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Freshwater
Most aquarists today start their hobbyist career as freshwater aquarium keepers - or, more
specific, with tropical freshwater aquaria. The necessary technical equipment for
freshwater aquaria, as well as a fairly decent assortment of tropical fishes and plants,
is available from the majority of pet shops.
Freshwater aquaria are very interesting!
For many people, a freshwater aquarium may be the chosen because it is a relatively cheap
and easily accessible alternative - and easy to maintain as well. There is no doubt,
however, that many aquarists go for a freshwater tank because of a specific interest for
this type of an aquarium; because they see interesting challenges in freshwater aquarium
keeping different from those you encounter with a marine tank. Freshwater aquatics offer
an enormous multitude of varied biotopes, thousands of beautiful and interesting fish
species, hundreds of water plants, as well as actually quite a lot of invertebrate animals
as well.
Freshwater aquarists can breed fascinating goldfish varieties (in accordance with many
centuries of Chinese tradition), or they can recreate true-to-nature rocky coast biotopes
modelled from the East-African Lake Malawi. Freshwater aquarists can observe splashing
tetras depositing their eggs above the water line (!), or study the four-eye fish's
strange double eyes. They may collect colourful rainbow fishes from New Guinea, or human
made varieties of the famous guppy. The possibilities are infinite.
More room for blunders?
There are clearly many reasons why freshwater aquaria have become so much more popular and
widespread than marine aquaria. In addition to the question of availability, it may be
important that it is more difficult to do irreparable blunders with a freshwater aquarium!
Even if you should shirk your duties with the maintenance work, give too much food, be too
much of a skinflint when you buy the technical equipment, or even totally disregard the
need for learning a certain minimum of biological and technical preconditions, you
actually have a fair chance of getting the aquarium to function - somehow. It may never
get really fun, or genuinely beautiful - but, when one doesn't know any better, it is
incredible what one can be satisfied with!
'Aquarium World' will help you
Even though it is easy to err with aquaria (as with so many other forms of animal
keeping), it is not all that much that is needed in order to succeed very well. It is
merely a matter of over-viewing and understanding certain basic knowledge. With time, you
will get good help with this here at 'Aquarium World'.
Freshwater aquatics are, however, a huge field of expertise, and there are neither books,
nor World Wide Web sites, nor human brains, which embrace it all. 'Aquarium World' will,
though, gradually build a larger database that can help, guide and fascinate you in your
search for knowledge and ideas. Please, remember to come back regularly for updates.
© 1999, Aquarium World
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