Peqaboo series
Stable water temperature keeps tropical fish healthy and disease-free. This guide covers how to size a heater to your tank, where to place it for even heat, the safe temperature ranges for common fish, and the warning signs of a heater that is failing or cooking your tank.
Algae is normal in every aquarium, but blooms mean something is out of balance. This guide shows how to control it by tuning light duration, cutting excess nutrients, and adding the right cleanup crew, plus how to tell which type of algae you actually have.
Regular water changes keep your aquarium safe, but done carelessly they shock fish with sudden temperature and chemistry swings. This step-by-step guide shows how much water to swap, how often, and how to treat and temperature-match replacement water so your fish barely notice the change.
An underpowered filter lets waste build up; an overpowered one blasts your fish around. This guide explains GPH, the turnover rule of thumb, how to adjust for stocking and fish type, and why the number on the box is not the flow you actually get.
Healthy adult fish cope with a short holiday far better than owners fear , and the biggest risk is overfeeding, not starvation. This guide covers how long fish can safely go without feeding, automatic feeders, pre-portioning for a sitter, and the water-quality checks that matter most before you leave.
pH, GH, and KH confuse many new aquarists, yet together they decide which fish will thrive and how stable your tank stays. This article explains each measure in plain language, how they interact, and why chasing a perfect pH number is usually the wrong goal.
A stable aquarium comes from small, regular tasks rather than occasional big clean-ups. This checklist breaks maintenance into simple daily, weekly and monthly routines for fish and shrimp tanks, so water stays healthy, problems get caught early, and your tank stays a pleasure to keep.
When the power fails, your aquarium loses oxygen circulation, heating and filtration all at once. The two real threats are oxygen and temperature. This guide gives you a calm, prioritised plan and the cheap kit to prepare now, so a typhoon or blackout never becomes a tank wipe-out.
The filter is the engine of your aquarium, yet the wall of options overwhelms most beginners. This comparison breaks down hang-on-back, canister, sponge, and internal filters , how each works, what tanks they suit, and the trade-offs in cost, flow, and maintenance.
A step-by-step guide to aquarium filter maintenance that keeps your nitrogen cycle intact: how mechanical, chemical, and biological filtration work, the two golden rules of cleaning, a full routine, pro media-basket tips, and troubleshooting for low flow, noise, and cloudy water.
A practical guide to fish gill health, explaining how gills breathe, balance salt, and excrete ammonia, why water quality drives almost all gill disease, how to read colour and breathing changes, and when gasping, brown gills, or rot mean it is time to call an aquatic vet.
How a fish swims is a live readout of its health. This guide shows you the anatomy behind movement, how to tell normal from abnormal, the conditions that change swimming, and a calm, methodical way to respond before a small wobble becomes an emergency.
A fish keeps its whole body wrapped in a living slime coat, its first defence against parasites and bacteria. This guide explains how that barrier works, how to read early warning signs, and the water-first routine that keeps skin and fins healthy.
For a fish, the water is everything at once: its air, its home and its toilet. This guide explains the nitrogen cycle that makes an aquarium liveable, the parameters that matter, a reliable maintenance routine, and how to handle an ammonia emergency calmly.
Fish are never groomed, brushed, or handled for cleaning. The equivalent routine is a partial water change and substrate clean, done on a schedule that protects the biological filter and keeps the fish in the tank throughout.
Fish are not introduced to a baby; the real task is protecting the tank from nursery aerosols and diffusers, which poison fish through the gills, and from lapsed maintenance during sleepless weeks. How to prepare and keep the tank stable.
Nitrate is the end of the nitrogen cycle and the filter does not remove it, so it accumulates until you export it. Worse, nitrification consumes carbonate hardness, and when the buffer runs out the pH falls sharply and the filter bacteria slow, producing ammonia in a tank that has been stable for years. This guide cove
Dry indoor air cannot dry out a fish, but a cold season does two real things to a tank: it pulls heat out faster than the heater replaces it, and it evaporates water quickly, concentrating everything left behind. This covers heater sizing, tank position, lids and insulation, and why topping up evaporation is not a wate
Fancy goldfish, show bettas and long-finned varieties are not sick, but their bred-for shape compresses organs, obstructs vision and makes swimming expensive. This guide covers what each trait costs the fish, how to tell a normal wen or bubble eye from disease, the low-flow smooth-decor tank these fish need, why sinkin
Fish medication is dosed by water volume, not body weight, and the water is also a living filter. This guide covers measuring the real volume, removing carbon, protecting oxygen levels, running a hospital tank, when salt and heat are appropriate, and the situations where medication is the wrong answer entirely.
Fish store surplus energy around the organs and inside the liver, and in a small body cavity that fat presses on the gut and the swim bladder. This guide covers judging condition from above, the species most at risk, why stale food damages the liver, and why a fat fish must never be crash dieted.
A fish cannot leave a hot tank, and warm water holds less oxygen just as the fish needs more. This guide covers surface gasping, heater failure, summer sun, and how to cool a tank without causing a second emergency.
Fish absorb calcium directly from the water at the gills, so hardness matters more than any supplement and there is no fish equivalent of reptile UVB. What food must supply is phosphorus and vitamins, and vitamin C degrades fast in stale flake. This guide covers that, and works through what a bent spine really means, f
The commonest way to lose fish during a holiday is overfeeding by a well-meaning helper, not starvation, because healthy adult fish tolerate a short fast far better than a fouled tank. This guide covers when fasting is the safe choice and which fish cannot be left, why plaster holiday blocks are harmful, how automatic
A small aquarium is the harder version of the hobby, not the easier one, because every input arrives at a higher concentration and the water tracks the room. This guide explains the dilution, thermal mass and buffering mechanisms behind nano tank failures, and gives the placement, stocking and weekly routine that compe
A shrimp must build a new shell, split the old one behind the head and back out. When that fails the shrimp dies within a day. This guide explains the three phases of a moult and how each one fails, how to tell a shed shell from a dead shrimp, why large water changes and evaporation top-ups are the leading trigger, and
Atypical mycobacteria live in aquarium biofilm, cause a slow untreatable wasting disease in fish, and cause a skin infection in people that is routinely diagnosed months late. This guide covers the pattern that identifies mycobacteriosis in a tank and the differentials for a wasting or bent-spined fish, what fish tank
