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How to Increase Your Fishkeeping Fun

by: Trevor Greenfield

Title: How to Increase Your Fishkeeping Fun
Author: Trevor Greenfield
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How to Increase Your Fishkeeping Fun
by Trevor Greenfield

Do you really get the fullest amount of enjoyment out of your
fish?, or is it hampered by little worries and anxieties?
Do you sometimes worry that you may be spending too much time
with your fish? I often hear people remark that although they
enjoy their hobby, the routine maintenance tasks involved detract
from the fun.

In this month's feature we will explore how we can increase our
fun by maybe taking a different approach to those mundane
activities that are so essential if we are to keep our fish in
tip top condition.

Create a plan

When you get some time to spend with your hobby do you go through
a sort of mental conflict wondering what to do?... and when you
finally do decide, half of your time has gone already.

WELL...you are not on your own, most aquarists share the same
dilemma. BUT... it is possible to overcome this problem, to even
double your fishkeeping enjoyment. HOW? Well, certainly not by
adding more tanks or even devoting more time to your hobby...
the answer lies in a change of mental outlook, a change of
approach.

Have you ever noticed that some people always seem to be on top
of their work?, how their fish rooms and tanks are always tidy?
how they always seem to have lots of time to enjoy their hobby?
Yet others never get a minute to live, they always seem to have
lots to do and yet nothing seems to get done.The most important
ingredient in our formula for increased fishkeeping fun is
planning.

Most of us lead busy lives, holding down a full-time job, and
taking care of family commitments etc. Without a plan it is all
too easy to put off our fish maintenance tasks until another day
when life is a litle less hectic. Unfortunately, more often than
not life doesn't get less hectic and our maintenance jobs build
up until our tank(s) become dirty and our fish begin to suffer.

That's when the pressure starts to build.

Include the family

This can be particularly difficult when your partner doesn't
share your love and enthusiasm for the hobby. It is only natural
that they will have different priorities for your time than you
and if harmony is to be maintained then some sort of agreement
must be reached. Having a plan that includes both the family
needs and your hobby needs goes a long way to ensuring that
everyone's needs are satisfied. The biggest obstacle to overcome
in any hobby is distraction. It is very tempting when we have the
time to spend with our fish to waste that time on trivial matters
or even just admiring our fish.

Now don't get me wrong... I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't
take time to admire our fish, after all that is the reason we
started keeping fish in the first place. What I am suggesting is
that there are probably more suitable times to sit and admire our
fish. We can fit in time for that when we are relaxing with the
family, for instance.

What I am saying is that during those precious occassions when
we can devote some dedicated time to maintenance, we should
concentrate just on maintenance activities.The most important
ingredient to making the best of our valuable time is one of
mental outlook and organisation. Clear thinking about your fish
is the key to getting maximum pleasure. No matter what your hobby
or interest is, there can be no pleasure in it if it causes
anxiety and frustration. Your hobby will only be pleasurable if
it brings you satisfaction and relaxation.

Be realistic

Ask yourself ... is your thinking absolutely clear about your
fishkeeping? Perhaps when you get some time one evening get a
pencil and paper and make a few notes along these lines. Have you
ever considered how much time and money you can afford to spend
on the hobby? Give it some thought and write it down. You might
think, for example, ......I can afford to work 2 evenings a week,
3 hours each evening and 5 hours every other saturday. ......I
can afford to spend �10 a month or �20 a month. Be as specific
as possible even though any one week may have to be changed. The
main thing is to have a clear idea of time and money commitment.
These will be different for every aquarist, of course. The
important thing is that they are commitments that you are
comfortable with.

One of the common traps that many of us fall into is letting our
hobby get out of hand. We become involved with fishkeeping, either
through a visit to a garden centre, pet shop or through a friend
and set up a tank in our lounge. Before long the bug has taken
hold and we introduce another tank, then another and before we
know it we find we can't cope with the water changing and
cleaning the glass etc. that we have to do just to be able to see
the fish!

One of the interim steps that we might have to consider is
shutting down one or more of our tanks, maybe just as a temporary
measure until we get better organised.

Next...

The next step is to set a specific objective for yourself and
your fishkeeping. This is not necessarily one to be achieved
immediately but it must be specific.

"To keep and breed every species of fish" is possibly a dream of
many breeders but hardly a specific objective. When setting your
specific objective, keep within your time and money commitment.
The great thing about fishkeeping is the wide range of possible
goals you could pursue. If you are a fish breeder for instance,
you could specialise in one fish and set a goal for a breeding
programme. If you are not a breeder but enjoy collecting you
could possibly try to collect every species within a genus.
Whatever your interest make sure you narrow it down to a specific
objective, one that is practical within your time and money
objective. It could be "Collect as many species of Dwarf Cichlids
as possible", "Develop a strain of albino Discus" or set up a
tank housing only the species from a particular geographical area
- a Madagascar tank for instance.

Having decided... think about your first step towards achieving
this goal. This is your short term goal, something to be achieved
in the near future."Find a good source of dwarf cichlids and buy
one pair" or "Keep adult discus alive for x months".

Give some thought to it but having decided write it down and
remember your previous decisions all the time.

OK, Next Step...

With your new goal in mind, go and look at your set up. Ask
yourself - "does everything in my current set up contribute
towards my short term goal?" The answer will almost certainly be
NO. There will probably be odds and ends of fish and equipment
that have nothing to do with your goal. NOW comes the hardest
bit....Everything that does not contribute to your goal should be
sold or traded in and the proceeds put towards your objective.
When you have achieved this you could well find that you have
doubled your tank space without buying a single tank!!....

NEXT

Create a list of priorities

Most aquarists have regular jobs that they do over and over
again. Daily jobs. Yet we regularly waste a lot of time deciding
what to do, often every day. I'm sure many of you can relate to
the scenario;

You get home from work, take care of the immediate priorities,
sit down to dinner, finishing at 7.00 pm. Perhaps you now have 2
hours to spend with your fish. So you now go through the decision
making sequence of what to do tonight. We can lose 15 valuable
minutes each time we stop to decide what to do next.

How can we overcome this? As we have identified above most
aquarists have routine jobs plus a few special ones. Keeping in
mind our short term goals, write down each job on a separate
piece of card.

For example a fish breeder might list the following 7 items:

Feed fish
Expand set-up
Cull young fish and move into a larger tank
Clean filters
Set out new pairs to spawn
Check for disease; treat any observed
Check water; change if necessary

This is not a complete list, of course, you will probably end up
with one much longer but 7 items will do for our example of how
to set priorities.

Now look at the list and re-arrange the items something like this:
Any disease can spread quickly and if left untreated could wipe
out your entire tank - it only takes a minute.

Make a visual check for unusual behaviour...hanging in corners...
clamped fins...scratching etc

So No. 1 on our list is: 1. Check for disease

Look at the remaining list. What should you do next? Feed the
fish? Well...maybe...but would you put food in a cloudy tank??

No, so it is best to check the water and if cloudy, change some
water.

So No. 2 on our list is: 2. Check water - change if necessary

You may ask, would you change water before cleaning/changing the
filters? Yes, I would. It is important to remove dissolved solids
and waste (bacteria) in suspension which can create harmful
nitrite before changing the filter media where wastes are being
partly broken down anyway. It is important to change the filter
media as time permits but not before water changes in my opinion.

We mentioned feeding the fish above and this is very important
and only items 1 and 2 above should come before it.

So our No. 3 is: 3. Feed the fish

Followed by: 4. Clean the filters

Now the last three.

-Cull young
-Set out new pairs
-Expand set-up

Having completed this exercise we now have a priority list to
work from. Having set that up, whenever we get a few minutes to
spend with our fish we start at the top of the list and work our
way through.

Check for disease; treat any necessary
Check water; change if necessary
Feed fish
Clean filters
Cull young fish and move into a larger tank
Set out new pairs to spawn
Expand set up

We have removed the delays caused by having to decide what to do
each time. In the 15 minutes that we may have wasted trying to
decide what to do we could be halfway down our list. The priority
list will be different for every aquarist but the principle will
be the same.

Finally....make a habit of keeping a diary of all your
fishkeeping activities. This will provide valuable information on
frequency of activities and when things like water changes are
due. Time has a habit of going so quickly that several weeks can
pass since our last water change but without having notes to
refer to it may, and often does, seem like last week.

Create your plan, work to it and replace the anxiety with
pleasure.

Happy Fishkeeping!

Copyright � 2005 Pet Fish World and Trevor Greenfield

About Trevor: Trevor Greenfield has been keeping and breeding
tropical fish for over 30 years. He has held committee posts for
several fishkeeping clubs and associations and was a founder
member and is the current secretary of the British Cichlid
Association (http://www.britishcichlid.com). He is author of
numerous articles on keeping and breeding tropical fish and
editor and regular contributor to Pet Fish World. You will find
more articles and useful links at http://www.petfishworld.com.

Trevor Greenfield has been keeping and breeding
tropical fish for over 30 years. He has held committee posts for
several fishkeeping clubs and associations and was a founder
member and is the current secretary of the British Cichlid
Association (http://www.britishcichlid.com). He is author of
numerous articles on keeping and breeding tropical fish and
editor and regular contributor to Pet Fish World. You will find
more articles and useful links at http://www.petfishworld.com

Contact him at http://reprintarticles.com