I'm sick of changing water weekly

[MarkLehr]

I am a believer that pH stability in the system is far more important that NItrate levels and more important than having a set schedule for water changes. Almost eveything we discuss comes down to the long term effect on the pH and the aquariums buffering ability. Naturally, this is assuming the aquarium is already cycled and can handle the biological load.

That being said, I always suggest to newcomers that a weekly 20% water change is essential for success, but this recommendation is keep the buffering ability of the system at its maximum without using chemicals. I know that a newcomer is more likely to overfeed & less likely to recognize the early warning signs which let more experienced hobbyists know we need to increase our maintainance schedule.

Personally, for the average community tank, I change 20% biweekly on tanks with small fish and 25% - 50% weekly on tanks with big fish.

 

[FishLover14]

I change my water 25% once a week.

Dan

 

[jibboo]

I change mine every 1-2 weeks depending. My nitrates are at a pretty constant 40ppm in a heavily planted tank (go figure). My friend and I expected my nitrates to plummet since I have so many healthy, growing plants, but it does not seem to be the case.

Personally, I clean my filter (aqua clear 300) every week from all the plant debris and dirt and try to change my water every 2 weeks. With that all said, I really haven't run into any problems fish-wise. I was changing my water every week when I first put in driftwood (cuz i couldn't stand the yellow water), but now that its all cleared up, I've gone back to every 2 weeks. And I would characterize myself as a heavy feeder ... I love to watch my fish eat ... so I'm a pretty standard twice-a-day feeder.

 

[Dmoney2780]

call me dumb,but what exactly is this "Python" that u all speak of?

 

[turboTSI]

I do my changes every sunday on my saltie I will let it go to 2 weeks at times just cause I use RO water.. and never have probs..

but I have been to let the FW's go 2 weeks and sometimes my IRR sharks get cloudy eye due to this.. once I change the water usually the next day the cloudy eye is gone.. so yeah that is DEFF a tale tell sign for me


Dave

 

[FancyGuppyGuy]

Well alot of interesting thoughts and ways of changing water here.

Myself I tend to change water once a week for 25-30% bigger tanks and two or three times a week for 10-20% smaller tanks. If I am raising new fry I do a minimum 10%-20% change daily. Also If I am feeding heavy or Light will play a big role in wether I change more often or not. If you want to change water less feed your fish once every couple of days the nitrates will go up alot slower that way. I really think alot of us spoil our fish with food just to watch them eat.

Does anyone know the minimum you can feed your fish weekly and they will still be healthy??

 

[turboTSI]

Does anyone know the minimum you can feed your fish weekly and they will still be healthy??

I think this all depends on the fish.. but I dont go more then 2-3 days in between feedings.. although I feed everyday I do mean like if I want to change a fish over to dead or what have u I will let them go no more then 2-3 days without eating

Dave

 

[kane2004]

30g tank.. he he...10 min water change....

What size do u have that bothers you so much? I just do the weekly water changes because i keep my tanks heavily planted and prefer to go with fresh water as opposed to constant testing and worring about ammonia or if my filter is at 100% all the time. Seems like less work to me just to do a 20-25% change and move on IMO.

 

[physicsdude]

Hmmm, I have a 10 gallon planted tank 2 Keyhole Cichlids, 1 Salvani Cichlid, 1 Parrot Cichlid, 1 Zebra Crayfish, 1 Pleco, 1 Clown Loach, and 1 Blue Gourami. Don't worry- they'll be in a twenty gallon soon, but as an fishkeepe with many types of demanding and interesting fish and cray, I change the water once a week at about 25-33% on average.
I think that its acceptable, and I would try to keep this piece of the puzzle simple, as other topics, like ammonia, nitrate, etc. are more important issues.

 

[Guest]

I actually enjoy my weekely water change, i kind of find it relaxing i guess becuase my life is so hectic right now (full time Nursing school)
But also if you think about it, in nature, the water is constantly being changed, evaporation, rain, etc.
If you don't do water changes often, its like the fish are swimming around in their own "toilet" so to speak. I think it's just nice for them and makes the environment healthier.

 

[Guest]

i like doing my PWC i think it is fun, although the only annoying part is whenyou ge too deep into the gravel everything gets really realy cloudy and thats what sucks

otherwise i like doing it, except friday i accidentaly sucked up one of my corydoras

poor thing

 

[greenmaji]

intreting read..

When I was selling fish for a big department store I knew people had a tendency to stock tanks at high levels.. like the bogus 1in per gallon rule I have heard sooo many times from aquarium store employees. I think that the surface area of the tank is more important than the total gallons for gas exchange and such. I kept my tanks in the past, as I have not had mine up for almost two years now, about one forth the level that most of the tanks I have seen in the descriptions. I also like to keep my bio-filtration about two to three times the neccasry size. I also like the idea of deep beds of small substrate to colonize bacteria to lower the nitrate levels in appropriate areas like in a sump. The smallest tank I had was a 48 gallon octagon. I disliked the depth of the tank and have not gone back to such a shape tank again, I salvaged the tank from a relatives garage it leaked before I got it. when I did weekly water changes I did small ones. 7 1/2% to 15% changes. I did monthly 25% changes and never had a ammonia spike.. my bio-load was never high enough to cause a ammonia spike. I do not like the lossy filter types that have floss but when I had to use them I rinsed them out in warm, 75-80 degrees F, water.. I never cleaned until I removed the bacteria, the slime, and only clean 1/2 of the biological filtration in a 24 hour period to allow for repopulation.
I have seen some strange stuff in this hobby, obsession, I have seen perfectly healthy systems that almost never got a water change. And horribly sick ones that everything was done "right". A little much for a first post but Ill work on it.

 

[caudelfin]

Part of the issue with high nitrates is when its combined with lax water changing. Theres 2 interesting articles that talk about nitrates (and one also discusses "old tank syndrome") that I'm posting cause I'm too tired to explain it myself LOL

Nitrate Reduction And How Often Should I Clean My Tank: http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/nitratereduction.shtml

Old Tank Syndrome:
http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/oldtanksyndrome.shtml

I do changes once a week; I find nitrates rarely make 15 ppm on that regimen.

I tried the two url's above but they seem to be long gone. 404 is all that I got. Does any one have the information from these url's that they could pass along?
caudelfin

 

[fishgurl]

water conditions

Hi Allivymar
I have also tried these web sites with no luck. I am interested if they are still out there.

So If you have sucess in finding them please let me know I would love a copy. I am trying to understand all this info. thanks "fishgurl"

"Part of the issue with high nitrates is when its combined with lax water changing. Theres 2 interesting articles that talk about nitrates (and one also discusses "old tank syndrome") that I'm posting cause I'm too tired to explain it myself LOL

Nitrate Reduction And How Often Should I Clean My Tank: http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/nitratereduction.shtml

Old Tank Syndrome:
http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/oldtanksyndrome.shtml "

 

[greenmaji]

Old Tank Syndrome

A tomgriffin artical thats still online...

www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/oldtanksyndrome.shtml+aquasource+tomgriffin+Old+Tank+Syndrome&hl=en&lr=lang_en%20target=nw]Google has it cashed[/url]

 

[fishgurl]

Thanks Greenmagi

the article was certainly worth the read

Fishgurl- 55 gal. tank. housing only one electric yellow and one P. lombardoi. I think water conditions are the cause of my loss of fish.
never did water changes until today. going to try 25% weekly. nitrate 80
nitrite 0 hardness 250 alkalinity 40 ph 8.0 Do you think this is enough.
thanks for your help

 

[gheitman]

I do 10% to 20% water changes weekly in my planted tanks with the smaller tanks getting a greater percentage of water changed. Planted tanks don't need as much water changed because plants remove nitrates from the water.

fishgurl - I would monitor your nitrate level and keep doing larger water changes until the nitrates are below 40.

 

[fishgurl]

water change

Thanks Gheitman

I am going to do another water change again Sunday. How long do I have to wait to do another test after I change the water.
Thanks you for your help
Fishgurl

 

[gheitman]

I normally wait until the next day to test but some people wait only 4 hours.

 

[greenmaji]

Part of the issue with high nitrates is when its combined with lax water changing. Theres 2 interesting articles that talk about nitrates (and one also discusses "old tank syndrome") that I'm posting cause I'm too tired to explain it myself LOL

Nitrate Reduction And How Often Should I Clean My Tank: http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/nitratereduction.shtml

Old Tank Syndrome:
http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/oldtanksyndrome.shtml Arrow

I do changes once a week; I find nitrates rarely make 15 ppm on that regimen.

I tried the two url's above but they seem to be long gone. 404 is all that I got. Does any one have the information from these url's that they could pass along?
caudelfin

Google has Tomgriffins old pages cashed... Ive gathered the links
www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/nitratereduction.shtml+aquasource+tomgriffin+nitratereduction&hl=en&lr=lang_en%20target=nw]Nitrate Reduction[/url]
www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/oldtanksyndrome.shtml+aquasource+tomgriffin+Old+Tank+Syndrome&hl=en&lr=lang_en%20target=nw]Old Tank Syndrome[/url]