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Gear for Your Clownfish
Like other fish, a clownfish requires a properly filtered tank that is set up according to its needs, a proper diet, and regular water changes to thrive. You need the following gear to properly care for your clownfish.
Tank
Your clownfish tank can be an all-glass aquarium or an acrylic tank. Glass aquariums are the most practical to use—they’re moderately priced, easy to see inside, and simple for you to maintain. Acrylics, on the other hand, are very light, easy to move, and available in a variety of shapes, but they can easily become scratched, which will make it difficult to see inside the tank.
Whatever type of tank you choose, make sure it has a sturdy cover that’s secure at all times. Clownfish are not ordinarily “jumpers” that hop out of an aquarium if given the opportunity, but they may do so under certain circumstances
—if a bullying tankmate is harassing one, for example. A cover also serves to keep dust, dirt, debris, and other pets out of the aquarium.
Tank Size
The rule of thumb when selecting a tank for your clownfish—or almost any other fish—is to purchase the largest one you can afford and have room for in your home. The larger the aquarium, the more stable and healthy your clownfish is likely to be—a large volume of water decreases the impact of human error, mechanical malfunction, and toxins such as ammonia. However, a large aquarium is not essential for clownfish because most remain close to their anemone homes or surrogates and therefore take up very little tank space.
The optimal tank size for your clownfish depends on the species you’re keeping. Smaller species like the ocellaris clownfish can live in tanks as small as 10–20 gallons (38–
76 L), while larger clownfish—like the tomato clownfish—are best suited for tanks of 40 gallons (151 L) or larger.
Tank Placement
Determining where to place your clownfish aquarium is a major decision that you should make before you set up your tank. Take the following into consideration when choosing where to keep your fish tank.
- Solid, durable surface: Including substrate and decorations, an aquarium can easily weigh 10 pounds per gallon (more than 1 kilogram per liter), which translates to 150 pounds (68 kg) for a relatively small 15-gallon (68-L) tank.
- Access to electricity: You’ll need to use several outlets to operate your aquarium, with ground-fault interrupting circuits (available at any hardware store) protecting all of them.
- Nearby water source: Keeping your tank near a water source—and ideally, a drain—makes aquarium upkeep much easier.
- Traffic: Keep your fish where they won’t be frequently disturbed by passersbys. Ideally, your tank should be somewhere that lets you see and appreciate your fish without subjecting them to constant foot traffic.
- Distance from windows: Direct sunlight on an aquarium overheats the water by day, especially in the summer, and causes it to cool again by night. These sudden and significant changes in temperature can be unhealthy for your fish.
Filtration
A filter is the most important piece of equipment you will purchase for your aquarium because it removes toxins and impurities caused by fish wastes, uneaten food, and other sources. There are three basic aquarium filtration methods:
- Mechanical: This filter removes excrement, uneaten food, and old vegetation from aquatic plants from the aquarium. The water passes through a sponge or floss medium inside the filter and then flows back into the aquarium, capturing and removing these waste particles.
- Biological: The most important filter in your aquarium, a biological filter is a special bacterial colony growing in a medium through which the aquarium water is directed to pass. Some good bacteria eat ammonia produced by the fish, changing it to nitrite, which is eaten by other bacteria, turning it into far less harmful nitrate. Biofiltration bacteria must attach to a surface—porous materials such as sponges provide an abundant surface area on which good bacteria can grow.
- Chemical: Chemical filtration removes unwanted substances from the water by chemical means. The most common medium is activated carbon, but resins are also available to remove specific contaminants such as phosphate or ammonia. A chemical filter won’t remove all the pollutants in the water, however, and must be used in conjunction with other filter types.
Choosing a Filter
A wide variety of filter choices is commercially available. Some of these filters are basic and only provide one means of filtration, while others combine more than one or all three—these are ideal filters for your clownfish aquarium. You want a filter that can keep up with the waste produced by your clownfish and that has an abundant surface area for colonization by good bacteria. Also, the filter you choose should be easy enough to maintain that you don’t dread having to clean it (which may cause you to do so less frequently).
Depending on the size of your aquarium, you may want to avoid using power or canister filters that pull water through complex filter media at a rapid pace, filtering the tank several times an hour. These powerful filters are good for larger or overcrowded tanks but can be overkill in smaller ones.
Protein Skimmer
A protein skimmer is necessary for any saltwater aquarium. It mixes air and water to create bubbles, which rise through a cylinder through which the water is pumped. Contaminants in the water stick to these bubbles and rise up the column into a collection cup that sits at the top of the cylinder, while the cleansed water returns to the tank. Clean the collection cup once it’s nearly full of the dark brown substance that accumulates in it as a result of this process.
The skimmer you select should be suitable for the size of tank you own or larger, and it should attach to the tank, drawing water directly from the aquarium. Your dealer can go over the various skimmer features to help you choose among different brands or designs.
Temperature
Clownfish can tolerate temperatures of 64–90°F (18–32°C), but they do best in temperatures close to 80°F (27°C), so purchase a heater to keep your aquarium water at that temperature. In an aquarium larger than 50 gallons (189 L), it’s a good idea to use more than one heater, with each of them containing less than the total required amount
of watts to fully heat the tank. (The heater’s packaging will include a chart that shows you how many watts your tank’s size requires.) This way, if one heater becomes stuck in the ”on” position, it won’t be able to heat the water enough to harm the fish.
Completely submersible heaters with dials for easy temperature adjustment are the best choice for your aquarium. If you decide to use one, unplug it before doing any water changes or tank maintenance.
Thermometers
Install a thermometer to monitor the aquarium temperature, and check it frequently to make sure the water isn’t too hot or too cold. The most popular thermometer is the flat, stick-on variety, which is easy to read when placed on the front or side of the aquarium. Keep your thermometer in the center of the water column, as opposed to a corner of the tank, so that you get the most accurate temperature reading.
Lighting
Your clownfish requires a light cycle, or photoperiod, of about 12 hours each day to mimic a natural environment. You can control lighting with a timer, available at most hardware stores.
A regular photoperiod helps your fish regulate its biological clock for feeding, resting, and, if offered the opportunity, breeding. Of course, proper lighting also helps make your clownfish more visible and aesthetically pleasing.
The best lighting to use in your clownfish aquarium depends on what else you include in the tank. If you intend to keep a fish-only aquarium, whether exclusively stocked with clownfish or with a mix of different fish with similar care requirements, the most basic and inexpensive aquarium light is sufficient. However, if you plan to include anemones in your tank, consider more advanced high-intensity lighting options to suit the invertebrates in your aquarium. Research the environmental requirements of any anemones you choose to add, and plan your tank accordingly.
Substrate
A calcareous (containing calcium) substance such as dolomite, calcite, aragonite, crushed coral, coral sand, or crushed shells makes an excellent substrate for your clownfish tank. Make sure that any substrate you use is fine rather than coarse—uneaten food can easily fall between large gravel pieces and decompose, releasing toxins into the water. Substrate with sharp edges is also unsuitable because fish can injure themselves on it.
Before adding any substrate to your aquarium, rinse it thoroughly. Once the substrate is inside the tank, stir it up regularly so that uneaten food and debris don’t accumulate on the surface.
Live Sand
Live sand is a substrate that houses a variety of organisms: bacteria and tiny worms, crustaceans, starfish, and mollusks. These organisms reproduce and populate the tank, providing your fish with beneficial bacteria and even a
potential food source. You can either purchase live sand on its own or introduce it from an established marine tank.
Decorations
Once you’ve taken care of the essentials in your clownfish tank, you can add decorative items that improve the look of your aquarium and also provide additional hiding spots, filtration, or even food sources for your fish. The most common decorative items added to saltwater aquariums include live rocks and hiding spots.
Live Rocks
The term live rocks refers to coralline (related to coral) rocks that are full of living organisms. Live rocks used in aquariums are typically porous skeletons of once-thriving coral colonies that have since become encrusted with algae and occupied by bacteria. These rocks are almost always harvested from the ocean, which gives the fish a more natural environment and makes an aquarium even nicer to look at. Live rocks also provide biological filtration and even a food source for fish that graze on the organisms growing on and among them.
Hiding Spots
Hiding spots are especially useful if you don’t plan to keep an anemone with your clownfish. To make them, cut holes of appropriate diameters into pieces of PVC pipe or clay or plastic flowerpots. These holes will make excellent caves in which your fish can take shelter. If you keep fish of varying types and sizes, PVC pipes of different diameters can provide smaller fish places to hide where the larger fish can’t bother them. Provide more hiding spots than there are fish in your tank so that there are always plenty of choices.
Water
A saltwater aquarium requires water that closely imitates the chemistry of natural seawater. You can achieve this by adding a commercially available salt mix to either purified or tap water and keeping a mixing tub in which to create and store your salt water.
Mixing Tub
Large plastic buckets, small garbage cans, plastic stock tanks, and spare aquariums all make suitable mixing tubs. Only containers made of glass or food-grade plastic are acceptable—don’t use a metal container for a mixing tub. Your mixing tub will require a submersible heater rated for the number of gallons (liters) your tub can contain (so that you can add preheated water to your aquarium when performing water changes). It will also need a powerhead, a small, submersible water pump that provides circulation and mixes the water.
Salt Mix
Ask your local retailer for advice before choosing a brand or type of salt mix. It’s possible for various salt mixes to differ in composition and in how closely they mimic natural seawater. Even two mixes with the same ingredient lists can differ in the quality of seawater they produce.
Never use table salt to make your own salt mix. Although it is a major component of seawater, many other components are necessary to produce a solution in which marine organisms can thrive. Purchase only a commercially made, high-quality salt mix from your local aquarium vendor.
Dechloraminator
If you plan to use tap water to make your artificial seawater, you must treat it with a dechloraminator to remove chlorine and chloramines before adding it to the aquarium (unless your tap provides untreated well water). Don’t use a plain chlorine neutralizer, which removes chlorine but leaves
ammonia in the water, which is toxic to your fish. A dechloraminator neutralizes both chlorine and chloramines and leaves no ammonia in the water.
Hydrometer
Use a hydrometer to monitor the salinity (concentration of salt) in your tank. Abrupt changes in salinity disturb the internal chemistry of your fish, so maintain a specific gravity range (the ratio of your aquarium water’s density to that of pure water) of 1.017–1.030 at all times and avoid any drastic shifts in salt content. If you need to adjust your tank’s salinity to address a health issue, do so gradually over a period of an hour or longer.
Aquarium Maintenance
The day-to-day maintenance of your clownfish aquarium is not difficult. Perform the following tasks each day:
- Check each inhabitant of the tank to see if any are behaving strangely or appear to have health problems.
- Glance at the thermometer to make sure the water temperature is adequate.
- Inspect the filter to make sure that it’s working properly and a particularly rambunctious fish hasn’t damaged it.
- Examine the collection cup of your protein skimmer, and empty it if it’s full.
In addition to these daily tasks, you also need to take proper care of your filters and perform regular water changes to maintain water quality—and by extension, the health of your fish.
Filter Care
Filters need maintenance about once a month, but don’t go overboard when cleaning them. A perfectly clean tank with an immaculate filter is actually not healthy for your fish: without the good bacteria that can grow on filters and other surfaces, toxins such as ammonia are more likely to thrive. If you use a sponge filter, for example, rinse it gently in a bucket of aquarium water so that the good bacteria remain relatively undisturbed.
Mechanical filters need a more thorough cleaning so that the filter doesn’t get clogged and so that excess wastes aren’t left in the water, producing more toxins than the good bacteria in the tank can handle. Filters with a cartridge need to have the cartridge taken out, disposed of, and replaced with a new cartridge that has first been run under treated water (water with chlorine and chloramines removed with commercially available chemicals). Clean only one filter at a time so that you dispose of as few beneficial bacteria in the tank as possible.
| Text & Photos Copyright © 2007 TFH Publications, Inc. | Acknowledgments & Disclaimer |
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