Freshwater

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Part III: Water, Chemicals, and Plants
ammonia and chlorine to help whiten your laundry unless you wanted to
spend five days in an oxygen tent, right? Well, your fish don’t cope well with
excessive mixtures and overuse of chemicals either.
Chemicals are chemicals. We cannot stress this point enough! Any chemical
can be dangerous if it is mixed with the wrong substance. Although this is not
a common hazard with aquarium chemicals, certain mixtures and overdoses
can be lethal to your fish. Before you use any type of chemical, read the
bottle very carefully.
Overdosing — adding too many chemicals at one time, or even adding too
many chemicals over a long period of time — can affect the water conditions
(pH and so on) in your aquarium. Dumping bottle after bottle of treatments
into your tank also makes your fish look like they’re swimming around in a
swamp, and we guarantee that they’ll end up hating you for it. The point is
that you shouldn’t just dump 15 bottles of chemicals into your aquarium
hoping one of them will work. (If you have to step carefully while walking
across your fish’s room to avoid crushing discarded chemical bottles, you’re
probably overdosing.)
When should you use chemicals?
When you treat diseases, use chemicals as a last resort. Try one of the many
more natural ways available (weekly water changes and keeping an eye on
temperature and pH) to help your fish avoid illness (see Chapter 11). If you’re
just starting an aquarium, you can use chemicals a little more frequently
because you need to dechlorinate your water and condition it. But you still
don’t want to over do it. Too much of anything is usually bad in some way or
other.
Following instructions to the letter
Always follow all the manufacturer’s instructions on the label! Don’t skip any
steps and follow through on the entire recommended treatment or usage
time!
If you don’t understand the instructions or the ingredients on a chemical’s
label (sometimes they seem to be written in some weird alien dialect), don’t
hesitate to contact the product’s manufacturer and have someone there help
clear up your questions. You will often find a 1-800 number right there on the
label. If you’re in a hurry, ask your local dealer for help.