{"id":814,"date":"2025-11-21T10:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T10:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/?p=814"},"modified":"2026-07-21T11:15:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T01:15:32","slug":"maintaining-a-natural-fish-tank-its-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/2025\/11\/21\/maintaining-a-natural-fish-tank-its-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Maintaining a Natural Fish Tank – it’s easy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Maintaining a natural fish tank is very easy, but if done wrong can result in disaster. So, once you have created a natural tank and have it up and running, what do you need to do in order to keep it a natural miniature ecosystem? In the mainstream (haha) fish keeping hobby you are required to fill the water with all sorts of chemicals, test its PH regularly, change water every week or two, feed three times a day, scrub away algae, and treat sick fish with strange coloured liquids. Dr Freya’s method is different, and follows the other stream of fish keeping – completely natural and minimal work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, there are just three points to keeping a tank: Replenishing the water level, pruning plants and feeding. Your tank should be set up with clean rainwater or creek water and a good light (not near a window), as described in Dr Freya’s ‘Setting up your aquarium’ post. So all you need to do now is keep it topped up with clean water. If you’re living in a cooler climate it is good to warm the water to room temperature before pouring it into the tank, especially if it’s a very small tank. In a larger tank its perfectly safe to pour cold water in. A lot of aquarium guides will tell you that you should do a 10% to 25% water change every 1 to 2 weeks. However with natural aquariums, you should never change the water. Even if it looks a little cloudy, don’t worry. Changing the water will make it even worse, and possibly damage the tank, creating more of a problem. If your tank looks cloudy you can try feeding a little less for a short time and that should help. If the tank stays cloudy, but the fish seem healthy then this is perfectly fine. Sometimes the tank just needs to readjust to new fish, or different temperatures, which is perfectly natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on the plants you have chosen for your tank you will need to prune more or less, but the general idea is to keep it looking neat while still being lush, and making sure the lush overhead foliage doesn’t shade out underneath. If the top becomes too tall and dense, it makes all the leaves and stems closer to the bottom die off from lack of light. This in turn creates rot, and cloudy water. It is important to keep a good amount of swimming space too, or the fish can become depressed. It’s like having a really messy house, with things all up the walls and hanging from the ceiling, which makes most people feel pretty claustrophobic. A natural tank is really an underwater garden – It needs to be clear enough for things to grow, but have enough growth to look lush and natural. Use nice sharp scissors to trim your plants, and here’s a caution to those with very friendly fish – be very careful not to cut them in half – Dr Freya has almost<\/em> done this a lot of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeding fish is also where a lot of people go wrong, and in fact, where fish food packets are giving misinformation. Despite what it claims on commercial fish food packets, you should only feed your fish once a day, not two or three times. The amount is obviously different for each tank, but the general idea is to feed a small, salt pinch sized amount. This measure is extremely disputable too – But whatever your usual salt pinch for some avo on toast would be will probably work out fine. So long as it’s a small amount only once a day, your fish with thrive. Dr Freya’s recommended food is Hikari<\/a> brand fish food, which is made in Japan, and everyone knows that if there’s one thing the Japanese are good at, it’s making fish food. They really know what they’re doing. These three steps are really all it takes to keep a fish tank healthy and growing. And if you’re having any trouble with your tank, Dr Freya is always here to help you with any problems. For any fish tank related assistance, email freya@sotb.au, and Dr Freya will be back to you very soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maintaining a natural fish tank is very easy, but if done wrong can result in disaster. So, once you have created a natural tank and have it up and running, what do you need to do in order to keep it a natural miniature ecosystem? In the mainstream (haha) fish keeping hobby you are required… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22,7,24,21,11,8,10,23],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tank-building-and-maintenance","tag-feeding-fish","tag-fish","tag-fish-tank","tag-fish-tank-care","tag-fishkeeping","tag-natural-aquarium","tag-organic-fishkeeping","tag-water-changes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2105,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions\/2105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freyasfishkeeping.sotb.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}