water change planted tank??

[Jorik]

How often do I need to do a water change in a planted tank and do I need to vacuum yhe poop up the lfs clerk said the plants use the fish poop as nutrients

 

[Ian086]

How often do I need to do a water change in a planted tank and do I need to vacuum yhe poop up the lfs clerk said the plants use the fish poop as nutrients

What kind of dosing are you using. I use the EI method and remove 50% weekly. I don't bother vacing the planted tank. What kind of substrate do you have??

 

[Jorik]

Pool filter sand

 

[NicoC16]

Yes, you should do a 10% water change. The plants do "eat" the nutrients in the water, but that is just the nitrate causing nutrients in the water. You have to manually remove the larger waste with a gravel vacuum. Just use tap water and buy a water conditioner; ot works great for my 29 gallon freshwater tank.

 

[Ian086]

If using the EI method, a 50% water change is needed because of the over-dosing of this method. Yeah if you have sand I would vac it....

 

[Kimlafeiet]

everyone's water change schedule will be different, but it will depend on your tank, stock, filtration, lighting,substrate, plants, and dosing.
Do you have a water test kit? A water change is to remove the Nitrates in your tank, which are caused by fish waste broken down through the nitrogen cycle. I would monitor your nitrates and base your water changes on what those levels are and how quickly they rise. The standard rule of thumb for a healthy happy tank is weekly water changes of anywhere from 25 to 50%. I personally do a 50% weekly water change on my tanks and test regularly. I could probably get away with 10 day to 2 week water changes without issue, but I like to stay on top of it and my fish seem to appreciate the clean enviroment with thier good health and color.

 

[flitabout]

I do a 50% weekly water change. I don't vacuum the gravel anymore so I don't disturb the roots on my carpeting plants. I do lightly vacuum the plants to get any poop or left over food off if there is any. I dose pps-pro and use root tabs. I don't bank on fish poop alone to feed my plants. All that does is send my nitrates through the roof. Vacuuming comes down to how and the way your tank is planted. I have carpeting plants all over the bottom of my tank so obviously I can't do the standard vacuuming, I would kill my dhg. But in my newly set up tank when I stock it I will be doing vacuuming of the sand until dhg is carpeted. Vacuuming sand is a bit different but it should still be done.
I also got bad info about plants from my lfs. The guy at mine told me that the only fert I needed was iron. Lucky for me and my plants I did my research otherwise I would have some crappy looking plants.
The thing to remember is the vast majority of lfs aren't into plants. The few plants they get in are usually not there very long so they don't end up having to care for them correctly nor do they know how to care for them. at least 75% of the time they don't even know what plants it is that they are selling! So take their advice with a grain of salt.

 

[Jorik]

Thanks thought so they only have 3 different groups like floating, moss and root plants and in each category theres alot of different species





My new planted tank up for so a week or two

 

[BBradbury]

Water Changes and Planted Tanks

How often do I need to do a water change in a planted tank and do I need to vacuum yhe poop up the lfs clerk said the plants use the fish poop as nutrients

Hello Jor...

I never vacuum the substrate in my planted tanks. The old plant and fish material dissolve in the water and nourish the plants. I would do large, weekly water changes of 50 percent of the tank's volume to remove excess nutrients and maintain a stable water chemistry, so algae doesn't become a problem.

B

 

[Rivercats]

There are many different types of toxins that build up in a tank besides nitrates so if you get in the habit of doing a 50% weekly WC you don't have to worry about any toxins or nutrients building up.

I actually only keep planted tanks and never gravel vac any of them. If you have a large open area in the tank that isn't planted you can carefully vacuum it but you need to stay well away from plants as you can damage roots during vacuuming.