my daughter Gamer Girl wanted her first fish tank but I don't want to get stuck taking care of this
thing all by myself so I want to find the fastest, most efficient way of keeping these fish happy and
healthy. Fish care task number one is food so to teach her responsibility I want Gamer Girl to feed
them every day and also feed them the right amount of food every day so to help her with this I gave
her two small jars of food to keep next to the tank and then I keep the rest of it stored in the
fridge and she's supposed to take out one pinch of fish flakes as well as a couple of Crab Cuisine
to feed the mystery snail and make sure he gets enough calcium now the routine is when she brushes
her teeth at night she will remember to feed the fish afterwards because it's right next to her
bathroom sink but just in case every morning I also feed the fish when I go around and feed all
the other tanks a wide variety of live, frozen, gel and other prepared foods to make sure they
get a wide variety of food and aren't getting like nutrient deficiencies or anything the problem is I
did notice a couple days that there were flakes all over the sink like really messy and so when
I asked her about it she said it wasn't her it was because she let her friends feed the tank but just
in case I think we're gonna temporarily switch over to freeze-dried cubes which hopefully should
be a little bit cleaner. Fish task number two is cleaning the aquarium. Now Gamer Girl actually
really likes cleaning the glass the outside of the tank whenever her brother you know spits
toothpaste on the tank and it flecks all over so I ended up getting her an actual aquarium glass
cleaner so she can do that on her own but cleaning the inside of the tank is going to require adult
supervision I just don't want flooding to happen on our floors so if everything is looking good
with the tank every week we basically test the water once using water test strips just because
it's kind of a newish tank and I just want to make sure the nitrate level is not above 50 ppm. If it
is above 50 ppm, then we're going to go ahead and do a water change. Otherwise most weeks we don't
have to do a water change because we have live aquarium plants in there they are slow growing
anubias but they're still consuming some amounts of nitrate and helping to purify the water.
We got all the materials underneath the sink — an aquarium siphon (must-have), I've got a
plastic tub that holds an algae scrubber, forgot to show the toothbrush. We also have as well as a
pump head and then a bucket if you need it. First thing we're going to do is wash our hands and then
I forgot to show it but I also unplug the heater and filter to make sure they don't run dry and
burning out although it doesn't matter as much for the sponge filter. Before I change out any of the
water, this is when I want to do any tests that really muck the water up so things like using the
algae scrubber to scrape down the walls, cleaning the decor if needed, cleaning the sponge filter
which I'll talk about at the end of the video but no soap involved in any of this. I'm just rinsing
them with water. Now we come to the awesome part — this is the best and easiest way to change water
using an aquarium siphon absolute life changer it's really easy to use I even taught my daughter
you use it. We personally have the Python aquarium siphon because the hose doesn't kink or stay bent
it's like very flexible and then we also bought a wider one so that it changes water fairly quickly
now all you need to do is you know you put the tube in into the tank and then the hose end into
your bucket or whatever is going to be collecting the dirty water and then while you're holding the
tube up upright so that the opening is towards the sky, go ahead and lower into the tank until
it completely fills with water. Raise the tube out of the tank so that water starts draining out
of it into the bucket and then before the water has completely drained out of the tube, like when
it's drained about halfway, plunge the tube back into the aquarium so that it's still facing upward
and then once you can hear the sound of the water going into the bucket, then you can slowly rotate
the tube while it's still under water so that you can basically vacuum the gravel of all the
fish poop and other gunk that's in the gravel or substrate. If at any point you need to pause the
siphon because maybe there's too much substrate or maybe a fish got caught up in the tube, just
pinch the hose and that will immediately pause the siphon until you want it to continue it again
afterwards you can basically pour that dirty fish water onto any plants or garden that you have to
use as fertilizer and then just rinse out that bucket and then fill it up in your bathtub making
sure that the you feel the temperature of the water it's roughly the same as the temperature
in the aquarium fill up that bucket make sure to add your water conditioner or dechlorinator
because most people's tap water has chlorine or chloramine in it which will kill your fish
so this will deactivate it and then afterwards go ahead and pour in the water from the bucket.
The problem with the bucket method is that the bucket is very heavy and if you fill it up with
a lot of water it tends to slosh all over our floors and realistically speaking my daughter
is not strong enough to lift it like we could get her a smaller bucket or container but then it's
going to take her forever to move between the sink or the bathtub to the tank and constantly
have to refill it that way so I found a faster method. This is so cool. It only works if you
have again your aquarium next to a sink like we do but we do the aquarium siphon and have
it drain directly into the sink — no bucket needed — and then afterwards when it's time to refill we
have a power head and basically I connect it to the bottom of the siphon to the hose part
of it and then remember that plastic container I had before? I put that into the sink because you
know sometimes sinks aren't the cleanest. I turn on the water to fill up that plastic tub so that
it's again roughly the same temperature as the tank water and then once the tub is filled and
the faucet is still running I plug in the power head that is sitting inside the tub and it sucks
up the water from the tub and pours it into the aquarium which is awesome. Now if the power head
is faster than the water coming from the sink faucet, then I could just temporarily unplug it,
wait for the plastic tub to fill up again and then plug it plug the power head back in again. Voila,
no buckets! Afterwards I disconnect them, I rinse out the siphon in the bathtub,
and then hang it to dry so that it doesn't grow like gross gunky stuff inside of it.
The next step is kind of optional but you might have the same problems as us but my daughter
noticed that Snowy the mystery snail was getting pits in his shell and that comes from a lack of
minerals and that's because we have pretty soft water so we went ahead and added some Seachem
Equilibrium minerals and that way hopefully he can get more calcium and magnesium and whatnot
to grow a nice smooth healthy shell. We also have live aquarium plants in the tank so went ahead and
did a couple squirts of Easy Green all-in-one fertilizer that way they get plenty of food to
eat and won't have any yellow leaves. Now one thing I only briefly mentioned previously was
that you need to clean your filter maybe every one to three months depending on how quickly
it gets clogged up. It's kind of like, it's not a magical black hole, it is a cat litter box in
a way where it's collecting a lot of animal waste but at some point you need to empty out all that
waste otherwise it's not as effective so I have a video over here take a look at it on how I clean
my sponge filter otherwise take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video [Music]
[Music]