that’s running tubing into a filtration system or changing out the water. This will free both your hands up to help coordinate whatever else needs to be happening. 

The infamous credit card scraper

There’s lots of ways you can scrape algae from your tank. Some folks use razor blades, magnetic scrapers and even scrub brushes. Did you know you can use old gift cards or credit cards? Not only will they do a great job of removing algae, but they’re particularly useful when it comes to finding the corners and crevices of your tank and getting to that hard-to-reach algae. 

Bio media

While hang-on-back filters are a popular choice among tank users, they don’t usually include any kind of specific biomedia. One of the things you can do, here – is to remove the traditional filter materials from the back and just replace it with ceramic rinks, lava rocks or even miniature bioballs. Not only will this improve your filtration, it’ll also create a far more healthy environment for your fish as well. 

Plastic syringes for water testing

Especially when you own a saltwater aquarium, water testing can become a way of life. Unfortunately – many of the testing kits come with test tubes that are easy to lose and in some cases – are extremely breakable. Just head over to Amazon and buy some plastic syringes. They’re clear and won’t discolor when you test water. They’re neater and cleaner. And even better? They’ll help extract enough water to do the tests you need them to. Yes, you’ll have to clean them thoroughly after the fact, but they are a super neat, full-proof way to test your fish tank’s water quality. 

Hopefully you found today’s blog helpful! Perhaps one of the hacks here will make your tank ownership a little bit easier. If you need help or advice on how to keep your tank healthy and clean, give us a call today and we’ll be happy to help. Until then – good luck!