Water Chemistry in Saltwater & Freshwater Aquariums

"Hi! I am Marc on behalf of expertvillage.com. I am getting a little further into aquarium maintenance. Let me first say that I can’t stress the importance of maintaining your aquarium on a regular basis. Generally speaking freshwater aquariums you do a water change and maintenance service on the aquarium about every four weeks, saltwater about two weeks, saltwater reef tanks about every week. Now the details of each one of them vary slightly but there are some basics that all of the maintenance are built upon. The number one basic that you are going to build upon for any maintenance is the water chemistry itself. You can’t tell by looking at an aquarium regardless of how clean it looks to your naked eye just how chemically clean or biologically clean it really is. You have to do a water test on it. The basic water test for most tanks are pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. When you get into saltwater you can add alkalinity, when you get into reef tanks you can add a plethora of things from calcium to strontium at all different levels that you have to test. If you need more information on this, please see us on our website at www.underwaterdepot.net."