Aesthetic arrangement of Aquarium - Part V

Watch fish everyday

Sometimes, fish in an aquarium start dying or become ill. Examine them carefully and try to diagnose their signs or symptoms. If a fish dies suddenly, check the quality of water. Change the water of an aquarium, if possible. Overfeeding may also cause poisonous effects. Some detergent, filthy spray, etc, may also be harmful to the fish. You may need to clean everything very thoroughly with running cold water and make them sun-dry.

If aquarium fish appear just a little off-color but there is no specific sign of any disease, test the water, change it and add a dose of broad spectrum medication. Any fish having signs of any disease is treated separately. Consult fish pathologist.

Fungus and ich are common disease-causing organisms in fishes. White cottony patches develop in fungal diseases while ich occurs after a period of stress – such as fluctuating water temperatures, and looks like small grains of salt. In case of fungal infections fishes can be treated individually. Addition of few drops of methylene blue also keeps fish fungus free. Application of malachite green keeps fish ich free.

Aesthetic arrangement of Aquarium - Part IV

Food for Fish

Most fish prefer to eat the food with a fishy smell. Ensure dates of manufacturing and expiry, if any, while buying fish food from the market. The fish should be fed once a day. It is better to feed them less to maintain their constant health.

If you provide live food like tubifex, give them in a porous cup, fixed in the front glass, after proper treatment. Dried tubifex and daphnia powder also may be fed to fish, if they are of genuine quality.

Behavior

While selecting fish, we should consider that fish should have normal swimming behavior. They should have rounded belly outline. Fish having shaky behavior and which standstill, are not fit for an aquarium. The fish should not have white spots over their body surface. The fins should be erect and there should not be any cut in any fin. Bloody fins need to be avoided. Fish with woody structure (fungus), external parasite are not suited for aquarium.

Add new fish

Check all the fish everyday to ensure that they are looking healthy and happy. Change fish, if they develop some unhealthy signs. And also watch carefully new fish that you have added. Sometimes, due to the addition of an alien fish, other tank mates are afraid and stick to particular corner only. This problem disappears gradually.

Aesthetic arrangement of Aquarium - Part III

Utility of Right Place
Choose the right place in your house to keep the aquarium so that it can enhance the aesthetic beauty of the house to the maximum. It should also help maintain with minimum efforts. Avoid the place where direct sunlight comes because it helps develop algae growth inside the grass. Place the aquarium at a light angle to the natural light. A place with diffused light is ideal.
If you want to place your aquarium in front of glass window, put a single dark colored screen behind the aquarium to focus the attention of viewers. It should have the direct attraction of your visitors and guests entering the house and add to the beauty of your drawing room.

How many fish should be kept in an Aquarium?
The aquarium should be provided with fish by according to their size. Add fish by calculating which length (cm) and breath (cm), divided by 20, it comes = 135. If the average length of the fish is 4 cm, you can roughly place 34 fish in your aquarium with proper aeration and using a sponge filter.

Fish combinations having almost similar behavior should be used. Therefore six sets of fish combination have been recommended based on their nature, feeding behavior and aggressiveness.
Set 1: All kinds of gold fishes except comet (Oranda, shubunkin, fantail, redcap, Bristol, lionhead, calico, etc) with tiger or albino white shark.
Set 2: Guppy, molly, swordtail, platy, widow tetra, tiger barb, chanda, zebra danio medium sized, rosy barbs, small angels and few loaches.
Set 3: Koi carps, tiger shark, big angels and big tiger barbs.
Set 4: Sarpae tetra, neon tetra, diamond tetra, red eye tetra, tiger barbs, rosy barbs and tinfoil barbs.
Set 5: All types and Oscars and angels.
Set 6: Rainbow, kissing, golden blue gourami, etc can be placed with a few cichlids.

Aesthetic arrangement of Aquarium - Part II

How to Design?

A submersible thermostat heater is used to keep the water pleasant, in winter season. But as such a fish is a poikilothermic animal and adapts body temperature to the changing environment. A sudden change in the temperature may create problems and stress-related diseases. Both types of fishes, indigenous and exotic, can be kept in the same aquarium. But these fishes should be selected on their compatible size and behavior. Marine aquariums offer, by far, the greatest diversity and colors in all the three categories. However, marine aquariums need some technical know-how from a subject matter specialist. One can easily fabricate an aquarium for one’s requirement. First of all buy a tube of silicon rubber and a gun. For a rectangular aquarium, five pieces of specific glass cuts are required. The back glass may be replaced with a mirror, if a back screen is not necessary. But people always prefer to put a plant or rock screen rather than a mirror. One silicon tube can fix 5-6 aquariums for 2.5 ft’ 1 ft’ 1 ft size.

For a rectangular aquarium, glass cuts of different thicknesses are used. These may be made according to the space available and utility of the user. Te aquarium should be kept parallel to one’s eyeline or three feet above the floor over a table. A piece of one-inch thermocol sheet is put below the aquarium to with stand its load uniformity.

Aesthetic arrangement of Aquarium

How to Design?

An aquarium can be designed according to the need and space available. It may be made like a bowl or a large, transparent cuticle in size. Glass, acrylic or quadrangular RCC (Cement) is used to make an aquarium. A glass piece is used to put on its front view. Though acrylic aquariums are breakage-proof, they are prone o scratches. Hence, glass aquariums are best preferred.

Nowadays moulded rectangular, cylindrical glass aquariums, though expensive, are available in the market. Owing to lack of space in houses, especially in living rooms, people prefer to use a wooden stand for keeping household things and on the top of that, they keep the an aquarium. The aquariums of various shapes like rectangular, triangular, hexagonal or trapeze may be used to fulfill the aesthetic appeal. Three types of aquarium indigenous, exotic and marine are popularly used. Each type of aquarium has its own guidelines to use.

The Chemistry of Laughter – Part III

Beneficial laughter

Because of the beneficial effects of laughter, a novel plan to introduce it as therapeutic measure was drawn. There was a reason to believe that a “feel good” sensation could actually prevent a simple cold from developing into a fever or bronchitis. An out burst of merriment does wonder for customer satisfaction. Laughter is a symptom of joy and happiness, so we can really do is to try to teach people to be more joyful, happier and less stressed out. We help them to define what happiness is for them. It’s different for everybody. Humans have many ways to express themselves, but one of the most enjoyable and mysterious one is laughter, emphasize researchers. When the world is going over board about benefits of laughter and medical fraternity has taken it so seriously that laughter wards in hospital may not be distant development, it is natural that there should be research in the various aspects of laughter. According to researches, far more than the sum of mouth, tongue and throat noises embody laughter which, “like love, is the most baffling of phenomena. Trying to get a grip of it is wrestle with clouds. The harder you work at it, the more elusive it becomes.

The Chemistry of Laughter - Part II

Age – wise Laughing
One of the saddest things that happen to us in life is that around the age of 6 or 7, we are told to stop laughing and be serious. Children smile on average 400 times a day, but by the time they grow up it is only 6 times. We’re all born with a capacity to laugh to laugh; it is just that in the West we are told not to. Laughter is not as spontaneous or infectious in the West as it is in the third world. We do not just feel good while laughing; there is a wide range of biochemical reactions going in inside our body that causes that good feeling.
It increases antibodies in saliva infections, decreases scrum cortisol thus providing an antidote for the harmful effects of stress. Laughter also makes the body secrete an enzyme that protects the stomach from forming ulcers, relaxes muscles throughout the body, aids in reducing the symptoms of neuralgia and rheumatism, benefits mental functions, reduces blood pressure and heart rate, liberates interleukin and other immune boosters, releases endorphins which provide natural pain relief, helps move nutrients and oxygen to body tissues, etc.
Fear initiates high blood pressure and anger triggers heart attacks, paralysis, and acidity, kidney malfunctioning and skin and liver disorders. All these problems can be averted if happiness is injected into the lives of people.

The Chemistry of Laughter

When you laugh your whole body benefits. Laughter causes chemical reactions that have beneficial effects within the body. Your lungs are exercised and your heart gets some tuning up. Mann has succeeded in increasing his life expectancy and in some countries today it touches 80 plus. But he has failed to make his years full of life. Instead, his years have over-whelming been condemned to tension and depression, both of which result in a host of tormenting diseases.
It is indeed tragic that man has condemned himself to this pathetic state though there is the free elixir of laughter for the mere asking and in any measure, to counter tension, depression and stress and to make like worth living sans serious health hassles.
The elixir however cannot be obtained from any pill or injection. There is as yet no medical deice to effectively induce laughter. Despite that, world medical authorities are all praise for it and are increasingly delving into studying its benefits. Robert Holden, Psychologist and laughter specialist, who set up Britain’s First National Health Services Laughter clinic and is the author of Laughter, The best medicine, says that while laughter is itself medicinal, unfortunately it cannot be prescribed. “Wouldn’t it be terrific if laughter were something we could get from a pill or injection? This would be just wonderful,” he says.