Common Fish-Keeping Mistakes and Ways of Avoiding Them

Keeping a pet always includes some challenges, and your pet is a fish, your difficulty level will be higher than others. Here, it does not matter whether you are a beginner or an experienced aquarist because the experienced aquarists can also make mistakes – taking care of so many factors sometimes becomes difficult for them as well.

Indeed the beginners make more mistakes, but in this article, we are focusing on the common fish-keeping mistakes in general, not just for the newbies. You can have a look at these and note the solutions provided to make your journey of fishkeeping flawless.

1. The Desire to Acquire More Fish

It is probably the commonest mistake for all fish-keepers, especially the experienced ones because, for them, fish-keeping is a passion. They always want to add some more elegant looking fish in their tank, and the pet stores tempt them by showing more colorful and beautiful species.

By doing this, they make their tank over-crowded, and sometimes they add incompatible tank mates. Also, the level of tank waste will increase due to this.

At the time of adding a variety of species, you may miss to place sufficient mates for the shoaling species. As a result, they will be scared and shy and will hide the entire day.

Solution

You have to go through the care guide of your initial fish and understand the space required during its adulthood. You can add a new species only if your tank is larger than that. Make sure that they will get sufficient space to continue their activities. You can get all the information regarding tank and water parameters, ideal gravels, and plants for the specific fish from those care guides.

Also, before adding a species, check the compatibility of that fish with the existing ones. Along with that, you will need to feed them like a pro and be an active cleaner to manage the nitrate level, which may arise due to excretes.

Finally, try to control the desire to purchase more fish because growing one or two healthy fish is more important than keeping so many unhealthily.

2. Overfeeding or Underfeeding

As the experienced fish-keepers tend to add more fish, these water buddies are sometimes overfed and sometimes underfed as sometimes they have different diet and eating habits. Also, there is a possibility of wrong feeding, as well.

The mid-level swimmers can eat the food of bottom dwellers, which results in the decay of your cool water pets, and sometimes it may be the cause of death too.

Solution

When you are adding different species in your tank, try to opt for the same types of fish (all bottom-dwellers or all mid-level swimmers or all fast runners or all nocturnal fish). It will solve the problem of over or underfeeding, but that’s not all! You have to get experts' guidance for quantity, type, and frequency of feeding.  

3. Over-Cleaning

When the common mistake for the newcomers is lack of cleaning the tank, the experienced ones over-clean the tank. Yes! You have heard right – Over-cleaning is also a mistake!

You must know that extremely clean water can cause several diseases to the fish. Crystal clear water means the absence of the beneficial bacteria which directly contribute for the wellbeing of the fish.

Solution

The possibility of this mistake will be decreased if you can resist adding new species in the tank. Because of that, it will be easier for you to understand the cleaning method and percentage of weekly water replacement for that particular fish or the shoal. As a result, the possibility of over-cleaning will automatically reduce.

Alternatively, you can go through water testing each week to get an indication of cleaning. This testing is mandatory before adding a fish in a clean tank too.

On the other hand, if you keep adding different types of fish, they will have different aquarium requirements for cleaning and water change, and it will be more difficult to manage the schedule of cleaning.

4. Relying on Medication

New hobbyists often rely on google results and opinions of other aquarists to treat their fish, but experienced ones are seen to rely too much on medications. They often apply medication seeing common symptoms in other species, which actually deteriorates the health of that fish.   

Solution

Sometimes immediate medications are not required for them. Changing temperature or 10-15% or cleaning can improve their health. Also, the dosage of medications is not the same for all fish. It is mandatory to consult a doctor before applying any medications.

5. Keeping Lights On

Aquarists are often extremely obsessed with their pets, and just because it looks majestic, they keep the color-changing LED lights on throughout the day. Due to that, fish fail to understand the time and do not sleep.

Sometimes, fish-keepers are so obsessed that they keep looking for disease or keep replacing the decors. Actually, fish is unlike other pets, and it does not need constant attention. By replacing the decors, you will make them stressed.

Solution

Keep in mind that the light is not just for enhancing the beauty of the aquarium; it is also for indicating daylight in captivity. Along with that, the lights help algae to grow, and too much light means excess algae.

It is definitely very pleasing to have an aquarium, and beholding the fish for a long time is like bliss, but during that try to look its beauty, not just signs of illness in it. It will be more satisfying.

6. Lack of Patience

Fish keepers are impatient for everything – they want to place the fish in tank soon, to see visible growth in the fish right after a week, to grow the plants faster, and so on. This impatience will result in unhealthy growth of the fish, and they will be stressed.

Solution

You have to know that patience is the key to success. Plants, as well as fish, will take time to grow, and you can’t add the fish before setting the tank and testing water. Your excitement is definitely very natural, but you need the patience to watch everything happening smoothly.

So, now you understand that beginners are not the only ones to make mistakes in fishkeeping, experienced ones are also in the queue. However, this is not to demoralize the experienced aquarists; rather, these mistakes are pointed out to make them more concerned so that they can avoid these mistakes at the time petting a challenging fish.