Tank Reorg = Ugly Water

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greenfish

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jun 2, 2004
Messages
631
Location
Livermore, California USA
I reorganized my tank tonight. When I did so, it kicked up a bunch of stuff that was hiding under the gravel. I did a 50% water change but there is still stuff floating around. The filter should get some of it out I'm sure overnight. Do you think I should give it another water change tomorrow just to be safe?
 
nah... my water always gets cloudy after a water change or during aquascaping. It should clear up overnight.
 
Cool. It has been a long time since I fussed with the layout of the tank. I guess it kind of shocked me how much mulm was hiding underneath stuff in the gravel.
 
Alot of it settles back down to the gravel IME. If you syphon under your ordements when you do your water changes this becomes much less of a problem. I usually do give a tank another water change 24hours later when this happens (usually one of my family members tanks :( )
 
I don't usually move stuff around or lift things up when I gravel vac. I usually just vacuum around everything. Maybe I will need to change my ways to prevent a reoccurrence.
 
Well.. if you do your gravel vac in 24 hours let us know how much yuck you get out. IME is like its been a week since the gravels been vacumed after a rearange like that.

BTW.. Its good to see you posting greenfish. :D
 
Well I did not get a chance to do a gravel vac & water change until today. I think you are right greenmaji. I vacuumed up a bunch of crud so at least a good chunk of it just settles to the bottom.

greenmaji said:
BTW.. Its good to see you posting greenfish. :D
Member since June 2004 and just over 400 posts. It might take me 10 more years to crack 5000 posts like you! ;) :)
 
greenfish said:
Well I did not get a chance to do a gravel vac & water change until today. I think you are right greenmaji. I vacuumed up a bunch of crud so at least a good chunk of it just settles to the bottom.

greenmaji said:
BTW.. Its good to see you posting greenfish. :D
Member since June 2004 and just over 400 posts. It might take me 10 more years to crack 5000 posts like you! ;) :)

I think alot of people assume its cleaned up by their filter.. It's always good to know you got some extra NO3 causing gunk out of your tank though.. :p

You post so often (Not) I don't even have a clue what kind of fish are in your tank.. LOL :p
 
greenmaji said:
You post so often (Not) I don't even have a clue what kind of fish are in your tank.. LOL :p

Right now I have Harlequin Rasbora, Sterbai Cory, Otto, & my new favorite a bristlenose (thanks Zezmo!). I have a big empty 55 sitting in my dining room that I am finally getting set up after a very long delay due to family issues. It will be a freshwater planted tank if I can get off my *bleep* and get it done. I am heading down to Arizona for spring training for a week and I keep telling myself that I will go full tilt on the new tank when I get back. I know once I get the plumbing done, I will be aching to fill it up and go plant/fish shopping.
 
I dont think it would be a good idea to take so much 'healthy' water out all of a sudden and change it to fresh.
If there is stiull alot of stuff floating on top just get a clean net and scoop it out, thats what I do.
:)
 
"healthy" water????

It really doesn't have to do with anything but water chemistry.. (KH wich comes down to PH stability)
And after 24 hours or more.. your going to be just fine.

And its not like he did two consecutive 90% water changes..
 
When I first started with fish (about 3 years ago now) I did alot of reading up on the subject and from what I can gather taking more than 60% of the water out within a week is a bad idea as it will change the chemistry to much.
I term 'healthy water as water that has the chemistry right etc.. :)
 
The percentages are wild guesses IMHO.. And 17 years in this hobby has told me you can change 100% of the water daily so long as your tap water has consitant peramiters (chemistry).

It depends on the diffence in chemistry in the tap water and the tank water.. so long as they are close you can change as much water as you like.. your consequince will likely be heathier fish, or you just might induce your fish to spawn.

I have done a little reading myself.. 10 years supsription (most of the years were not mine, my mom's husband liked it) to freshwater and marine aquarium magazine and numerious books.. :)
 
Here we go again, LOL. The Myth of changing too much water, raises it's ugly head again. Ask any Discus or angel breeder how much water you should change and you will get an answer of much more than 60% per week. I have done 60% daily changes while growing out angels. I would have absolutley no qualms about changing 98% at a time if I thought it was necessary. The more often you change water, the more likely your tank water is to stay similar to your tap water, with regards to parameters. The ideal situation would be continous, flow through water change, like a trout farm. This of course, would be impractical, with home aquaria, hence the need to find a happy medium, that allows us to maintain our tanks, with a minimum of effort. That does not make it the best way. Bottom line is, that the bioload in the tank determines how much and how often water needs to be changed. However, that is the minimum,and doing more than the minimum is not a bad thing. You can't change too much water, too often. There may be exceptions to this, but at the moment, I can't think of one.
 
I do a 50% water change weekly. The fish don't seem to mind and the tank stays pretty stable. I have heard that Discus people, especially breeders, do more than that with no issues.
 
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