4) Cool it: If you enjoy airconditioning so does your dog.If you have a cooled space share it with your pooch.

5) No closed encounters: Never leave dogs in a completely closed space. If your dog is home, Leave on fan. In a car, leave window partially open.

6) Let it all hang out: Dogs sweat from their tongues so never tie or muzzle mouth in summer. Whilst giving medical treatment see if you can hold head rather than tying mouth. If you have to tie mouth be sure to release as quickly as possible.

7) Do not bathe your dog more than once a month. Soap/ Cleansers strip their skin of natural oils and lead to skin irritation. when dirty you can simply towel dry with a damp towel.

STEP 7: Add water to aquarium. To avoid messing up your gravel and plants, you can place a plate or saucer in middle of your aquarium and direct water flow onto plate. Use room temperature water when filling. To remove chlorine and chloramine, use something like Tetra AquaSafe for Aquariums. Don’t completely fill up aquarium until you are sure of layout of your decorations. Otherwise, when you place your arm in to move stuff around water is going to spill over. Doh!

STEP 8: Set up equipment. Install your heater but don’t plug it in until thermostat in heater has adjusted to water temperature. This usually takes about 15 minutes or so. Hook up your filter and any other equipment you have, then top off aquarium water to just under hood lip. Place your hood and light on aquarium and then check your power cords to be sure that they are free of water. I would also recommend using a drip loop on all of power cords to be extra cautious. Plug all of equipment into a power strip and then “turn on” aquarium.

STEP 9. Wait, wait, wait and then wait some more. I know, you want to add some tropical fish. But, in order to do this right you must wait until your aquarium has cycled before adding any fish. There are ways of speeding up this process. Check out nitrogen cycle page to learn more. If you must use fish to cycle, try to get a hardier species like zebra danio or cherry barb.

STEP 10. Add tropical fish. Only add one or two fish at a time. Adding a couple tropical fish at a time gives your filtration system time needed to take on increased biological load that new fish introduce. When you bring fish home let bag float in tank for about 15 minutes so that fish can become acclimated to temperature and pH of aquarium water. After 5 minutes of floating bag you should add some of aquarium water to bag so that fish can become acclimated to pH level in aquarium. This will help reduce amount of stress imposed on tropical fish. Stressed tropical fish often leads to dead tropical fish! Don’t feed your tropical fish on first day. They probably wouldn’t eat any food on first day anyway. Let them get acquainted with their new home.

STEP 11. Get ready for regular maintenance. Be prepared to spend some time once every week or two to clean your tank. Performing regular water changes will reduce nitrate levels and keep your tropical fish happy and healthy.

For more tropical fish and aquarium information, please visit FishLore.com - Tropical Fish & Aquarium Information.