However, many aquarium owners notice something unexpected after replacing part of the tank water: their fish suddenly appear paler than usual.

While fading colors can be alarming, it’s not always a sign that something is seriously wrong. In many cases, temporary color loss is simply a response to environmental changes.

Understanding why it happens can help you distinguish between normal behavior and situations that require immediate attention.

Why Fish Change Color

Fish use specialized pigment cells called chromatophores to display different colors and patterns.

These cells react to various factors, including stress, lighting, temperature, and even interactions with other fish.

A water change introduces several changes at once. Even if the new water is properly conditioned, it may have slightly different temperature, pH, hardness, or mineral content.

Fish often respond by dulling their colors until they become comfortable with the environment.

For most healthy aquarium fish, this adjustment period only lasts a few hours.

Common Reasons Fish Become Pale After a Water Change

Temperature Differences

A difference of just a couple of degrees can cause temporary stress. Tropical freshwater species are particularly sensitive to sudden temperature shifts.

Using a thermometer instead of estimating the water temperature helps minimize this problem.

Changes in Water Chemistry

Freshwater can alter parameters such as

• pH
• General hardness (GH)
• Carbonate hardness (KH)
• Total dissolved solids (TDS)

Fish that are accustomed to stable conditions may react to these differences by becoming less colorful until they acclimate.

Increased Activity During Maintenance

Water changes often involve moving decorations, cleaning the substrate, or placing hands inside the aquarium. These activities can make fish hide or trigger a mild stress response.

Just as people may become cautious in unfamiliar situations, fish often reduce their normal activity until everything feels familiar again.

Brighter Lighting

After algae is cleaned from the glass and fresh water improves clarity, aquarium lighting can appear significantly brighter.

Some fish naturally display muted colors under intense light and regain their vibrancy once they settle into their normal routine.

When Color Loss Is Normal

Temporary fading is usually nothing to worry about if:

• Fish continue swimming normally.
• They maintain a healthy appetite.
• Breathing remains steady.
• Colors return within several hours or by the next day.

Many experienced aquarists observe this behavior regularly, especially in community tanks containing tetras, rasboras, barbs, and other schooling species.

When You Should Be Concerned

Persistent color loss may indicate an underlying issue if it’s accompanied by:

• Rapid gill movement
• Gasping at the surface
• Clamped fins
• White spots or unusual patches
• Refusal to eat
• Lethargy
• Erratic swimming

If these symptoms appear alongside faded coloration, it’s worth testing your aquarium water immediately. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate levels can reveal whether the problem extends beyond a simple adjustment period.

Tips to Prevent Stress During Water Changes

Match Water Temperature

Always prepare replacement water so its temperature closely matches the aquarium.

Condition Tap Water Properly

Water conditioners remove chlorine and chloramine, both of which can irritate fish and damage beneficial bacteria.

Avoid Large Water Changes Unless Necessary

Routine maintenance generally benefits from moderate water changes rather than replacing a majority of the aquarium’s water at once. Large changes can alter water chemistry more dramatically than fish are accustomed to.

Work Calmly Around the Aquarium

Moving decorations slowly and avoiding sudden disturbances helps fish remain comfortable throughout maintenance.

Interestingly, successful aquarium keeping shares something in common with using the PHBingo app: Consistent results come from understanding patterns rather than relying on chance.

Observing how your fish respond after each maintenance session can reveal valuable clues about what works best for your aquarium.

Fish Species That Commonly Show Temporary Color Changes

Some freshwater species are especially known for displaying temporary color loss after environmental changes:

• Neon tetras
• Cardinal tetras
• Harlequin rasboras
• Discus
• Angelfish
• Gouramis
• Bettas
• Corydoras catfish

These fish often regain their natural coloration once they feel secure and environmental conditions stabilize.

Building a Stable Aquarium Environment

While water changes are essential, consistency is even more important. Fish thrive when temperature, chemistry, and maintenance routines remain predictable over time.

Using quality equipment, testing water regularly, and following a consistent schedule helps reduce unnecessary stress. Over time, fish become accustomed to these routines and are less likely to react dramatically after maintenance.

Final Thoughts

Seeing your fish lose their color after a water change can be unsettling, but it’s often a temporary response to changes in their surroundings.

By matching water conditions closely, minimizing disturbances, and monitoring your fish afterward, you can make routine maintenance less stressful.

The more familiar you become with your aquarium’s normal behavior, the easier it becomes to differentiate harmless adjustments and genuine health concerns.

In many cases, patience is all that’s needed, and your fish’s vibrant colors will return once they settle back into their environment.

The immediate assumption is often that something is wrong. Sometimes that’s true. Other times, the fish is simply behaving exactly as nature intended.

The challenge is knowing the difference between normal shelter-seeking behavior and a warning sign that deserves attention.

Hiding Is a Natural Survival Behavior

In the wild, visibility can be risky. Fish constantly balance the need to find food with the need to avoid predators, defend territory, and conserve energy.

That instinct doesn’t disappear in an aquarium.

Many popular freshwater species naturally spend large portions of the day under cover. Kuhli loaches, plecos, corydoras, and numerous catfish species are known for retreating beneath structures or vegetation, especially during daylight hours.

Even schooling fish such as tetras may become noticeably more reserved when they don’t feel secure in their environment.

For this reason, hiding by itself is rarely enough to indicate a problem. Context matters more than the behavior alone.

A fish that hides periodically but emerges to eat, interacts normally with tank mates, and maintains healthy coloration is often behaving within its natural range.

New Surroundings Can Make Fish More Cautious

One of the most common reasons for increased hiding is environmental change.

Fish rely heavily on consistency. Introducing new decorations, rearranging hardscape, increasing lighting intensity, or moving fish to a new aquarium can temporarily disrupt their sense of security.

This is especially noticeable with newly purchased fish. During the first few days or sometimes weeks, many species spend considerable time evaluating their surroundings before becoming comfortable enough to swim openly.

Patience is usually the best response.

As long as water conditions remain stable and the fish continues eating, temporary hiding during acclimation is generally considered normal.

When Tank Mates Become a Source of Stress

Not all aquarium conflicts are obvious.

Aggressive behavior isn’t always dramatic enough to leave torn fins or visible injuries. In many community tanks, social pressure comes in the form of repeated chasing, territorial displays, or subtle dominance behavior.

The result is often a fish that spends increasing amounts of time hidden while a more dominant tank mate claims valuable swimming space.

This is particularly common when species requirements don’t align. A peaceful fish placed alongside territorial or highly active companions may retreat simply because it no longer feels safe occupying open water.

If hiding behavior appears suddenly, observing the aquarium quietly from a distance can sometimes reveal interactions that go unnoticed during feeding or routine maintenance.

Water Quality Often Shows Up in Behavior First

Fish frequently display behavioral changes before physical symptoms become visible.

Poor water quality, elevated ammonia, nitrite spikes, unstable temperatures, or other environmental stressors can lead to reduced activity and increased shelter-seeking behavior.

A fish that suddenly hides more than usual while also refusing food should raise concern.

Appetite is one of the most useful indicators of fish health. When hiding is paired with loss of appetite, rapid breathing, faded coloration, clamped fins, or unusual swimming patterns, it’s worth investigating water parameters immediately.

In many cases, behavior provides the first clue that something in the aquarium requires attention.

Why More Hiding Places Often Breed Confidence

Many aquarists make the mistake of designing tanks that look open and attractive to people but feel exposed to fish.

Shelter plays an important role in reducing stress. Plants, driftwood, rock structures, caves, and other forms of cover provide fish with places to retreat when they feel threatened.

Interestingly, fish that know a safe shelter is readily available often become more confident in exploring the rest of the aquarium. The goal isn’t to eliminate hiding spots but to provide enough of them that fish don’t feel vulnerable when they leave cover.

It’s similar to how having multiple options can create confidence in decision-making. Whether someone is choosing strategies in Spinplus or a fish is navigating a planted aquarium, a greater sense of security often encourages more active exploration.

When Hiding Becomes a Warning Sign

While hiding is normal for many species, there are situations where it deserves closer attention.

Monitor your fish carefully if hiding is accompanied by:

• Refusal to eat
• Rapid or labored breathing
• Faded or unusually dark coloration
• Clamped fins
• Weight loss
• Swelling or visible abnormalities
• Persistent isolation from other fish

These signs suggest the behavior may be connected to illness, stress, or environmental problems rather than routine caution.

Understanding the Difference

The most important thing aquarium keepers can remember is that hiding isn’t a diagnosis.

Some fish hide because that’s what healthy fish of their species do. Others hide because they’re adapting to a new environment.

Occasionally, fish hiding is one of the earliest indicators that something in the aquarium needs correction.

Instead of focusing on the behavior alone, look at the bigger picture: species tendencies, appetite, water quality, social interactions, and overall appearance.

The more pieces of the puzzle you examine, the easier it becomes to understand what your fish is actually trying to tell you.

Getting compatibility right is genuinely one of the most important skills in the aquarium hobby. It’s also one of the most underestimated by beginners, who often pick fish based on looks alone and figure out the hard way that a gorgeous fish in a store can become a nightmare in a community tank.

The Three Things That Actually Determine Compatibility

When I’m building a community tank, I think about compatibility in three layers.

The first is temperament.

Is this fish peaceful, semi-aggressive, or aggressive? A single aggressive fish can disrupt an entire tank, even if every other inhabitant is perfectly matched to the water parameters and tank size. Temperament sets the baseline for whether a community is going to work at all.

The second is environment.

Do these fish need the same water temperature, pH, and hardness to thrive? You can get away with small differences, but pushing fish outside their preferred range creates chronic stress, and chronically stressed fish are sick fish. This is why researching water parameters for every species before you buy is non-negotiable.

The third — and the one that’s easiest to overlook — is values.

By which I mean: what does each fish actually need from its environment to be happy? Some fish are schooling fish that need to be in a group of six or more to feel secure. Keep them alone or in pairs and they’ll spend the whole day hiding, lose their colour, and slowly decline. Some fish are highly territorial and need specific shelter. Some need open swimming space. Some need dense planting. These aren’t preferences, they’re requirements. And when you match fish who share the same fundamental requirements, something clicks into place. The tank comes alive in a way that a poorly matched community never quite manages.

The Same Principle Applies Everywhere

It’s one of those things that’s obvious in the context of fishkeeping but surprisingly easy to ignore in other areas of life. The environments we put ourselves in, and the people we choose to be in those environments with, shape us more than most of us like to admit.

This is something that SALT, a Christian dating app built and run by a small Christian team, has taken seriously from the ground up. The whole platform is designed around the idea that shared values — not just shared interests or shared geography — are the foundation of a relationship that actually thrives. It’s available in 50 countries and translated into 20 languages, with millions of users worldwide and a core demographic in the 25 to 35 age range.

Rather than matching people based on photos and proximity, it uses values-based filtering and profile badges so that what someone believes and cares about most is visible before any conversation starts. Users send an intro message before a match is even confirmed, which slows things down in exactly the right way. There’s in-app video calling and voice notes for building real familiarity, and the whole environment is kept safe through human moderation, selfie verification, and fraud detection.

The BBC, Vogue, and GQ have all covered it. Success stories include couples who found each other across different continents through shared faith. For Christians who take their beliefs seriously and want a platform built around that from the inside out, it’s become the obvious place to look — not because it’s the biggest, but because the compatibility logic is right.

Getting It Right From the Start

Back in the tank, the best advice I can give anyone building a community is to research before you buy. Every time. Even if you’ve kept fish for years and you’re pretty confident about a species, look it up again. Parameters change, stock changes, and your memory of a fish’s requirements isn’t always as reliable as a fresh look at the care sheet.

The other thing I’d say is don’t rush to fill a tank. A sparse, well-matched community is always going to outperform an overcrowded, poorly-matched one. Give each fish the environment it actually needs, choose tankmates that share its requirements, and the tank will reward you with something genuinely beautiful to sit and watch.

Compatibility isn’t everything, but it’s the thing everything else depends on. Get that right and the rest tends to follow.

I wish you and your fish the very best!

In this article, we explore how armored catfish contribute to aquarium ecosystems, why they are so popular, and how to care for them properly. Whether you are setting up your first tank or upgrading an existing one, understanding their importance can elevate your aquarium experience.

What Are Armored Catfish?

Armored catfish belong to a group of freshwater fish characterized by bony plates covering their bodies instead of traditional scales. One of the most well-known examples is the Plecostomus, often referred to as “plecos” by aquarium enthusiasts.

These fish are native to rivers and streams in South America and have adapted to thrive in a wide range of aquatic conditions. Their ability to cling to surfaces and feed on algae makes them especially valuable in aquariums.

Natural Tank Cleaners: Keeping Your Aquarium Balanced

One of the primary reasons armored catfish are so popular is their role as natural cleaners. They feed on algae, leftover fish food, and organic debris that accumulate in aquariums over time.

Benefits of Their Cleaning Behavior:

• Algae Control: They help prevent excessive algae growth on tank walls and decorations.
• Waste Reduction: By consuming uneaten food, they reduce waste buildup.
• Improved Water Quality: Less waste leads to better water conditions and healthier fish.

While they are not a substitute for regular tank maintenance, armored catfish significantly reduce the workload for aquarium owners.

Enhancing the Aquarium Ecosystem

Armored catfish do more than just clean—they contribute to the overall balance of the aquarium ecosystem.

Ecosystem Contributions:

• Nutrient Cycling: They break down organic matter, helping maintain a stable nitrogen cycle.
• Substrate Interaction: Their movement along the tank bottom prevents debris from settling.
• Compatibility: Most species are peaceful and coexist well with other fish.

Their presence helps create a more natural and self-sustaining environment, which is essential for long-term aquarium success.

Ideal for Beginners and Experts Alike

One of the standout qualities of armored catfish is their adaptability. They can thrive in a variety of tank conditions, making them suitable for aquarists of all skill levels.

Why They’re Beginner-Friendly:

• Hardy and resilient
• Low maintenance requirements
• Wide availability in pet stores

Why Experts Love Them:

• Diverse species with unique appearances
• Useful for maintaining large or complex tanks
• Ability to thrive in community aquariums

This versatility makes them a staple in the aquarium hobby.

Aesthetic Appeal and Unique Behavior

Beyond their practical benefits, armored catfish add visual and behavioral interest to aquariums. Their distinctive appearance and habits make them fascinating to watch.

Notable Features:

• Armored plating gives them a prehistoric look
• Sucker mouths allow them to cling to glass and decorations
• Nocturnal activity patterns provide nighttime interest

Their calm demeanor and unique movements create a soothing and engaging viewing experience.

Proper Care for Armored Catfish

Despite their hardy nature, armored catfish still require proper care to thrive. Understanding their needs ensures they remain healthy and effective in your aquarium.

Key Care Tips:

1. Tank Size

• Larger species like plecos require spacious tanks (at least 20–30 gallons or more).

2. Diet

• Supplement algae with sinking pellets, vegetables like zucchini, and occasional protein.

3. Water Conditions

• Maintain stable temperature (22–28°C)
• Ensure proper filtration and regular water changes

4. Hiding Spots

• Provide caves, driftwood, or decorations where they can rest during the day

5. Tank Mates

• Choose peaceful species to avoid stress or aggression

Providing the right environment will maximize their lifespan and effectiveness.

Common Misconceptions About Armored Catfish

Many aquarium owners misunderstand the role of armored catfish, which can lead to improper care.

Myth 1: They Clean Everything

While they help control algae, they cannot replace regular cleaning routines.

Myth 2: They Stay Small

Some species grow quite large, so research is essential before adding them to your tank.

Myth 3: They Don’t Need Feeding

They still require a balanced diet beyond algae.

Understanding these misconceptions helps ensure responsible fishkeeping.

Choosing the Right Armored Catfish for Your Tank

Not all armored catfish are the same. Selecting the right species depends on your tank size, setup, and goals.

Popular Options:

• Bristlenose Pleco: Smaller and ideal for beginner tanks
• Common Pleco: Larger, better suited for big aquariums
• Rubber Lip Pleco: Great for algae control and moderate tank sizes

Each species has unique requirements, so careful selection is crucial.

The Joy of Aquarium Maintenance and Relaxation

Maintaining an aquarium can be both rewarding and therapeutic. Watching armored catfish glide along surfaces and quietly maintain balance in your tank offers a calming experience.

In many ways, this mirrors other relaxing hobbies where consistency and patience yield satisfying results. For example, casual entertainment platforms like gamezone slots provide a similar sense of relaxation and engagement, where small actions contribute to a larger, enjoyable experience. Just as armored catfish help maintain harmony in an aquarium, simple leisure activities can help maintain balance in daily life.

Long-Term Benefits of Keeping Armored Catfish

Adding armored catfish to your aquarium is not just a short-term decision—it’s a long-term investment in the health and stability of your aquatic environment.

Long-Term Advantages:

• Reduced algae maintenance
• Improved tank cleanliness
• Enhanced ecosystem balance
• Increased visual diversity

Their presence contributes to a more sustainable and enjoyable aquarium setup.

Conclusion

Armored catfish are far more than just background fish in an aquarium—they are essential contributors to a healthy and balanced aquatic ecosystem. From controlling algae to enhancing water quality and adding visual appeal, their importance cannot be overstated.

Whether you are a beginner setting up your first tank or an experienced aquarist refining your setup, incorporating armored catfish is a smart and beneficial choice. With proper care and understanding, these remarkable fish will not only improve your aquarium’s condition but also enrich your overall fishkeeping experience.

By recognizing their value and providing the right environment, you can create a thriving aquatic ecosystem where every species—including your armored catfish—plays a meaningful role.

Teaching kids about water safety can start in small ways at home and gradually progress to larger environments like lakes, beaches, and swimming pools. By introducing water in stages—from fish tanks to supervised swimming—children develop both confidence and caution.

Starting Small: Learning Responsibility Through Fish Tanks

One of the easiest ways to introduce children to water awareness is through something simple like a fish tank. Aquariums are not only beautiful but also educational. Kids quickly learn that water is a living environment that requires care and responsibility.

When children help feed fish, clean the tank, or observe how fish move and breathe, they begin to understand that water is more than something to splash around in—it’s an ecosystem. Parents can explain how fish rely on clean water and how sudden disturbances can affect them.

Through these activities, children begin to associate water with responsibility. They learn that water environments must be treated carefully, which lays the foundation for understanding water safety later in life.

Bathtime Lessons: The First Step Toward Water Safety

Bathtime is another opportunity to introduce important water concepts. Many parents see bath time as playtime, but it can also be a learning moment. Children can be taught simple rules such as sitting while bathing, avoiding rough splashing, and always having an adult nearby.

These early lessons help kids understand that even shallow water requires attention. A bathtub might seem harmless, but teaching caution at this stage builds habits that carry over into bigger water settings.

Parents can also start introducing the idea of floating, blowing bubbles, and gently putting their face in the water. These small exercises make children more comfortable in water while reinforcing the importance of calm behavior.

Moving Outdoors: Exploring Water in Nature

As kids grow older, they become curious about natural water sources like ponds, rivers, and lakes. These environments are perfect for teaching them how unpredictable water can be.

For example, ponds may look calm but can have slippery edges. Rivers may have currents that are difficult to see from the surface. By observing these natural environments together, parents can explain why certain rules exist around water.

Children should be encouraged to:

• Stay close to adults near water
  
• Avoid running on wet surfaces
  
• Never enter unfamiliar water without permission
  
• Understand the depth of water before stepping in
  

These discussions help kids recognize that water can change depending on the environment, which builds awareness and caution.

Building Confidence Through Structured Swimming Lessons

Once children are comfortable around water, the next important step is formal swimming instruction. Swimming lessons provide children with essential life skills while reinforcing the importance of safety and respect.

Learning to swim is not just about fun—it’s about survival skills. Children who participate in structured lessons learn how to float, kick, breathe properly, and move confidently in water. These skills help reduce panic if they accidentally fall into water.

Professional instructors also teach important safety habits such as entering pools safely, recognizing pool signals, and understanding pool rules. Many parents choose trusted programs like Nemo Swim School because experienced instructors combine skill-building with safety education.

Through consistent practice and guidance, kids gain the confidence they need to navigate water safely while still respecting its power.

Understanding Pool Rules and Boundaries

Swimming pools are often where children spend the most time around water. While pools may appear controlled and safe, they still require strict safety habits.

Teaching kids clear pool rules is essential. These rules should be simple and repeated often so they become second nature.

Important pool rules include:

• No running near the pool
  
• Always asking permission before entering the water
  
• Using appropriate flotation devices if needed
  
• Never swimming without adult supervision
  

Children should also understand the difference between shallow and deep areas of a pool. Visual markers and depth signs can help them identify where they are safe to swim.

Parents can reinforce these lessons during family swim sessions by calmly reminding children of the rules and explaining why they exist.

Teaching Respect, Not Fear

One common mistake parents make when teaching water safety is focusing too much on fear. While children should understand that water can be dangerous, they should not become afraid of it.

The goal is to teach respect rather than fear.

Respect means understanding that water deserves careful attention. Kids should feel confident exploring water while knowing when to pause, ask questions, or seek help.

Encouraging curiosity is important. Children who feel comfortable asking questions about water—such as how currents work or why pool rules exist—are more likely to develop responsible habits.

This balanced approach helps kids feel empowered instead of intimidated.

Making Water Education Fun and Engaging

Children learn best when lessons are fun. Water safety education does not have to feel like a lecture—it can be built into everyday activities.

Parents can turn water lessons into games and challenges. For example:

• Practicing floating contests
  
• Seeing who can blow bubbles underwater the longest
  
• Identifying safe and unsafe behaviors around water
  

These playful activities reinforce skills while keeping children engaged.

As kids grow, structured lessons that help them learn to swim can expand these skills further. Swimming programs combine technique training with water safety education, helping children become stronger and more capable swimmers.

Encouraging Lifelong Water Awareness

Teaching children to respect water is not a one-time lesson. It’s an ongoing process that evolves as kids grow and experience different environments.

Younger children may start by learning about water through fish tanks and bathtubs. As they get older, they encounter swimming pools, lakes, beaches, and water parks. Each new environment offers opportunities to reinforce safety and awareness.

Parents can support this learning by:

• Modeling safe behavior around water
  
• Encouraging swimming skill development
  
• Discussing potential water hazards
  
• Supervising children during water activities
  

Over time, these repeated lessons become habits that stay with children for life.

Creating Confident and Responsible Young Swimmers

Water is a source of joy, adventure, and relaxation for families everywhere. From watching fish swim in a tank to diving into a backyard pool, water provides countless opportunities for learning and fun.

However, these experiences are safest when children understand the importance of respecting water. By introducing water awareness gradually—starting with small environments and progressing to larger ones—parents can build both confidence and responsibility.

When children grow up understanding how to behave around water, they become safer swimmers and more responsible individuals. They learn that water is something to enjoy, but also something to approach with care.

With guidance, patience, and consistent teaching, kids can develop a healthy relationship with water that lasts a lifetime.

In recent times, Lisbon has established itself as one of the most important cities for culinary tourism. Visitors from all over the world want to explore the destination and its typical attractions, but they also want to discover traditional dishes, culinary secrets and stories, and how other cultures and geography have influenced the culinary scene, all through a food tour Lisbon.

What can you do in Lisbon?

Lisbon boasts a wide array of tourist and cultural attractions. In this destination, you can stroll through the streets of classic neighborhoods that still retain their essence, explore world-famous monuments, and enjoy viewpoints offering breathtaking vistas of the city.

One of the most popular attractions is the Belém Tower. This fort, built hundreds of years ago, represents Portugal’s Age of Discovery. The Jerónimos Monastery is located a short distance away and is a magnificent structure that reflects the country’s historical importance.

One neighborhood you absolutely must visit is Alfama. This is one of Lisbon’s oldest areas, and you’ll be able to admire the streets, the cobblestones, and the colorful buildings that create a truly unique atmosphere.

Finally, another symbol of the city is the yellow tram. One of its lines travels through Lisbon’s most traditional neighborhoods, allowing visitors to explore many sights while enjoying the scenery.

Gastronomic tourism around the world

For some years now, culinary tourism has become a growing trend. Many people plan their trips with the destination’s cuisine as their primary focus. This includes recipes passed down through generations, exotic flavors, traditional dishes, and understanding the culture through food. You can experience this firsthand with an amazing food tour Lisbon.

Gastronomic tourism has grown because food allows people to connect with the identity of a particular destination or region. Each ingredient in a dish, the cooking methods, the recipes, the climate, the geographical location, and the customs can transport people to another era and help them understand different aspects of a region.

This is a great experience for people of all ages and for all types of travel. It doesn’t matter if you’re traveling alone, with family, children, or friends. Either way, you’ll enjoy this type of tourism because it allows you to combine unique activities such as visiting markets, exploring restaurants, and discovering local producers.

Lisbon is undoubtedly one of the favorite places for gastronomic tourism because it has a lot of factors: gastronomic traditions, fresh products, modern businesses and innovative techniques that are mixed with traditional ones.

Typical dishes of the city

The cuisine in this destination is based on fish, seafood, spices and some simple ingredients that provide a lot of flavors.

Cream pie

This is one of the most famous sweets in the entire country. It’s a small tart made with puff pastry and filled with custard.

Some people prefer to eat it warm and sprinkle cinnamon or a specific type of sugar on top.

Bacalhau á Brás 

This is a typical dish from Portuguese cuisine. The star ingredient is shredded cod.

First, should be skipped the onion and garlic in olive oil. Then, add the flaked fish and diced potatoes that have been previously fried. Next, mix everything with eggs until the mixture has a smooth and creamy texture.

Grilled sardines

This is a famous dish in the city, especially when the summer festivities arrive.

This recipe is simple but packed with flavor. Fresh sardines are seasoned with coarse salt and grilled. Some people prefer to serve them with bread or other side dishes.

Lisbon and gastronomic tourism

The city boasts several key attractions that have made it a perfect destination for those seeking to explore culture through gastronomy. Lisbon offers a wide array of restaurants, from small, family-run establishments to world-renowned fine dining venues.

Furthermore, the city is located next to the Atlantic Ocean, which means that the cuisine features fresh fish and seafood as its main ingredients at all times.

Another interesting point is that there are gastronomic markets where you can enjoy specialty preparations, all in one place.

Finally, the hospitality of the locals is essential for a pleasant stay. Lisbon’s relaxed atmosphere allows for better experiences and enables visitors to interact with the locals and learn much more about the culture, customs, and traditions.

Lisbon is a clear example of how a tourist destination can offer much more than landscapes or historical and popular sites.

In a world where tourists seek new experiences, gastronomy is a great way to understand everything about a place’s culture.

I’ve been keeping fish for years, and my fish food collection has grown accordingly. But here’s the thing: I’m not a hoarder. Every single thing in that drawer earns its spot. I’ve tried a lot of fish food over the years, and I’ve thrown out plenty of it after flipping it over and reading the ingredients. If the first thing on the list is “fish meal” – the vague, unspecified kind – it goes in the bin. Life is too short to feed your fish garbage.

So today I’m pulling open the drawer and walking you through exactly what’s in there and why.

The Golden Rule Before We Start

Before I get into the actual products, I want to hammer this home one more time: ignore the front of the package. The front is marketing. The back is the truth.

Any fish food brand can slap a picture of a gorgeous, neon-colored fish on the packaging and write “ENHANCED COLOR FORMULA” in big letters. What matters is what’s actually in the food. You want to see whole fish, krill, shrimp, spirulina, algae meal: real, high-quality ingredients near the top of the list. What you don’t want is vague “fish meal” or terrestrial fillers like corn and soy dominating the first few ingredients.

OK. Drawer open. Let’s go.

1. Omega One Super Color Flakes

This one is basically a permanent resident of my drawer. It’s been in there for years and it’s not going anywhere.

Omega One Super Color Flakes are built on a genuinely solid foundation: salmon and whole herring as the top two ingredients, followed by whole shrimp. Right away, you’re looking at three high-quality, easily digestible protein sources. These aren’t mystery proteins scraped off the floor of a fish processing plant, these are whole ingredients that actually nourish your fish.

What really makes these flakes stand out is the color-enhancing lineup packed into the formula. Marigold extract, astaxanthin, and canthaxanthin are all present, and they work. I’ve fed these flakes to community tanks and watched the reds, oranges, and yellows on fish just pop over time. It’s not an overnight transformation, but it’s real and it’s consistent.

The flakes themselves float well at the surface before slowly sinking, making them perfect for mid and top-water feeders. Even my pickier fish, and I have a few drama queens in my tanks, eat these without hesitation.

There is some wheat flour and wheat gluten in the ingredient list, which is the one knock against them. Fish can’t really digest terrestrial grains well, and they’ll just pass through as waste. But those ingredients are far enough down the list that they make up a small percentage of the overall formula. It’s not a dealbreaker.

Best for: Community fish, color-conscious aquarists, pretty much any tropical fish

2. Fluval Bug Bites Tropical Formula

This one caused a bit of a stir when it first came out, and rightly so. Black soldier fly larvae as the primary ingredient was a bold move, and it paid off.

The science behind it is solid. Insects are a natural part of the diet of most freshwater fish. In the wild, a tetra or a rasbora isn’t turning down a bug that lands on the water’s surface. Black soldier fly larvae, specifically, are almost pure protein because they don’t have an exoskeleton to contend with. The result is a highly digestible, protein-dense food that closely mimics what fish would encounter in nature.

My cichlids go absolutely berserk for Bug Bites. I mean that literally, when the container comes out, they’re already pressing against the glass. It’s borderline embarrassing how excited they get.

The pellet size works well for small to medium fish. The formula also includes salmon as a secondary ingredient, which gives it a nice nutritional boost. There are no terrestrial grains in this one either, which is a genuine rarity in this hobby.

Best for: Tropical community fish, carnivorous and omnivorous species, fish that need high protein

3. Zoo Med Spirulina 20 Flakes

These big green flakes have been in my rotation for a long time. They look a bit alarming at first, they’re huge and very green, but your fish will work out what to do with them pretty quickly.

Spirulina is one of those ingredients that’s worth its weight in gold for fish. It’s a blue-green algae (technically a cyanobacteria, for the pedants among us) that is absolutely loaded with vitamins, minerals, and easily digestible protein. It’s particularly good for enhancing blue and green coloration, which makes these flakes a great pairing with the Omega One Super Color Flakes if you want to cover the full spectrum.

Beyond the spirulina, these flakes contain dried krill and shrimp meal, which gives them solid animal protein sources, along with plankton meal. The protein sources listed are salmon fish meal rather than generic fish meal, which is a meaningful upgrade in quality.

The one downside is that soy flour appears fairly prominently on the ingredient list, which isn’t ideal. But the quality of the other ingredients more than compensates, and the spirulina content is genuinely impressive. I’ve had consistent growth and good coloration from fish fed on this food.

Large flakes can be crushed between your fingers for smaller fish, which makes them versatile across different tank sizes.

Best for: Herbivorous and omnivorous fish, enhancing blues and greens, larger community fish

4. Repashy Super Green Gel Food

Every fish keeper eventually discovers gel food, and when they do, they usually have the same reaction: why didn’t I start using this sooner?

Repashy Super Green comes as a powder that you mix with boiling water. It sets up firm (think a very stiff Jello), and you can drop chunks into the tank, coat a piece of driftwood with it, or press it onto a flat rock for grazing fish to work through at their own pace. Fish that have never shown any interest in flakes or pellets will absolutely demolish gel food.

Super Green is specifically formulated for herbivorous fish, and the ingredients are outstanding. Spirulina algae sits right at the top of the list, followed by chlorella algae and several other plant-based ingredients. There are no terrestrial grains, no mystery fillers, and no generic fish meal.

I keep this in the drawer specifically for my plecos and any herbivorous fish that need more plant matter than flakes can reliably provide. It’s also excellent if you ever need to medicate a sick fish, you can mix medication directly into the gel before it sets, which means your fish gets their treatment without you having to play games trying to get them to eat medicated food.

The only “downside” is that you have to make it yourself, which takes about two minutes. If that’s too much effort, I don’t know what to tell you.

Best for: Plecos, herbivorous cichlids, any fish that grazes, sick fish needing medication

5. Omega One Freeze Dried Krill

The treat in the drawer. Every drawer needs one.

This is exactly what it sounds like: a container full of freeze-dried krill, whole. Nothing else. No fillers, no terrestrial grains, no vague ingredients, just krill.

Fish go crazy for these. It’s a high-protein supplement that makes a fantastic addition to any varied feeding routine. Krill also contains carotenoids in abundance, which means feeding them regularly will help bring out the reds, pinks, and oranges in your fish’s coloration. Combined with the color enhancers in the Omega One Super Color Flakes, you’ve got a genuinely effective color-boosting feeding strategy.

The krill can be on the larger side for smaller fish, but you can easily crumble them up between your fingers before adding them to the tank. Bigger fish can eat them whole, or just tear off pieces.

I don’t use these as a staple diet, freeze-dried foods work best as a supplement or treat a few times a week. But as a high-quality, single-ingredient treat with real nutritional value, these are hard to beat.

Best for: Medium to large fish, boosting red and pink coloration, high-protein supplementation

The Bottom Line

A good fish food drawer doesn’t need to be complicated. You want a solid flake or pellet as your staple, something plant-based for your herbivores, a gel food for variety and medication purposes, and a quality treat to round things out.

What you don’t need is a shelf full of brightly-packaged foods with corn and soy at the top of the ingredient list. Read the back of the package. Every time. It takes ten seconds and it makes a real difference to the long-term health and color of your fish.

Your fish can’t tell you what they need. That’s your job. Fortunately, it’s not that hard once you know what to look for.

Providing mental stimulation and understanding your betta’s natural habits not only keeps it entertained but also promotes long-term health and activity. This article explores practical ways to enrich your betta’s environment and decode their behaviors so you can enjoy a thriving, playful betta.

Understanding Betta Behavior

Before you give your betta new toys or make changes, watch how it moves. These fish are smart and aware of their surroundings because they react in clear ways. When you run around and poke at plants, it usually feels fine and safe. If it stays behind a decoration for most of the day, something might be wrong. Do you ever rub up against the edges of glass? That habit usually means being uncomfortable, and it might also mean being alone. 

The fish sometimes pushes out its gills and fans its fins. This could mean energy or pride. It’s okay to stay like that for a short time, but if you stay like that for too long, it could be bad for you. When males feel safe, they often make floating bubble clusters, which is a mating instinct. These signs can help you make care plans that work with how your betta really acts.

Rotating Decorations and Plants

When you move the plants and decorations around, your betta will be more interested. Moving pieces around instead of keeping them still opens up new paths that mimic how this fish naturally swims through water. To make it feel more like the wild, try moving rocks or putting a cave in a different corner every few weeks. Slow changes are important because quick changes could hurt the helpful microbes that live in the glass walls. Throwing in a leaf that is floating or tilting a fake log a little bit could cause bursts of nosing and darting. What looks small to us often means a lot more down below. Stability is still important even when things are changing.

Safe Toys and Interactive Play

To keep your betta busy, try putting safe things in the tank that are made for fish. You could get your pet to move and be interested by giving them floating ping-pong balls, small tunnels, or a mirror to watch closely. Limit mirror sessions to short amounts of time because too much time in front of one can be stressful. Swimming through or around things keeps you active and your mind sharp. When your fish meets new things in the tank, pay attention to what it likes. That behaviour gives you clues about what it likes. Use those clues to choose new things that it will like.

Creative Feeding Techniques

Your betta can stay sharp and move around during mealtime. Instead of just throwing food down, spread pellets through the plants so the animals have to find them. A feeding ring or slow-release device makes eating take longer, which makes people act in ways that are natural. This makes dinner more interesting and cuts out boring parts. If you keep doing them, your fish might start to look forward to these little puzzles. Routine tasks like these make activity build up slowly.

Target Training and Bonding

A tiny pointer or even the tip of your finger could help a betta learn the small moves it picks up quickly. When you show these fish a mark to follow, they catch on quickly. For example, you can nudge them close to something tasty and then eat it. Think of short games every now and then, nothing too long, just fun times that keep things interesting. Each round slowly builds trust as the two of you work together without rushing or forcing it. Gentle touches help, and so does giving food after a job well done, like giving praise at the right time. When the pressure is low and joy sneaks in every minute, learning happens best.

Encouraging Natural Behaviors

Your betta will act more like itself in a calm place. When males are comfortable, they often make bubble nests at the top. Open surface areas help this behaviour. There are clumps of plants or small shelters below that look like wild hideaways and make people want to explore instead of being scared. You can change your fish’s environment quietly by watching what it does every day. Less time stuck near walls and more time swimming freely thanks to peaceful routines.

Safety Considerations

Adding things can help, but keeping your betta safe is the most important thing. It might get too much change or too much handling, so take it easy. When you look in a mirror, pay close attention for a short time. Things inside the tank need smooth surfaces and no sharp edges. Before putting new things in water, always wash them well. When you add new things, the water conditions often change, so it’s important to check the quality. Keeping an eye on things helps keep things stable, which is important. The betta can play and change without stress as long as the steps are followed. Even when something new comes into view, comfort comes from consistency.

Final Thoughts

Seeing how your betta acts can help you make the environment better. Changing plants from time to time gives you new things to look at without adding stress. If you check for sharp edges first, floating things might be interesting. Meals became puzzles that made people eat more slowly and made them curious. If you see tiny bubbles rising, it could mean nesting. Give that instinct some room. When energy fades, shadows under leaves make quiet places. Changes that are too big can mess up routines, so small steps are best. Safety is always more important than variety. A steady mix of calm and change will help make the future better.

Breeding angelfish is really fun and extremely rewarding, but it’s quite a commitment to raise the fry.

So, today I’ll go over the ins and outs of breeding angels and raising their fry. 

An Outlet for Fry

Before you start breeding angelfish, make sure that you have a solid way to rehome the fry that you breed.

Angelfish can produce a hundred babies with each spawning and each breeding pair will spawn every week and half to two weeks for several months a year.

That’s a lot of babies that will take up a lot of space and require quite a bit of care, especially the first two weeks of their lives. It’s impossible to keep them all.

I hate to think of someone starting to breed them, not having a way to rehome fry, and then flushing them to get rid of them all. 

Getting a Breeding Pair

Acquiring a breeding pair is the first big hurdle to breeding angelfish.

The most surefire way to get a breeding pair is to buy a proven pair from a private breeder. This can be quite expensive, and difficult to find, especially for the more exotic varieties.

If you don’t want to lay down the money for a proven pair, your best bet is to buy a large group of juvenile angels, at least six or so, put them into a 55 gallon (208 liter) or larger tank, let them grow up together and then wait for them to pair up on their own. 

It’s a good idea to get fish from several different breeders so that you get males and females that are not all related to each other. I would suggest sourcing from a few different private breeders since big box stores often use the same fish wholesalers.

The fish should be fed a varied diet of high quality flake foods, occasional baby brine shrimp and bloodworms. Good nutrition will help the fish grow more quickly and get them conditioned for breeding.

As well, I highly recommend doing 50% weekly water changes. Fish excrete hormones and pheromones into the water column that, if allowed to build up in the water, can inhibit fish growth. 

An excess buildup of nitrate can also greatly stunt fish growth and negatively impact fish health. Water changes remove built up nitrate, hormones and pheromones, helping fish to be healthy and grow more quickly.   

Even with excellent care, you may have quite a wait before you get a pair. 

Angels don’t become sexually mature until they are at least six months old. I’ve had groups that didn’t show any interest in pairing up until they were almost 18 months old. 

Most breeders sell their fish that are a few months old, so it can take a while for the fish you buy to become sexually mature and pair off.

Sexing Angelfish

When they are juveniles, males and females look pretty much identical. How I wish you could easily tell them apart at 3 months old!! It would have made my life SO much easier!

But, at least, once they’re mature, angelfish are fairly simple to sex.

First off, males are substantially larger than females. I’ve had pairs where the male appeared to be almost 50% bigger than the female.

Secondly, males have a slightly different head shape. It’s a bit subtle to discern, but once you’ve seen it several times, it becomes more obvious.

Males’ heads have a much more pronounced outward curve from their dorsal fin down to their nose.

The females’ head does curve from the dorsal fin to the nose, but it’s a completely smooth curve without the slight outward hump that males get.

Once you can identify males and females, it’s still important to wait for fish to pair up. It’s generally not as simple as putting a male and female together. Angelfish won’t just automatically breed because one of each sex is present. Some pairs of fish live together for years and will never breed.

Watch for Pairing Behavior

Once your group of fish have started to become sexually mature, you may start to see some of them display pairing behavior:

• Chasing – the pair will start to stake out a territory and will begin chasing off other fish. The pair will move away from each other to chase off another fish, but they will continually move back to be near each other.
• Picking – both fish will start to pick clean a vertical surface in the tank. They’ll do their best to clean off any algae or other gunk on it. This gives their eggs the best chance of sticking as the female lays them.

Usually when you see this behavior, it’s a safe bet that those two fish have become a mated pair, and you can move them to their own breeding tank.

Breeding pairs will need their own tanks. Yes, it’s possible for them to lay and hatch eggs with other fish in the tank, but it is incredibly stressful for the parents. And the other fish in the tank will eat the babies once they are free swimming.

Setting Up a Tank for Angelfish Breeding

Tank Size

It’s important to make sure you put your breeding pair in a large enough tank.

Some commercial breeders put each pair in a 20 gallon high tank, but I really think this is much too small unless you plan on doing water changes at least twice a week.

I would recommend putting a pair in at least a 30 gallon, but I think a 40 gallon is even better. This makes sure that you have plenty of water volume to prevent rapid and drastic swings in parameters. Plus, this gives the fish plenty of swimming room when they’re not tending eggs.

Filter 

If you’re going to breed angels, I highly recommend using sponge filters, especially for fry tanks. They’re relatively cheap, easy to set up and simple to maintain.

They don’t create a huge amount of flow, which is important for fry and grow out tanks. It’s fine to use hang-on-the-back or canister filters for tanks that have adult angels, as long as the flow isn’t excessive, but tiny fry and juveniles can easily get sucked up by strong filters.

You want your baby angels to be putting their energy into growth, not constantly trying to swim against dangerous current in their tank.

Hands down, Hydro Sponge are my favorite sponge filters. I have used this brand for decades. I tend to get the pro version that has coarser sponge. They don’t get clogged up as fast as the finer sponge.

I also like that you can add on a diffuser to these sponge filters, making them much quieter than other brands.

If you need to use a canister or hang-on-the-back in a tank, I highly recommend at least adding on a sponge pre-filter to the intake. This will prevent fry from being sucked into the filter.

Heater

Angelfish originate from the Amazon where water temperatures are very, very warm.

Unless your room temperatures stay over 78°F (26°C), you will need a heater in your tank. 

I have always kept my angel breeding tanks between 78°F-80°F (26°C-27°C).

I ran an extensive experiment comparing popular heater brands. Without a doubt, the Fluval E Series heaters are the best, most reliable heaters on the market. They are now the only heaters I buy. 

Five of my eight aquariums are heated. Four of those have Fluval E Series heaters. And the only reason that the fifth doesn’t have an E Series is because there’s nothing wrong with the Fluval M200 that’s been in there for years. But, when I do need to replace that M200, I’ll be getting an E Series to replace it.

To see our in-depth comparison of aquarium heaters

Lights

Angelfish don’t have any specific lighting requirements. You can pretty much use whatever kind of lighting you want.

But, if you want to grow plants in the tank, I highly recommend getting some Hygger plant lights.

Yes, there are fancier, more expensive brands than Hygger. But now that I’ve been comparing lights for years, Hygger has become my favorite.

Not only do I get ridiculous plant growth, but the fish look amazing under these lights. And Hygger lights are way cheaper than a lot of their competitors.

Lid

I prefer to keep a lid on my angelfish tanks.

It helps keep the lights from getting splashed, cuts down on evaporation and helps keep heat from escaping, which saves electricity.

Also, every once in a while, a young angelfish will get a wild idea and try to jump out of the tank. It’s not often, but it does happen.

Substrate

Angels do not have specific substrate requirements. I’ve kept them on gravel, sand, inert planted substrates and even in bare bottom tanks.

I would just caution against using planted substrates that put out ammonia or nitrate unless you have prior experience with them.

Plants and Decor

OK, so you don’t have to have plants and decor for angelfish, but I recommend giving them at least something to hide behind for when they feel stressed.

When you’re growing out juveniles so they’ll pair, I would recommend giving them a fairly normal tank decor wise: plants (live or fake), rocks, driftwood and or resin decor. This gives them hiding places and can give squabbling fish a break from each other.

Some folks keep their angel pairs in almost completely bare tanks. Others keep them in fully planted tanks that look like a jungle. Both kinds of setups can be successful.

I personally kept my breeders in fully planted tanks. I think it helped reduce stress, especially while they were guarding eggs or small fry.

But, it did sometimes make catching fry more difficult. However, I felt like that trade off was worth it.

Breeding Slate

In the wild, angelfish lay their eggs on some sort of vertical surface in the water: a rock, a leaf, a sunken log, a tree root, etc.

In an aquarium, angels will lay eggs on plant leaves, filter intakes, decor, sometimes even the glass.

Most of these are very inconvenient if you want to harvest eggs or wrigglers from the tank.

A breeding slate is great for both you and the fish. Slates give the parents a smooth, angled surface that makes it easy for the female to deposit eggs on and for the male to then fertilize. 

A slate can also be easily removed from the tank when you want to harvest eggs or young fry.

Slates used to be made almost exclusively of actual slate stone, but these days, you can find ones made of ceramic or even plastic.

Some people also use the ceramic cones that Discus breeders prefer.

I like these hang-on-the-side plastic breeding slates because they’re easy to put in different positions in the tank. 

I also like that they’re not down on the bottom, making it easier to vacuum the substrate during water changes.

The Breeding Process

Once your pair are settled into their new tank, they will hopefully start breeding.

The expectant parents will choose a nesting site and start picking at the surface to get it free of algae.

You’ll see them start to hover around this area almost continually, leaving it only to eat.

Once she’s ready, the female will glide very close to the surface, depositing lines of eggs as she moves in an upward motion. The male will then move along the surface, releasing sperm to fertilize them.

They’ll take turns, going back and forth this way until the female is out of eggs. This process can take several hours.

It’s important not to disturb the pair while they’re in the process of laying eggs. If it’s time to feed them, but you see that they’re still laying eggs, just skip feeding them for right now, and add food later. I can tell you from experience, the parents will be very hungry after they’ve finished laying, so just offer them a snack once you see they’ve stopped laying and switched to guarding their clutch of eggs.

Sometimes, the male doesn’t get close enough the first few times the pair lays eggs, resulting in unfertilized eggs. He usually gets better after the first few attempts. Give the pair three or four attempts before giving up on them.

Hatching Eggs

Once the pair have laid their eggs, they’ll stay close to them, guarding them against any potential harm.

They will aggressively chase off other fish, shrimp or even snails that come near the eggs. They’ll go after your hand (don’t worry, they can’t actually hurt you), a net, a gravel vacuum or anything else that moves close to their nest.

Over the next few days, the parents will pick off unfertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs will become bright white, like a sheet of paper, while fertilized eggs will remain a sort of pale yellowish milky color.

Normally, the female will eat the unfertilized eggs. This is a really good thing because the bad eggs rapidly start to break down and grow fungus that can easily spread to the good eggs.

After 2-3 days, depending on temperature, the eggs should hatch and wrigglers should emerge.

At this stage, the fry stay stuck to the surface they were laid on. They have an attached egg sac that they feed off of for several more days.

If Your Angelfish Pair Eat Their Own Eggs

Some angelfish will eat their own eggs after they’re laid, even perfectly good ones that have been fertilized.

If your fish eat their first, or even their second, batch of eggs, this could just mean that the male didn’t do a great job of fertilizing them.

Give the pair a chance to figure out how to lay their eggs properly. But, if batches of eggs keep getting eaten again and again, then you may need to pull the eggs as soon as they’re laid.

You’ll need to keep a close eye on the pair when they lay. As soon as the two stop making passes back and forth across the breeding slate, pull it out and immediately put it in another tank. 

It’s best to use a small tank, something like a 5 or 10 gallon. It’s best to heavily, heavily aerate the water with an airstone, making sure that there is a strong flow of water constantly going over the eggs. 

To keep down fungus, add methylene blue. This strong blue dye does a great job to cut down on bacterial and fungal growth.

Just do your best to keep it off your hands and clothes, it stains like crazy!!

You’ll need to change the water out daily. Make sure to use a dechlorinator.

Raising Fry

Fry Tank

While fry are very small, all you need is a 10 gallon (39 liter) tank. The smaller size makes it easier to make sure that the baby fish can find the food you give them.

It’s a good idea to have a separate tank set aside for raising your angelfish fry. 

Most parents that don’t eat their eggs will happily raise their own fry but, if you want to speed up how often the parents will lay eggs, you’ll need to remove the babies when they’re very young.

Also, if you have the parents in a planted tank, collecting the babies once they can evade you becomes a major hassle, believe me. I once spent an entire day chasing 3 month old angels around with a net until I caught them all.

Fry tanks don’t have to be fancy. You mainly just need a sponge filter, a heater and a little bit of decor, like a fake plant so the babies have a little cover to hide around if they feel insecure.

You can make it more elaborate, if you want, but these basic elements are all you need.

Hang-on-Front Hatchery

Alternatively, for the first few weeks, you can keep your angelfish fry in a hang-on-the-front hatchery.

I’ve raised many batches of fry in this Fluval hatchery, but you do have to modify it slightly.

You attach a small air pump (sold separately!) to the lift tube on the hatchery. This pulls water from the main aquarium into the body of the hatchery. At the other end of the hatchery is a little return drain that spills water back into the main aquarium.

This drain has a small grate that’s meant to keep baby fish from swimming into the main aquarium. But, the slats on the grate are too big and newly hatched angels can easily pass through it.

To fix this, I wrapped mesh from an old fish net around the grate and kept it in place with a few dots of super glue. 

I also highly recommend that you install both a non-return check valve and a control valve on the airline. 

The check valve stops water from back flowing into the pump if the power goes out and the control valve lets you control how much air is going to the bubbler, which in turn controls how much water is going into the hatchery.

I like these little USB powered air pumps for the hatcheries. You don’t want too big of a pump, and these are perfect.

Feeding Fry

Feeding your baby angels is where the real work comes in. It is very important to remember that angelfish fry do not require food until they are fully free swimming!

Adding food too early can cause uneaten food to grow fungus that can kill your angelfish fry. 

For the first week after they become free swimming, I recommend that you feed your baby angels three times a day. You’ll see their little bellies turn orange as they gorge themselves on brine shrimp.

Once they’re a week old, they’ll eat more shrimp per feeding, but only need to be fed twice a day.

At 3 weeks is usually when I start to introduce brine shrimp substitutes. I usually do one feeding with brine shrimp substitute and one with actual brine shrimp.

At a month old, I usually convert them over to crushed flake food. I usually still do one feeding of brine shrimp a day because I found that it gave the best growth. At this age and beyond, the baby angels will readily accept frozen brine shrimp.

Hatching Brine Shrimp

Some people recommend using powdered foods for newly hatched angels, but I disagree. Live baby brine shrimp get the attention of angel fry. I really don’t recommend powdered foods until they’re a bit older.

You’ll need to get brine shrimp hatching once the eggs hatch and you’ve got wrigglers.

It takes at least 18-24 hours for brine shrimp to hatch, so I would usually set up the shrimp hatchery 24-36 hours after the fry emerge from their eggs.

To hatch brine shrimp you’ll need:

• Brine shrimp eggs
• Brine shrimp hatchery
• Air pump
• Salt 

I highly recommend investing in a quality brine shrimp hatchery.

I love the one made by V Aquavista Aquatics. I’ve hatched dozens and dozens of batches with this thing, it’s great. 

You can hatch enough shrimp with this hatchery to feed four batches of angelfish fry for 2-3 days.

You do need your own empty 2 liter soda bottle. I recommend using one that is completely clear.

And you’ll need to add on an air pump. The same little pumps that I recommended for the hang-on-the-front hatcheries work perfectly for this. 

I use a turkey baster to suck up brine shrimp and place them in the fry tank. Watch your fry eat and adjust how many shrimp you’re giving them at a time. It’s OK to have a few stray brine shrimp, but you don’t want too many dying in the water and fouling things.

Holding Brine Shrimp

It’s easy to hold brine shrimp for several days. I use a 2 gallon plastic container and aerate it with an airstone. This lets me keep live brine shrimp around for 2-3 days so I don’t have to hatch them every single day.

Again, those same little USB air pumps are the perfect size for this task.

After 2-3 days though, the shrimp will start to die off. Make sure to dump them out promptly at that point or they’ll start to stink.

Freezing Brine Shrimp

I like to freeze some of my excess baby brine shrimp. Older angel fry will gladly eat them, as will adult fish.

I scoop up brine shrimp with a net, then suck them up with a pipette and put them in little plastic tubes with lids that are made for freezing brine shrimp. It’s really easy. The tubes even come with a little organizer box. 

Once I’ve filled up what I want, I just put the whole thing in the freezer for use later.

When I want to feed the frozen shrimp, I just float one of the tubes in the tank for a few minutes, and then dump the brine shrimp into the water. It’s super easy.

Brine Shrimp Substitute

Some breeders swear by brine shrimp substitute as a first food, but I really do not. It’s great when the fry are several weeks old, but when they’re itty, bitty, powdered foods don’t draw their attention the way that live foods do.

I recommend waiting until the fry are at least 3 weeks old before you start trying to offer commercially prepared foods instead of live foods.

Water Changes

I can’t stress enough how important water changes are when you are raising fry. I highly recommend at least two 50% water changes per week. Even more if you’re using small tanks.

This will keep nitrate low, replenish minerals and get rid of the hormones in the water that can inhibit fish growth.

Growing Out Angelfish Fry

Don’t keep your angelfish in crowded conditions as you’re growing them out.

After they’re about 2-3 weeks old, they’ll need to be bumped up into grow out tanks. 40 gallon tanks work best, but will only be sufficient for a month or so. You’ll then need to divide your crop of babies between several 40 gallon tanks as they grow larger.

Keeping too many young angels in a tank that’s too small will result in bent fins and poor water conditions.

Make sure to stay on top of water changes. It will help keep the water parameters in check and will help speed growth.

Culling Fry

This is a hard subject to talk about, but if you’re going to breed fish, you’re going to have to cull.

It’s inevitable that you will have fish with poorly shaped fins, bent spines or other  defects.

If you have fish that need to be culled, I recommend that you put them in a small container of water and add several Alka-Seltzer tabs to the water. The CO2 that the tabs put out will quickly and humanely kill the fish. 

Just make sure to leave them in the water for several minutes to make sure that they’re completely dead before you dispose of them.

Is Breeding Angelfish Right for You?

Breeding angelfish is really fun, but it’s also a whole lot of work and takes up quite a bit of room.

Look, it’s not for everyone. There’s no getting around hatching live food for them, in my opinion, and you’ll need to do quite a few water changes to keep them healthy and growing well.

I don’t want anyone to get halfway into this venture, only to find themselves completely overwhelmed by how much care the fry require.

But, if you have the time and inclination, I find breeding angelfish to be extremely rewarding. 

I especially liked when they would first start to look like angelfish, instead of just little tadpoles. 

And watching their colors start to come in was really neat, too.

I hope you find this article helpful.

I wish you and your fish the very best!

They’re a great way to supplement your plants, even if you don’t have nutrient rich plant substrate. 

But, root tabs are powerful fertilizers that aren’t suited to every tank. 

Today, I’ll go over what kind of tanks do and don’t need root tabs, and then some of the different kinds of root tabs that are available on the market, so you can make the best choice for your aquarium.

Overview On Root Tabs

Not every tank needs root tabs, far from it, in fact. Tabs are very concentrated fertilizers that can leach nutrients into the water, sometimes faster than plants can use them; proceed with caution.

But, if you’ve got a heavily planted tank, populated by heavy root feeders, tabs may be just the thing to provide a steady flow of nutrients to your hungry plants.

I recommend adding a very small number of tabs and then monitoring your water parameters to ensure there are no spikes in nitrites/nitrates or GH.

Does Every Planted Tank Need Root Tabs?

Nope. 

Root tabs have some seriously concentrated fertilizers that can be too much for small, low-tech tanks to handle.

If you have low lighting, slower growing plants, with no CO2, you likely don’t need root tabs at all. You’d likely get better results from liquid fertilizers that make it  easier to control nutrient levels within your tank.

Tabs leach nutrients into the water as they break down, and you really can’t control the rate at which they do this. 

Sometimes, they break down too quickly and cause the GH and other parameters to rise beyond healthy levels faster than the plants can use up the nutrients. This can be detrimental to fish and invertebrates in your aquarium.

Please, be careful!

Can Root Tabs Cause Nitrite/Nitrate Spikes?

Yes!

Please, be aware, that as they dissolve, root tabs can put off nitrite and nitrate. 

If you’re just starting out using this kind of fertilizer, add just a few tabs, wait a few days, and then test your water parameters.

Adding too many root tabs all at once can cause spikes that may stress your fish.

Start slowly and keep your eye on your water parameters. Add one or two tabs (do not ever add more than the directions recommend!!), and monitor how your water is affected.

If your parameters start to get to unhealthy levels, I recommend digging up the tabs to prevent more fertilizers from being released, as well as frequent water changes.

For an in-depth comparison of aquarium testing kits, please, see our article, here.

Which Plants Benefit from Root Tabs?

Heavy root-feeding plants get the most benefit from root tabs.

Most carpeting plants draw a lot of nutrients from the substrate, species like dwarf baby tears, dwarf sagittaria, dwarf hair grass.

If your substrate is not very nutrient rich, you can supplement it with root tabs to help lush plants like these grow in a thick mat along the bottom of your tank.

Cryptocorynes also love root tabs. The tabs provide a ready flow of nutrients as they dissolve that the crypts will gladly tap into.

Larger root-feeding plants, like Amazon swords and jungle vallisneria, will have much more lush growth, if they have fertilizer available for them to uptake through their roots. 

What Kinds of Plants Don’t Benefit from Root Tabs?

Stem plants, like water wisteria, rotunda, anacharis, moneywort, pennywort, etc, get their nutrients directly from the water column and don’t get much benefit from root tabs.

I would recommend dosing the water column with liquid fertilizers, if you primarily have stem plants.

Also, epiphytic plants, like Java fern, anubias or various mosses, feed from the water column and don’t need root tabs.

Research the kinds of plants you have in your tank. Your plants may not benefit from root tabs. It’s easier to control nutrient levels when you dose with liquid fertilizers, so they’re a better choice for plants that don’t feed from their roots. 

Best Root Tabs For Planted Tanks

Seachem Flourish Tabs

In general, you can’t go wrong with Seachem products. I pretty much consider them to be the highest industry standard in the aquarium trade. 

Flourish Tabs contain both macro and micronutrients to help your plants grow.

They contain very rich fertilizers that are best suited to fast-growing plants in high tech tanks.

Contains: 

• Nitrogen
• Phosphate
• Potassium 
• Calcium
• Magnesium
• Sulfur 
• Boron
• Cobalt
• Copper
• Iron
• Manganese
• Molybdenum 
• Zinc

Planted Aquarium Concepts Fertilizer Tabs

These root tabs from Planted Aquarium Concepts are also nutrient rich and provide all of the macro and micronutrients your plants need to thrive.

Again, this is some high octane fertilizer, best suited to a high tech tank.

Contains:

• Nitrogen
• Phosphate
• Potassium 
• Iron
• Magnesium
• Manganese
• Boron
• Zinc
• Molybdenum
• Calcium
• Nickel
• Cobalt
• Sulfur

API Root Tabs

API Root Tabs are a bit more basic, they only provide macronutrients and a bit of iron. But, they’re good for providing a small boost without the worry that they’ll increase the tank’s GH.

These are better suited to low tech tanks with plants that just need a little pick-me-up.

Contains:

• Nitrogen
• Phosphate
• Potassium 
• Iron

Final Thoughts

Not every tank needs root tabs, far from it, in fact. 

It’s only tanks with fast growing, root-feeding plants that really need root tabs.

Tabs are very concentrated fertilizers that can leach nutrients into the water, sometimes faster than plants can use them; proceed with caution.

But, if you’ve got a heavily planted tank, populated by heavy root feeders, tabs may be just the thing to provide a steady flow of nutrients to your hungry plants.

I recommend adding a very small number of tabs and then monitoring your water parameters to ensure there are no spikes in nitrites/nitrates or GH.

Take things slow and be careful.

If things really get out of whack, I recommend digging up the tabs, just to be safe.

I hope you find this article helpful.

I wish you and your fish the very best!