C&C Tropical Pet’s Blog

With spring here, it’s time to spruce the pond up for summer. The first thing you need to do is vacuum or scoop out debris that accumulated over the fall and winter. After your done with that you will want to do a partial water change. Using your pump, take out about half of the water and replace with fresh water using a hose. Next add water conditioner. We use Stress Coat, it removes chlorine and conditions the water. Let the pond settle for a couple of hours and then test the PH. You want to shoot for a PH of 7.2 - 7.4 . Next, check all of your equipment to make sure it is working properly. If you are using a UV sterilizer(which you should be) and it has been over a year since you replaced your bulb, you will want to get a new bulb. UV bulbs degrade over time, to where they’re ineffective after about 8 months. Replace all of your old filter media with new. If it’s been years since you bought your filter, you may want to look into a new one. They have advanced pond filtration technology by leaps and bounds over the last 5 years or so. Now you will want to add Pond-zyme with barley to the pond. Pond-zyme adds beneficial enzymes to the water that consume any leftover leaves and waste still in the water. Start monitoring the ponds temperature. Once it hits 50 degrees you will want to start feeding the fish again. Start with a spring/fall food that’s low in protein. When the temperature hits 64 you can start feeding your normal summer food. Always use a good quality food. The more digestible the food, the less waste the fish will add to the water.

Setting up an aquarium can be challenging for newcomers. A lot of people that I talk to say they’ve tried keeping fish before and “never had any luck”. There is no luck to keeping fish, it’s a science. you don’t need to know a lot about it to be successful but you do need to put a little effort in it and do it correctly. The first thing you need to understand is that the filtration system you use will determine how much work you will be doing in maintenance. This is the one area you will not want to be cheap about. Remember, fish are reliant on water quality to survive. Better filters provide better water quality. Look at it this way, if you were to live indoors your whole life and the quality of the air was determined by the quality of an air purifier you were using, wouldn’t you spend as much as you could afford on that purifier? I would think so and the same logic goes when buying a filter. There are a lot of filters on the market so when purchasing one ask a lot of questions so you can figure out which one is the best for you. If you’re not sure which one to buy we can recommend one for you depending on your budget, how much maintenance you want to do, and other factors.

Another piece of equipment that is extremely important is the heater. Here again there are a lot of choices and again I would recommend buying the best one you can afford. If you go with a cheap heater and it ends up malfunctioning you will end up with cooked or sick fish and there goes the money you saved buying a cheap heater. The best ones are totally submersible and have a temperture dial.

Now that you have the aquarium set-up it’s time for the fish right? Wrong, you need to test the PH before you do anything else. The single most important thing you can do to help yourself be successful is to maintain the PH by testing regularly, at least weekly and more if you’re having problems. A PH of 7.0(neutral) is sufficient for most fish, but there are some that have more specific requirements like African Cichlids and goldfish to name a couple.

The next thing you will need are water conditioners. The most common is a dechlorinator to remove chlorine from the water, but there are many others available to do specific things like making water harder or softer. One of the other ones I highly recommend is a biological additive. There are a few of these on the market and some are better than others. The good ones will help keep your gravel, glass, and ornaments cleaner. I recommend using one when adding new fish because it will inocculate your tank with beneficial bacteria to help prevent new tank syndrome.

As a business owner I am constantly faced with decisions on how I want my business to appear, what causes to support publicly, and how to support causes I find worthy without offending any of my customers. Last week I was approached by some good customers that wanted to chain themselves in front of my store and hand out brochures about the cruelty of dogs being tied-up outside. Being in the pet industry humane treatment of animals is something that’s on my mind every day. I support the cause to treat dogs humanely and as pack animals one of the cruelest things you can do to a dog is chain him outside 24 hours a day. However I thought having people chained outside of my store greeting customers with brochures about changing laws to fine people who tie-out dogs just might offend other customers. I know good, caring people who will tie-out their dog on nice days, with adequate shelter, food, and water, while they are at work. And some dogs would rather spend nice days ouside for a while. Having said that, I find it offensive when I see a dog tied to a small container(these cannot be called houses)with nothing to lay on but mud in all kinds of weather. This is the kind of situation that needs sensible laws so that people that treat there dogs humanely are not lumped together with people that barely give their dogs food and water.