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All Just simply about FishingHow to Increase Your Fishkeeping Fun
by:
Trevor Greenfield
Title: How to Increase Your Fishkeeping Fun
Author: Trevor Greenfield
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How to Increase Your Fishkeeping Fun
by Trevor Greenfield
Do you actually get the fullest figure of enjoyment out of your
fish?, or is it hampered by little worries and anxieties?
Do you sometimes worry that you may be defrayal too more time
with your fish? I often hear folk remark that tho'
they
enjoy their hobby, the routine maintenance tasks involved bring down
from the fun.
In this month's feature we wish explore how we can increase our
fun by mayhap taking a several approach to those mundane
activities that are so essential if we are to support our fish in
tip top condition.
Create a plan
Once
you get several time to spend with your hobby do you go through
a sort of mental conflict curious what to do?... and once
you
finally do decide, half of your time has gone already.
WELL...you are not on your own, most aquarists share the same
dilemma. BUT... it is possible to overcome this problem, to even as
double your fishkeeping enjoyment. HOW? Well, for certain not by
adding more tanks or even as devoting more time to your hobby...
the answer lies in a change of mental outlook, a change of
approach.
Have you ever detected
that several folk always seem to be on top
of their work?, how their fish rooms and tanks are always tidy?
how they always seem to have lots of time to enjoy their hobby?
Yet others ne'er
get a minute to live, they always seem to have
lots to do and yet nothing seems to get done.The most important
ingredient in our formula for accumulated fishkeeping fun is
planning.
Most of us lead busy lives, holding down a full-time job, and
taking care of family commitments etc. Without a plan it is all
too easy to put off our fish maintenance tasks until another day
once
life is a litle less hectic. Unfortunately, more often than
not life doesn't get less agitated
and our maintenance jobs build
up until our tank(s) become dirty and our fish begin to suffer.
That's once
the pressure starts to build.
Include the family
This can be particularly difficult once
your partner doesn't
share your love and enthusiasm for the hobby. It is only natural
that they wish have several priorities for your time than you
and if harmony is to be maintained then several sort of agreement
must be reached. Having a plan that includes several the family
necessarily and your hobby necessarily goes a long way to ensuring that
everyone's necessarily are satisfied. The biggest obstacle to overcome
in any hobby is distraction. It is really tempting once
we have the
time to spend with our fish to waste that time on trivial matters
or even as simply loving
our fish.
Now don't get me wrong... I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't
take time to admire our fish, after all that is the reason we
started keeping fish in the 1st place. What I am suggesting is
that there are probably more suitable times to sit and admire our
fish. We can fit in time for that once
we are quiet with the
family, for instance.
What I am language is that during those precious occassions once
we can devote several dedicated time to maintenance, we should
concentrate simply on maintenance activities.The most important
ingredient to fashioning the better of our valuable time is one of
mental outlook and organisation. Clean thinking simply about your fish
is the key to deed maximum pleasure. No matter what your hobby
or interest is, there can be no pleasure in it if it causes
anxiety and frustration. Your hobby wish only be gratifying if
it brings you satisfaction and relaxation.
Be realistic
Ask yourself ... is your thinking dead clean simply about your
fishkeeping? Maybe once
you get several time one evening get a
pencil and paper and do a few notes on
these lines. Have you
ever considered how more time and money you can afford to spend
on the hobby? Give it several thought and write it down. You power
think, for example, ......I can afford to activity 2 evenings a week,
3 hours each evening and 5 hours every different saturday. ......I
can afford to spend £10 a month or £20 a month. Be as specific
as possible even as tho'
any one week may have to be changed. The
main thing is to have a clean idea of time and money commitment.
These wish be several for every aquarist, of course. The
important thing is that they are commitments that you are
comfortable with.
One of the common traps that many a of us fall into is belongings our
hobby get out of hand. We become involved with fishkeeping, either
through a visit to a garden centre, pet shop or through a friend
and set up a tank in our lounge. Before long the bug has taken
hold and we introduce another tank, then another and before we
cognize it we find we can't cope with the water dynamic and
clean up the glass etc. that we have to do simply to be able to see
the fish!
One of the interim steps that we power have to consider is
motility down one or more of our tanks, mayhap simply as a temporary
measure until we get better organised.
Next...
The next step is to set a specific objective for yourself and
your fishkeeping. This is not necessarily one to be achieved
at once but it must be specific.
"To support and breed every species of fish" is possibly a dream of
many a breeders but hardly a specific objective. Once
setting your
specific objective, support inside
your time and money commitment.
The great thing simply about fishkeeping is the wide range of possible
goals you could pursue. If you are a fish stock farmer for instance,
you could specialise in one fish and set a goal for a breeding
programme. If you are not a stock farmer but enjoy aggregation you
could possibly try to collect every species inside
a genus.
Some your interest do sure you narrow it down to a specific
objective, one that is practical inside
your time and money
objective. It could be "Collect as many a species of Dwarf Cichlids
as possible", "Develop a strain of unusual person
Discus" or set up a
tank housing only the species from a particular geographical area
- a Madagascar tank for instance.
Having decided... think simply about your 1st step towards achieving
this goal. This is your short term goal, thing
to be achieved
in the near future."Find a nice source of dwarf cichlids and buy
one pair" or "Keep adult discus alive for x months".
Give several thought to it but having definite
write it down and
remember your previous decisions all the time.
OK, Next Step...
With your new goal in mind, go and look at your set up. Ask
yourself - "does everything in my current set up contribute
towards my short term goal?" The answer wish all but for certain be
NO. There wish probably be odds and ends of fish and instrumentation
that have nothing to do with your goal. NOW comes the hardest
bit....Everything that makes not contribute to your goal should be
sold-out
or listed
in and the income put towards your objective.
Once
you have achieved this you could well find that you have
doubled your tank space without purchase
a single tank!!....
NEXT
Create a list of priorities
Most aquarists have regular jobs that they do over and over
again. Daily jobs. Yet we on a regular basis
waste a lot of time deciding
what to do, often every day. I'm sure many a of you can relate to
the scenario;
You get house from work, take care of the immediate priorities,
sit down to dinner, finishing at 7.00 pm. Maybe you now have 2
hours to spend with your fish. So you now go through the decision
fashioning sequence of what to do tonight. We can lose 15 valuable
minutes each time we finish to decide what to do next.
How can we overcome this? As we have known
above most
aquarists have routine jobs plus a few special ones. Keeping in
mind our short term goals, write down each job on a separate
piece of card.
For example a fish stock farmer power list the following 7 items:
Feed fish
Expand set-up
Cull young fish and come into a larger tank
Clean filters
Set out new pairs to spawn
Check for disease; treat any determined
Check water; change if necessary
This is not a complete list, of course, you wish probably end up
with one more longer but 7 items wish do for our example of how
to set priorities.
Now look at the list and re-arrange the items thing
like this:
Any malady can spread quickly and if left untreated could wipe
out your entire tank - it only takes a minute.
Do a visual check for unusual behaviour...hanging in corners...
clamped fins...scratching etc
So No. 1 on our list is: 1. Check for malady
Look at the remaining list. What should you do next? Feed the
fish? Well...maybe...but would-be you put food in a cloudy tank??
No, so it is better to check the water and if cloudy, change several
water.
So No. 2 on our list is: 2. Check water - change if necessary
You may ask, would-be you change water before cleaning/changing the
filters? Yes, I would. It is important to move out dissolved solids
and waste (bacteria) in suspension which can create harmful
chemical group before dynamic the filter media wherever
wastes are being
part
broken down anyway. It is important to change the filter
media as time permits but not before water changes in my opinion.
We mentioned feeding the fish above and this is really important
and only items 1 and 2 above should come before it.
So our No. 3 is: 3. Feed the fish
Followed by: 4. Clean the filters
Now the last three.
-Cull young
-Set out new pairs
-Expand set-up
Having completed this exercise we now have a priority list to
activity from. Having set that up, whenever we get a few minutes to
spend with our fish we start at the top of the list and activity our
way through.
Check for disease; treat any necessary
Check water; change if necessary
Feed fish
Clean filters
Cull young fish and come into a larger tank
Set out new pairs to spawn
Expand set up
We have removed the delays caused by having to decide what to do
each time. In the 15 minutes that we may have wasted trying to
decide what to do we could be halfway down our list. The priority
list wish be several for every aquarist but the principle wish
be the same.
Finally....make a habit of keeping a diary of all your
fishkeeping activities. This wish provide valuable information on
frequency of activities and once
things like water changes are
due. Time has a habit of going so quickly that several weeks can
pass since our last water change but without having notes to
refer to it may, and often does, seem like last week.
Create your plan, activity to it and replace the anxiety with
pleasure.
Happy Fishkeeping!
Copyright © 2005 Pet Fish Earth and Trevor Greenfield
Just simply about Trevor: Trevor Greenfield has been keeping and breeding
tropical fish for over 30 years. He has command
committee posts for
several fishkeeping clubs and associations and was a founder
member and is the current secretary of the British Percoid
Association (http://www.britishcichlid.com). He is author of
many
articles on keeping and breeding tropical fish and
editor and regular contributor to Pet Fish World. You wish find
more articles and useful links at http://www.petfishworld.com.
Trevor Greenfield has been keeping and breeding
tropical fish for over 30 years. He has command
committee posts for
several fishkeeping clubs and associations and was a founder
member and is the current secretary of the British Percoid
Association (http://www.britishcichlid.com). He is author of
many
articles on keeping and breeding tropical fish and
editor and regular contributor to Pet Fish World. You wish find
more articles and useful links at http://www.petfishworld.com
Contact him at http://reprintarticles.com
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