The #1 Reason You Should Clean Your Aquarium!

It's Wednesday which means it's our slowest day of the week. I've got all of the orders packed and ready to go and that means now it's maintenance time. When it comes to the day-to-day operations of the old fish house here's how things work. I'm very fortunate to have a wife who's not only a beautiful person inside and out but she's also a big-time fish keeper. She takes care of the majority of the aquariums in our fish house because well most of the tanks are hers but six out of the eight big tanks are mine. She helps me out with those when she's doing her normal routine but when big-time maintenance needs to be done that's when I need to get in there roll up my sleeves and get to work. I don't mind it. In fact I enjoy the work. It's like therapy. I can get in there roll up my sleeves put in my air pods and go to work. There's other reasons why I like it and we'll get into that throughout this video but I have a larger point I want to make. I'm going to go through each tank and show you how I do routine maintenance but there's more to it. I want to talk about why I do what I do in the hopes that you'll implement something similar for your sanity and your fish. To look at my two 240 gallon African cichlid tanks you're probably thinking they don't look bad at all and you're right. Yeah the peacocks and the haps have moved the sand around as they've established their territories but for the most part other than a little algae on the glass the tanks look really good. Perhaps the 100% water change I did a few weeks ago so that I could redo the scapes had something to do with that but when we get to the 360 gallon Oscar, Biker and Severum tank that's where things get ugly. I've got big plans for this tank but until I can do that I'm just going to have to put in the work to get it done. My strategy for everything in life is get the worst part of any task done first then everything else gets easier as I go on. One of my favorite things to do is mow my lawn. I know that might seem like I just jumped into another lane but work with me here I'm trying to make a point. Lisa and I have just under five acres here in Northeast North Carolina and I got to cut the grass at least once a week. When we moved in the first thing I purchased was a huge Kubota zero turn mower with a 60 inch deck. It is my prized possession. When it comes to doing yard work riding on that big old Kubota is the best part. The trimming not so much. Walking five acres with a weed whacker in the North Carolina sun in June is no fun at all so I do it first. Once that's done I get to spend four or five hours on the zero turn. If I rode the zero turn first and then had to get off and walk five acres with a weed whacker it would be a nightmare. The point I'm trying to make is whatever job you're doing do the hardest part first. The part of the job that's the most difficult then as you get done and move on the job is getting easier and more enjoyable as you proceed. It's a strategy that's worked really well for me in everything I do. Even when it comes to packing orders for our website I pack the four and six foot long boxes for lights first and get them out of the way and as I progress the boxes get smaller and easier until I'm packing the tiny boxes with just one little item in it. Anyway you get what I mean and when it comes to my aquarium maintenance this means I have to start with my 360 gallon. Not because I don't like it. I actually love doing work on this tank. It's because it's the biggest most challenging and time-consuming part of this whole routine. I start this tank off by using a big trash can on wheels. I have an old canister filter hose with a piece of three quarter inch pvc attached to get in there and pull out a lot of the water and waste really fast. This allows me to get into tight spots and pull all of that filth out really fast. So fast that I have to empty the trash can multiple times as I work my way through. That's my least favorite part of this whole process because it's heavy and I've got to wheel it outside to dump it and it's February. Even in North Carolina it's cold in February. Have I mentioned that I really hate the cold? I moved down here to get away from it. Once I've gone through and gotten the bulk of the mess up with the big hose I switched to a smaller hose. I think it's like a half inch but to be honest I've never measured it. It doesn't really matter. The smaller hose obviously doesn't fill up the trash can as fast so I can take it and really fine tune what I'm picking up and also go through with a scrubber and remove the algae from the bottom. I absolutely love when the bottom of this tank looks like a mirror. I can't believe I screwed all of that up by putting sand in here a few months ago. That was so dumb. Now you might be wondering why I'm not getting into the sump and pulling out all the media and cleaning it. Well it's because I've practiced a particular philosophy with my aquariums that I'm working on a video about as we speak. The philosophy is if it ain't broke don't fix it. It's something I've preached on this channel from the beginning. In a future video I'm going to demonstrate this in an extreme way by cleaning out two canister filters that I haven't opened in three years. Yeah that's right. Three years. If you want to see that and what two canisters look like after three years make sure you subscribe. That one should be interesting. Once I get up as much of the debris as I can and clean off the algae and the overflows it's time to take a break while the tank fills up. Now you might be thinking can't you work on other tanks while you're filling this one up? Yeah I could but here's the thing. I told you this is like therapy for me. If I start working on other tanks I'm gonna have to pay attention to what I'm doing while constantly looking over to make sure I don't overflow the first one. Oh no the pumps are running dry in the tank I'm working on so I gotta unplug those. The trash can is almost full. I forgot to unplug the heater and someone's calling me with something important about business. It's just too much. I want this job to be laid back and casual. Not a chaotic mess. It's not laziness. It's just being smart and not being in a hurry. Here's another question I get about maintenance all the time. Don't you have to treat the water with Fritz Complete prior to putting it in the tank? No and anyone that tells you to do it that way is one of those people that believes everything in life has to be a perfect world scenario. I add Fritz Complete while the tank is filling up and I've been doing it this way since 1993. It's fine. Also I add the dosage of conditioner that'll treat the entire tank. You can save on conditioner by just adding enough to treat what you took out but I just do it this way and I've never had a problem. Now moving on to the 240s. The next two largest tanks in the collection. Again working my way down to where each tank gets smaller and easier as I go. The 240s are super easy. Even though these tanks have way more fish in them than the 360, they don't produce nearly as much waste and there's substrate in them that can easily be vacuumed. I bought this CaribSea black African cichlid sand from my yellow lab tank back in 2021 and I absolutely love this stuff. It vacuums super easy and the cool thing is there's a small amount of white grains in the sand that when I vacuum those come up to the top and make it really easy to see where I've been and where I haven't. Then after a week or so those sink down and it looks all black again. But to be honest I like it when the white and black's mixed up. I don't know. I absolutely love this stuff but I gotta tell you who doesn't. The driver that delivered it for Amazon. I actually watched this happen. Some dude pulled up into my driveway and literally threw the eight boxes of sand out the back of his van and just drove away. I wouldn't have been happy if I had to deliver that either. 160 pounds of sand sucks to deliver. I don't care who you are. But anyway it's great stuff. It's the CaribSea EcoComplete African cichlid sand. If you keep African cichlids you should definitely check it out. CaribSea didn't send me this stuff folks. I paid full price for it. I just believe in telling you about great products when I come across them and this is definitely one of them. So the 240s are just vacuum, wipe a little algae and fill them back up again. I'd say I did probably 30% but again I did a 100% water change a few weeks ago so we're all good. Now that all the big ones are done I can move on to the two smallest. The 90 gallon peacock breeding tank and the 75 gallon fancy goldfish tank. You might be thinking John 90 gallon and 75 gallon tanks aren't small but hey I just got done with a 360 and two 240s. These are like micro tanks now. These two couldn't be easier. Vacuum, wipe the algae and fill it back up again. The real story with these is what's under them and that's the two three-year canister filters. I'm telling you the video cleaning those filters is going to blow your mind. Make sure you have notifications turned on for that one. Now I want to talk for a minute about this 90 gallon peacock breeding tank because I feel pretty bad about it. I talked a while back about wanting to start a peacock breeding project and my friend James Largo from The Cichlid Shack heard it and said hey John what peacocks you want to breed? I said well I'd really like to breed fluvescents and he was like all right I got you. He sent me these fish for free for this project full disclosure and just look at them. They're an amazing group but there's a problem. We haven't been able to get any fry from them yet. It's not that they're bad fish it's just something that hasn't happened yet. We've had several holding females but by the time we went to pull them out and house them in a tank by themselves they'd spit them out or just ate them. This is why I haven't done a video on this yet but they'll come around they'll get to work and start making babies and I'll do a video all about it. I'm sorry James I feel like I've let you down but don't worry it'll happen soon. So the overall point I'm trying to make with this video is aquarium maintenance should be something you do for three reasons. First is it provides a healthier environment for your fish and allows them to live their best life. This is the most important thing. Second is it makes the tanks look better so you can be proud of them not be nervous that you're going to get a surprise visit from your friends and be totally embarrassed. Or maybe the visit from the national sales director for Fritz and owner of Aquashella. Yeah that's happening next week. But the big one is the third reason and that's for your own sanity. Listen folks times are tough right now and we all need things that can allow us to escape from all the BS that's going on out there. Pandemics, people still walking around wearing masks and even wearing masks while they're driving around in cars by themselves. Everything is super expensive. Inflation, possible recession, wars and threats happening all around the world and of course there's the news of a different incident every week that hits the internet that sets the world on fire. We need a way to escape that. Yeah aquariums are good to look at and enjoy and can help take your mind off things but actually getting in there getting your hands wet and making a difference in these animals lives is the best distraction from all this. You're going to look at them and say you know what I just made this thing better. My fish are happier and I feel good about myself. This is sappy and cheesy I know but if you've ever stepped back and felt that feeling you know exactly what I'm talking about. So there you go. Thanks for going along this journey with me. I hope it opened your eyes to looking at this differently and I can't wait to talk to you on the next one. Oh one last thing if you're still driving around in your car by yourself wearing a mask in 2023 you should really just turn around and go back home. You're embarrassing yourself. I mean if you're gonna make a fool of yourself at least don't wear the stupid thing upside down. Anyway, bye.