It happens to the best of us. It was great when it started, but after a while the excitement of newness begins to wear off. You no longer rush home just to be near, and your desire to meet every need has diminished to the point where you just seem to be going through the motions. The honeymoon's over; you take for granted the things you once cherished. You hope it's just a phase, but deep inside you fear you're headed for....

Old Tank Syndrome.

OK, so maybe it's not quite true that "Aquariums are People, Too". But the analogy may be worth considering: a neglected or poorly maintained aquarium may superficially appear to be doing just fine, but disaster may be brewing beneath its surface.

Perhaps the most important concept to bear in mind is that home aquariums are very "closed systems" - in essence meaning that, with few exceptions, everything we put in the aquarium stays there, in one form or another, until we take it out. That ten ounce can of flake food, two bottles of water conditioner, and even the chemicals present in the top-off water added during the last six months, are all still in there somewhere - unless we have taken steps to remove them. Some of these chemicals will now be in "good" forms (for example, much of the protein in the fish food will hopefully be in the form of bigger, healthier fish), but others will occur in forms more detrimental to the well-being of ...