Answers, without the murk.

Aquary is a diary for your aquarium or pond. You record water tests, fish, care routines, equipment and spending, and Aquary keeps the whole history, with charts, reminders, weekly reports and honest answers about your own tanks.

iPhone and iPad (iOS 26 or later), with an Apple Watch app for Aquary Pro subscribers. It also runs on Apple-silicon Macs as the iPad app. Everything stays in sync through iCloud.

No. Aquary has no accounts, no sign-up and no passwords. Your data lives on your device and in your own private iCloud. We never see it.

From the Fish Room (the home screen), tap the + button and choose New Tank. Give it a name, a photo if you like, and you’re ready to record your first water test.

Yes. Ponds are tanks in Aquary. Everything, including tests, livestock, care and equipment, works the same way.

Yes. When you first open Aquary you can start a free 14-day trial of everything in Pro. You choose when to start it, you can cancel any time during the trial, and the price is always stated up front.

The Fish Room is Aquary’s home screen, showing every tank at a glance: latest readings, today’s care, warnings when something is outside its safe zone, and highlights across your whole fishkeeping.

Yes. Each tank card can be collapsed to a single line with its photo, name, last test and any warning. Aquary remembers your choice for each tank.

You decommission it rather than delete it. A decommissioned tank keeps its entire history, including tests, fish, timelines and spending, and stays viewable forever, but becomes read-only. Aquary never casually deletes years of records.

Tanks with history must be decommissioned first. This protects you from losing a tank’s story to an accidental tap.

Open the tank and start a Test Session. Enter the parameters you tested, such as ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, temperature, hardness or any custom parameter you have added, and save. Every reading is dated and kept.

Yes. Alongside the standard parameters you can create custom ones, with your own name, unit, decimal places, colour and icon. Custom parameters get the same charts, safe zones and history as the built-in ones.

Each parameter can have a safe range for that tank. Readings outside it are flagged with a warning on the tank card, and readings approaching the edge show an amber caution. You set the ranges that suit your stock.

If a parameter has not been tested for a while, Aquary says so rather than letting an old number masquerade as current. Readings always show their age, such as “3 hours ago”, “yesterday” or “last week”.

Yes. For test kits that need a timed wait, a countdown timer is built into the Test Session.

Yes. Spoken test entry is an Aquary Pro feature. Read your results aloud (“ammonia zero, nitrate twenty, pH seven point four”) and Aquary fills in the session for you to confirm. A one-tap swap is there for look-alike words such as nitrite and nitrate.

Every parameter gets a chart with its safe zone shaded, cautions marked, trend arrows and water changes overlaid so you can see cause and effect. There is a per-tank chart view and a View All Charts screen.

On the free plan, charts show the last 30 days. Aquary Pro unlocks your full history, including six months, a year and all time, across every chart. Your data is always recorded in full on every plan. The free limit applies only to the chart window, never to what is stored.

No. Every reading you have ever saved is kept and listed in full, on every plan, forever.

Each tank has a livestock list. Add fish, shrimp, snails or anything else you keep, individually or in groups, with photos, species, dates and notes.

A built-in reference of around 250 species with photos and care information, included free. You can also add your own species entries.

Every fish and tank builds a timeline automatically, covering tests, treatments, additions and observations. You can add named threads, for example a health thread tracking a fish through treatment, with photos and notes at every step.

Aquary handles it with care. The fish moves to Remembrance, where its story, photos and dates are kept rather than erased.

Anything on a schedule: feeds, water changes, filter media changes, dosing and equipment maintenance. Tasks carry details, including how much to feed, which food to use or what percentage water change to perform, and arrive as notifications.

A task can repeat on a fixed schedule, where doing it late does not move the next calendar date, or from when it was last done, where the gap restarts from each completion. The second option suits filter media and anything that wears from use.

Yes. Delay is a third option beside Done and Skip. Delaying moves the reminder without pretending the job was done.

Yes, optionally. Aquary can mirror care tasks into your Apple Calendar.

Yes. Notifications carry Done, Skip and Delay buttons on iPhone and on the wrist.

A weekly report for each tank: every parameter charted with the week’s highs and lows, the care log, new additions and costs. It arrives as a notification on the day and time you choose, reads beautifully in the app, and shares as a PDF.

Yes. Past weeks are kept in an archive on the Weekly card.

Ask answers questions from your own records, such as “when did I last change the 307’s media?” or “what was nitrate doing in September?”, with the records it used cited so you can check them. It runs on-device.

No. Ask answers from your data. It does not diagnose or speculate, and it says so when a question is beyond it.

When you need help from a vet, shop or forum, Aquary builds a proper write-up from your real records: the tank, recent tests, the fish’s timeline and photos, all chosen by you. This feature is free, because asking for help when a fish is sick should not cost anything.

Yes. If you run Home Assistant, Aquary Pro connects to it and shows live sensor readings, including temperature or anything else you map, on the tank page, in charts, in Weekly and on your Watch.

Go to Settings → Connections → Home Assistant. Enter your instance URL and a long-lived access token, test the connection, then map sensors to each tank. The token is stored in your device’s Keychain and never leaves it. It is even excluded from backups.

No. They sit alongside them. Sensor readings are shown as sensor data, honestly aged, and never mixed into your test records.

It puts today’s care list on your wrist with Done, Skip and Delay, plus a Fish Room glance, live tank temperature, complications for your watch face, including a temperature gauge and today’s care count, and spoken test entry from the wrist.

The Watch app works through your iPhone and says so honestly. If the phone is unreachable, actions queue and the Watch shows when it last heard from it.

Today’s Care (free) shows the day’s tasks on your home screen. The Tank Status widget (Pro) shows a tank’s readings, and you can curate exactly which parameters and sensors it displays.

Yes, completely, and it is free on every plan, always. Settings → Data → Export Everything produces a single archive of your entire diary: every tank, test, fish, timeline, task, purchase and photo, in a documented format. Share it to Files, AirDrop it or keep it anywhere.

Yes. The same archive restores into Aquary. Restoring replaces everything in the app with the backup’s contents. Aquary shows you exactly what is on both sides and asks for deliberate confirmation before anything happens. A failed restore leaves your existing data untouched.

No. Secrets never leave the Keychain. After a restore you re-enter the token once.

Never. Full export is free in every state, including the free plan, trial and a lapsed subscription. Your records are yours.

One tank with the complete diary: all water testing (every parameter, including custom ones, with safe zones and timers), all livestock with timelines and Remembrance, all care tasks and reminders, equipment, foods, suppliers, wishlist and spending, the species library, all 18 calculators, vet and forum drafts, charts of your last 30 days, the Today’s Care widget, iCloud sync, and full export, backup and restore. No ads, no account.

Unlimited tanks, Aquary Weekly, your full chart history and every time range, Ask and tank debriefs, spoken test entry, Home Assistant sensor integration, the Apple Watch app and complications, the Tank Status widget with curation, plus Fish Room highlights and trends.

£2.99 a month, £24.99 a year, or £74.99 once for Lifetime. Prices in other countries are set by the App Store at the local equivalent. See the pricing page for the full plan comparison.

Start it from the welcome screen or any Pro screen: 14 days of full Pro, free. You will see the price before you start, and if you cancel during the trial you pay nothing. One trial is available per Apple ID.

A single purchase that unlocks Aquary Pro permanently on your Apple ID, with no subscription, ever.

Nothing is deleted, ever. You choose which one tank continues as your free tank, with full recording, and your other tanks become read-only: fully visible, browsable and exportable, but not accepting new records until Pro returns. The free-tank choice is permanent, so choose thoughtfully.

Pro usually follows your Apple ID automatically. If it has not, go to Settings → Aquary Pro → Restore Purchases.

Subscriptions are managed by Apple. Go to Settings → Aquary Pro → Manage Subscription, or use your Apple ID’s Subscriptions page. Cancelling takes effect at the end of the paid period.

On your device and in your own private iCloud database, synced by Apple’s CloudKit. Aquary has no servers of its own and no access to your records.

No. There is no analytics, tracking, advertising or account. The App Store privacy label says “Data Not Collected” because that is the truth.

On your device. Ask, debriefs, drafts and spoken test entry all use on-device intelligence. Your records never leave your iCloud to be processed.

Read the full Aquary privacy policy.

Check both devices are signed into the same Apple ID with iCloud Drive on, and that Aquary has iCloud permission in Settings. Sync can take a few minutes after large changes. A restore, for instance, notes that syncing may take a while.

Aquary never blanks a value. It shows the last reading with its honest age, and flags when the sensor has gone quiet. Check the sensor and your Home Assistant instance. Once it reports again, Aquary catches up on its own.

They are the hardest two words in fishkeeping for any speech engine. Aquary is tuned heavily for them, and when it does mishear, the one-tap swap on the confirmation screen puts it right before anything is saved.

Open Aquary on the iPhone once so the Watch can refresh, and check the Watch has the complication or app added. The Watch states when it last heard from the phone rather than guessing.

Use the contact form. A real fishkeeper reads it.