Fish Keeping 

It’s with great excitement that we welcome all our clients to our fish and pet centres. Started in August 2008 Stodels management set up Milnerton, Bellville and then finally Kenilwor.

These pet centres are managed by Jacques Solomon (Bellville), Andre Abrahamse (Milnerton), and Keagan Krishella (Kenilworth). With a wealth of experience and knowledge, these pet centres wish to provide our clients only the best in information, customer care and professional sales service.

As this is our introductory article, we will provide our clients with a basic understanding of animal care. This will be provided on a monthly basis, so we hope that it will not only help with understanding, but that you look forward to our article every month.

This month we will be discussion Fish keeping :

Most of you at some or other time have kept a fish at home, whether in a bowl, tank or pond. You might remember this as being a successful exercise or it might have been disastrous, but let’s look at some basic principles:

Fish are divided into 3 categories namely: Cold water, Tropical and Marine Fish.

Their requirements differ but let’s look at the basic setup for all fish.

Every aquarium has specific needs but whatever setup you’re running, you need to kick start the aquarium. First rinse out your stones and add tap water in to the appropriate level. Add a heater if you are setting up a tropical tank, desired temperature is 26 degrees Celsius. It is essential to remove many of the chemical in tap water. Stodels have products that remove chlorine, chloramines and heavy metals from the water. Once this is removed, biological supplements of beneficial bacteria that eliminate toxins have to be added. Don’t forget to add a dose at each water change to top up bacterial levels. Once this is in, filters can be activated. It’s best to wait for your tank or pond to settle before adding in fish gradually, usually about 24-48 hrs. The secret is not to add too much fish too soon, as the system needs to mature first. There are organic products that allow for immediate introduction of fish available at our pet centres. Fish when bought needs to be floated in their bags for approximately 20 minutes. Once opened introduce about a cup of the tank / pond water to the packet wait approximately 5 minutes and net the fish out, introducing it in a gradual stress free way into your tank or pond. The water in the packet must be discarded.

In our next article we will be discussing more basic pet care and types of fish.

Happy fish keeping to all our clients.