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The key to having health and happy fish swimming in your tank is proper maintenance. This is done on a daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly basis. By keeping up with your maintenance tasks, you can help prevent fish stress caused by any irregularity in their environment. The goal is to make sure that the fish tank lives up to the living requirements of your tropical fish. Here’s a short guide.Daily maintenanceThe daily tasks involved in taking care of tropical fish tanks are simple. These are checking if your fish are complete and healthy, spotting and removing dead fish and dead plant matter, and examining the temperature readings of your heater and thermometer. The temperature readings should match. Otherwise, it could mean that there is something wrong with your heater.To make sure that the fish will thrive, make sure that the heater is working properly. Check its temperature reading along with your thermometer’s just to be sure.Weekly maintenance tasksYou change the water and also clean tropical fish tanks on a weekly basis. This is the time when you have to check the decor and any ornament installed inside your fish tank. Take them out and clean them at once. Also check the tank walls, and look for any floating particles. For live plants, pruning and re-anchoring are most often required. Do not empty the entire fish tank with its water, only take out 25%. The water that you will add should be filtered, aerated, and, most importantly, dechlorinated, as chlorine can harm your fish. When changing the water, observe the right temperature needed by tropical fish tanks. Try not to make any abrupt movements to prevent causing stress to fish.Monthly scheduleCleaning and replacement of some of the equipment of tropical fish tanks are done monthly. These are your filter media and filter cartridges. Do the monthly cleaning together with the scheduled water change so you can use the discarded water to clean the mechanical and chemical filter media of your fish tank. However, do not replace nor replace the biological media as this will wipe out the bacteria colonies needed for filtration. Make sure that you test the levels of ammonia, pH, nitrates, and nitrites in the fish tank.More importantly, check and monitor the pH levels, along with the nitrates, ammonia, and nitrites in the fish tank. Making sure that they are at their proper level will keep the fish healthy and thriving. Make it a habit to jut down all your observations so you can use them as reference for any problem you might have with tropical fish tanks.Bi-annual scheduleTropical fish tanks are equipped with pumps, light bulbs, filters, pipes, and protein skimmers, and you need to clean or replace them at least every six months. Make sure that the pumps are working properly by checking for impeller cracks or any missing blades. For pipes, you have to clean them thoroughly to make sure that they’ll work properly. It’s best to replace the light bulbs of tropical fish tanks one at a time and when they’re cool enough. Check the manual as a guide for replacing and cleaning any of these equipment.Stuff you will needTo complete the task diligently, arm yourself with the needed tools for maintenance. Among them are the algae pads, gravel vacuums, scrapers, tongs, gloves, tongs, and magnetic cleaners. Also use cleaning fluids such as salt creep removers, lime dissolvers, and glass polishers.