How should an aquarium smell?

Not an idiot, i've had fish for years and just started getting guppies in
the last year and there were so many things i "should" have known, but
didn't, dont worry about it, you know now, we all make mistakes, hay at
least you did not kill anything......
Nikki




"Suzie-Q" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Koi-Lo" wrote:

- "Suzie-Q" wrote:
-
- Should a freshwater aquarium have a smell?
-
- A clean healthy aquarium has a faint pleasant lake-like aroma.
-
- Sometimes I get a "stale" smell coming from my 2.5-gallon betta
aquariums.
-
- It sounds like it's time for a partial water change!
-
- And I sometimes get a foul smell from my 10-gallon aquarium (a dozen
- glo-light
- and neon tetras, a pleco, a SAE, and about four ghost shrimp).
-
- This tank sounds a bit overcrowded and probably also needs some partial
- water changes. Larger changes and more often. Vacuum the gravel as
well.

Overcrowded with all those little tiny fish (and shrimp)? Another thing I
never
would have imagined.

- I vacuum the tank and do water changes, although probably not as
often as
- I should.
-
- How often are you doing them? A least once every 10 days?!?!?!

Maybe every two or three weeks. I'll start doing them more often.

- I've also started using distilled water, since our local tap water
- is very hard and God only knows what's in it! (I won't drink the
stuff.)
-
- Fish will die at some point in distilled water. It's not a good idea
and is
- also expensive when water change time comes. You can mix it 50/50 with
your
- tap water if your tap water is hard and alkaline.

Man, I'm an idiot when it comes to fish. I had no idea about the distilled
water. I'll use the tap water from now on. How about filtered tap water?
(I
have one of those Pur filters that attaches to the faucet.) Is that okay?

Thanks to all of you who responded.
--
8^)~~~ Sue (remove the x to e-mail)
~~~~~~
"I reserve the absolute right to be smarter
today than I was yesterday." -Adlai Stevenson

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It should smell like youwouldn't mind drinking it. Tough to do in
a small tank where the population densty is orders of magnitude
higher than in nature.

--
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On Tue, 7 Mar 2006 03:52:07 +0000 (UTC), (Richard
Sexton) wrote:

It should smell like youwouldn't mind drinking it. Tough to do in
a small tank where the population densty is orders of magnitude
higher than in nature.

Smell is such a subjective sense - I could say a good aquarium smells
like a handful of perfectly prepared spring garden soil, or a
perfectly aged compost heap, but non-gardeners couldn't relate to
that. Bottom line is that a healthy aquarium should never have a smell
that is offensive to anyone. If something smells bad to you, then
something's wrong with your water.

-- Mister Gardener