You cannot cuddle fish, you do not have to take them out and the care can often include regular feeding and cleaning the aquarium once in a while. Still, entire tribes love their aquarium and a beautiful aquarium in a public building always attracts attention. You can’t grab fish. A brisk walk or a nice romp with a guppie is out of the question. Yet many children are immediately fascinated by the sight of life under water.
Anyone who grows up in an environment with an aquarium will enjoy it in childhood and often remember it later with pleasure. The life of countless organisms takes place on a relatively small surface. Fish are born, eat, multiply, die, in short, lead a life that can be fascinating for the viewer to follow. For growing children, who lead busy lives filled with homework, games and all sorts of other activities, keeping an aquarium is a relatively little time-consuming leisure activity. Feeding the fish can be done in between, cleaning is possible on a Saturday morning or, with the current state of technology, is only necessary once every six months. In addition, life in the aquarium is in many cases very useful as a subject for a school assignment. Educational and yet fun and you don’t have to go all out to achieve a nice result. Certainly with the current state of the art it is increasingly easy to achieve good results and a beautiful aquarium in which the fish swim happily and healthily and the plants look good for everyone. The light can be switched on and off automatically with a timer, there are chemical preparations that ensure that water changes, the time-consuming chore of yesteryear, are seldom necessary and even for feeding there are devices that provide this fully automatically. The only thing that does not happen automatically is keeping the plant growth within limits. Anyone who does nothing about this will soon have a container full of plants in which no fish can move a fin. But clever birds may know a trick there too: put fish that eat plants.
Some guidance;
Younger children obviously need some help and guidance in setting up and maintaining a tank with fish, but older children can do this very well themselves. Depending on the child, an aquarium is not too big a task from the age of eight. Before purchasing an aquarium, it is of course important to be completely sure that the child in question really wants to keep fish. For those who have a son or daughter who interacts every day with an acquaintance who keeps fish and shows great interest in it, that is all too obvious, but many younger children are so interested in so much without really wanting to do it all themselves. Fish are animals and they should be well cared for. Whoever buys fish, for himself or someone else, therefore has a certain responsibility.
Non-allergenic pet;
Most children would like a pet. Everyone knows that a child develops better when it learns to care for another living being. For that reason, many children would like an animal in the house, an animal to take care of and that can be a dog, a cat, a rabbit or bird. Unfortunately, it is increasingly not possible to keep such animals. It happens that children and adults have allergies to everything that has feathers and hair and therefore a pet is not wise. Fish have no such objections and keeping fish is so easy nowadays that children, with the exception of the smallest ones, can look after an aquarium very well. For this reason, an aquarium with fish is the ideal ‘pet’ in many families, which the whole family can enjoy and which is a jewel in the living room.
Cold or warm;
Really cozy fish, where relatively little can go wrong are goldfish. They come in all shapes, sizes and colors and an aquarium with goldfish is a very good choice for those who are going to keep fish for the very first time. Choose a tank that is not too small, provide it with good lighting and a filter and start with a not too large group of goldfish. Of course, before the fish are carefully released into it, this cold water aquarium is planted with the suitable cold water plants: cabomba, waterweed, hornwort and maybe some pennant. Letting go of fish takes some time. To begin with, place the fish, plastic bags and all, in which they were shipped home from the store, on the water in the aquarium. Carefully cut the bag open and drain some of the water from the aquarium into the bag. Repeat this for 15 minutes so that the water in the bag slowly mixes with the aquarium water. The fish, which remain in the bag all this time, get the chance to get used to the aquarium water. After fifteen minutes they may be released into the tank. The advantage of overcoming them slowly is that the fish are less stressed and that is better for their health. If you prefer a warm aquarium, it is best to start with a tropical community tank. It can look almost the same as the cold tank, although an aquarium heater is installed and the plants are suitable for warmer water: vallisneria, rotala, cryptocorine, anubias and many others are suitable.
Safety first;
Because children do not constantly pay attention to possible dangers and because ‘children are just children’, it is even more important when setting up an aquarium in a house where children live to ensure that no dangerous situations arise. Completely safe is an aquarium with built-in filter and heating where the lighting is already installed in the hood. When a reputable brand is chosen, such an aquarium is protected with a fuse that ensures that the power is immediately switched off as soon as something goes wrong. The best security is, of course, that the children know that an aquarium is fun, but not a toy. Be sure not to let young children mess in the tank alone and make sure that they cannot put anything in it that could harm the fish.
For purchase;
An aquarium houses live animals and is not a toy to be bought lightly. Before the first fish or plant is bought, it must be thoroughly discussed who will do what later. Who will feed the fish? Who cleans the aquarium? Who takes care of the plants? And above all, who will have enough time for that. Unfortunately, it still happens too often that people, including children, do not realize enough that maintaining an aquarium takes little time, but regularly takes some time. Feeding does not have to be done every day and siphoning off some dirt, preferably every week.