5 Tips to Keep Your Aquarium Family Approved

If you have an aquarium and you want to be sure it's not in the dumpster in six months, we'd highly suggest you watch this video. If you have an aquarium or you have multiple aquariums, you know how addictive this hobby can be. But it can often be a challenge to balance your passionate hobby of keeping an aquarium fish and keeping your family happy. So by following these 5 simple steps we're hoping we don't see your aquarium on Craigslist in 6 months.

Tip #1 - If your aquarium looks like a green algae experiment from high school, you're probably not going to be keeping that aquarium for very long. Keep your tank clean, nothing is more of an eyesore than a dirty aquarium. Here's a few tricks to make that aquarium maintenance easy for you. Use an algae cleaning magnet to remove algae from the glass of your aquarium. The magnet keeps things dry and makes it quick, simple and an easy enough chore that you can possibly get your kids to do for you. Wipe down the edge of your glass aquarium, the glass top, or any of your equipment that has that ugly salt creep on it.

Replace evaporated water or use a top off system. Seeing an aquarium with a low water level or bubbles blowing around the entire tank is not a very pretty sight. You can have the most stunning aquarium in the world, but if your equipment cables and wires look like a bird's nest, you can be sure your family members are going to complain about it. Keep your cables and wires wrapped and labeled.

Tip #2 - If you travel a lot for work, try to keep things around your aquarium as simple as possible.

Tip #3 - Label your fish food with instructions. Fish always look hungry, and I cannot tell you how many times my family has accidentally overfed the fish, only to call frantically that the water is cloudy or the fish are gasping for oxygen. Label your fish food to ensure your family knows how much and how often they should be feeding your fish. If you don't believe me, drop everything you're doing and ask your family right now how often and how much they should be feeding your fish and let us know in the comment section below what their answer was.

Tip #4 - Put your aquarium lights on a 24-hour timer or have them on a controller. This takes the guesswork out of when to turn your lights on and off and will make sure you don't come home to a cloudy, green, algae filled aquarium.

Tip #5 - Keep your aquarium safe. This is the most crucial piece of advice we can give an hobbyist who has an aquarium. Remember, having an aquarium is about your passions, but it's not all about you, it's also about your family and keeping everyone safe. So how do you keep your aquarium safe?

First always always plug all of your electrical equipment into a GFCI. Secondly, if you keep any fish or invertebrates in your aquarium that might be dangerous or they're escape artists, make sure you're using a glass top or some sort of enclosed top that prevents them from escaping your aquarium. Some of these dangerous animals include lion fish, scorpion fish, eels, jellyfish, even sea urchins.