Well, let’s see...my fingers are all shriveled from cleaning my tanks this weekend. I have 3 freshwater aquariums and 1 saltwater aquarium. I typically clean the freshwater tanks first, usually Chester’s tank. Chester is my big, beautiful pink kissing fish with a fabulous personality. There are a total of 9 fishes in Chester’s tank. 3 Buenos Aires Tetras, 2 Rosy Tipped Tetras, 1 Silver Rasbora (my oldest fish), a Red banded Rasbora and a big, bad Pleco and then there is Chester. It’s pretty cute because the tiny little Silver Rasbora swims at the top of the tank with Chester and he is pretty giant comparatively speaking. There have been more and/or different fishes in there over the years , but they have perished for one reason of the other. Never due to illness that I know of. I think some have gotten eaten, some have jumped out, a couple I had to re-home because they just got too big. The tank is definitely too small for just Chester by himself (I am looking to upgrade to a 75 - 90 gallon tank) but it would be a pretty lonely existence for him to be by himself so I keep other Dudes in there to keep him company. I am really good at doing water changes so at least his water is clean. Last June, I had an operation on my shoulder so I designed very easy ways to do one-handed water changes and a way to do them without having to lift any buckets of water. I use small 195 gallon/hour to 295 gallon/hour power heads, tubes, hoses, filters and garbage cans to do most of the work. Makes it so easy that I can siphon out the substrate, scrub algae and complete a water change in about 90 minutes on my 40 gallon tank. My saltwater aquarium is 50 gallons and it takes about 3 or 4 hours only because I have to make saltwater and it takes a while to fill up the garbage can with 15 to 20 gallons of Reverse Osmosis water and make salt water. Salt water tanks need different types of cleaning / maintenance than tropical fish tanks. I try to keep things pretty tidy all the time so I don’t have to do everything at once. The thing about my aquariums and fishes for me is that I enjoy them so much. I love the time I spend feeding my fishes. I like just watching them swim around. Not everyone has the kind of extra time like I do and for that I feel very fortunate. Here are some photos of my aquariums. I don’t think the photos do them justice. If anyone is interested in more details on the easy peasy water change process, please let me know. I put quite a bit of thought into it and it makes a huge difference. Have a great week
