Keeping the aquarium clean and the fish healthy

Thanks for the comments. About keeping the aquarium clean and the fish healthy:

1. I use two Whisper filters that are each rated for up to 30 gallons, in a 29 gallon aquarium. I felt this was important because I’m breaking the rule of thumb not to have more than 1 inch of fish per gallon of water. The fish I have came from a fast moving stream, so I'm sure they appreciate as much oxygen and water movement as possible.

2. I feed gold fish flakes to the dace (the darters won't touch flakes), and then I throw in a cube of frozen bloodworms (i.e. mosquito larvae). The darters and logperch go into a frenzy over the bloodworms, and afterwards there is rarely anything left to get sucked into the filter or settle into the gravel. Uneaten food is the quickest way to make the water nasty.

3. I change out 5 gallons of water about once every other week, and then maybe once a month I’ll take the fish out, stir the gravel up so all the crap floats up, and then change out around ¾ of the water before stuff has a chance to settle back down.

4. I wait as long as possible to change out the carbon filters, because they’re expensive. I take them out once a week and rinse them out in the sink to get big stuff off them.