There are many diseases that can affect your aquarium fish and once your tank is infected, there’s a good change that all your fish can get sick. Luckily, keeping a disease free tank is not that hard. Most disease is a result of poor water quality so not overcrowding your tank and keeping a regular maintenance schedule is a must.

Most aquarium disease can be avoided by making sure your aquarium water is healthy. If disease does break out, doing a water change and treating the water for the particular disease is the best way to nip it in the bud. If you don’t do these two things your tank is a disaster waiting to happen.

Neglecting the appropriate tank maintenance and partial water changes will allow toxins to build up in the water, basically polluting your fish’s environment. As the water becomes more toxic your fish become more “stressed”, the more stressed your fish becomes the easier it is for the micro organisms present in your aquarium water to infect your fish with various diseases.

I addition to insuring your aquarium has good water quality, you should also keep an eye on your fish each day so that you can be alerted to any signs of stress right away and take the appropriate action.

So how do you tell if your tropical fish are stressed?

Tropical fish don’t react the same way to stress as people do, but there are some tell tale signs you can be on the look out for. Some things to look for include; fish rubbing themselves against the gravel or aquarium décor, fish hiding in the corner or under plants or rocks all the time, fish bobbing around with their fins close to they body and any growths or white fuzzy spots are some of the things that indicate aquarium disease.

Of course, the first step in treating aquarium disease is preventing it. Here’s some steps to make sure your aquarium remains free of disease.

1. Don’t overcrowd your fish tank. Your tank can only support so many fish - the more fish you have the more waste they create and if the filtration cannot handle the waste you end up with toxins in the water that can accumulate to dangerous levels over time. The larger the tank, the more fish you can have.

2. Acclimate new fish to the tank properly. When you bring a new fish home form the pet store, it’s already been through quite a bit. Shipped from the breeders to the new store and put in a new tank, then transported into your tank all can be stressful to the fish. To acclimate your fish properly, make sure you float him in the bag in your aquarium for 10 minutes then open the back and introduce some of your aquarium water into the bag, let that sit for about 10 minutes and then let the fish out into your tank.

3. Make sure to have great water quality. Since poor water quality is the greatest case of fish disease and death you’ll want to be diligent about your tank maintenance and partial water changes. Also, make sure to test the PH and nitrite / nitrate levels and adjust the tank accordingly. This is quite easy and there are test kits made for testing as well as adjusting the water.

Keeping your aquarium disease free is not difficult and will help you enjoy beautiful healthy fish for years to come!