After setting up, it’s time for the most important and most exciting part: caring for your aquarium.
Maintaining a “normal” aquarium consists of nothing more than doing a partial water change (about 30%) every two weeks and cutting back the aquarium plants which have grown too long. ProScapers carry out daily partial water changes of up to 80% (this is not a typo!) as soon as their aquarium is set up. After only 6 days the plant growth is perceptible and their tools become important. With the help of different scissors the plants are trimmed and any leaves which aren’t perfectly developed or taking up too much space, are removed.
The spring scissors ( JBL PROSCAPE TOOLS S SPRING ) are perfectly suited to cut down moss and fine plants. With angled scissors ( JBL PROSCAPE TOOLS S CURVED ) the cutting of plants is very easy and with the wave scissors ( JBL PROSCAPE TOOLS S WAVE ) trimming the lawn (in the aquarium of course) will become a piece of cake. The next maintenance measures consist of the water analysis and the subsequent fertilization: First measure the individual factors CO2, Fe, K, Mg and nitrate and then set up a timetable for the fertilizing of your scape using the fertilizer calculator ( ProScape dosage calculator ).
After the daily partial water change during the first six days you can extend this to a weekly partial water change of a third. The usual removal of the substrates with a gravel cleaner ( JBL AquaEX Set 20-45 ) is not possible in many scaped aquariums because of their meadow plants. If this is the case do not use the gravel cleaner and suck off the dirt with the open hose end over the meadow plants. The meadow plants will prevent the dirt from penetrating any more deeply into the soil. With fine sand, such as JBL Sansibar SNOW or JBL Sansibar WHITE , cleaning the ground is also tricky, because it is too fine not to be sucked in. Siphoning the dirt with the open hose end from a certain distance to the sand is more suitable here too. The most important care measure of all is to siphon the ground in combination with the partial water change!
Glass pane magnets are most suitable for cleaning the aquarium. Ideally with a floating inner part ( JBL FLOATY II ), so it can never accidentally fall into the gravel, causing trapped gravel stones to scratch the pane. The JBL ProScape Cleaning Glove has been designed to remove algae coating on technical and decorative items. Even if the silvery-white glove ( JBL PROSCAPE CLEANING GLOVE makes you feel like Michael Jackson, it is a great help when cleaning and many aquarium owners say they couldn’t manage without it anymore.
The annual replacement of the fluorescent bulbs belongs to the maintenance steps. They lose a lot of their luminosity in 12 months and also change their light spectrum. Staggering the replacement of the bulbs is recommended, so that the bulbs are never changed in one go.
To find out what the results of correct maintenance can be (and it’s really not difficult), have a look at the following video:
