Best Way To Change Water Without Harming Fish

[eschaton]

Hey all,

So, while I'm waiting for my tank to cycle, I've been doing water changes. I just put two gallons into my tank. Of course the water was not refrigerated. It was, however, room temp, which in my apartment is 68 degrees; around 10 degrees cooler than my tank.

I was trying to take care when pouring it in to do it rather slowly and avoid actually hitting any of the fish. Since my guppies are inquisitive top-feeders, they kept following the water stream. While others went near with apparently no problem, one apparently swam through, because he looked stunned and started swimming poorly. When I saw him last he was swimming rather poorly to the back region of my tank where I can't find him without disturbing the plants, but I daresay he's probably dead or dying.

Do I need to warm up all water (on the stove or something) before adding it to the tank? Or should I pour water into the tank at an even slower rate?

 

[pica_nuttalli]

if you want, you can warm *some* of the water with a kettle and then mix it to match the temperature of your tank... but i don't think that's an essential thing to do. i've always just used the warm water out of the tap

probably if the guppy got hurt, its due to being hit directly with the water stream. the way i've always judged about how fast i should pour is how deeply the tank water is agitated. if its turbulent for more than 1/2 the depth of the tank, then i slack off and pour a little slower.

 

[Dan04COBRA]

Do I need to warm up all water (on the stove or something) before adding it to the tank? Or should I pour water into the tank at an even slower rate?

To the best of my knowledge, a sudden temperature change can quickly stress and kill your fish. I've never heard of it happening personally, and I would imagine the temperature change would have to be sudden and drastic as my A/C crapped out in my room and in less than 5 hours my tank went from 74 degrees to 86+ and I experienced no loss of fish. However, every fish was very very sluggish and inactive for several days after I stabilized the tank at 80 degrees for a week before I brought it back down to 74 over the course of 48 hours.

 

[sparklefuzz]

Do I need to warm up all water (on the stove or something) before adding it to the tank? Or should I pour water into the tank at an even slower rate?

To the best of my knowledge, a sudden temperature change can quickly stress and kill your fish. I've never heard of it happening personally, and I would imagine the temperature change would have to be sudden and drastic as my A/C crapped out in my room and in less than 5 hours my tank went from 74 degrees to 86+ and I experienced no loss of fish. However, every fish was very very sluggish and inactive for several days after I stabilized the tank at 80 degrees for a week before I brought it back down to 74 over the course of 48 hours.

I mix my water from the hot and cold taps till it feels the same as the tank water, to touch. Never had a problem. You definitely should not be adding cold water to a tropical tank, for one thing it would drop your tank temp drastically, and take ages to warm back up, and directly pouring it onto the fish would be a massive drop in temperature all at once, and will most likely kill them.

Don't get why you would add it cold to be honest, makes no sense to me

 

[eschaton]

Do I need to warm up all water (on the stove or something) before adding it to the tank? Or should I pour water into the tank at an even slower rate?

To the best of my knowledge, a sudden temperature change can quickly stress and kill your fish. I've never heard of it happening personally, and I would imagine the temperature change would have to be sudden and drastic as my A/C crapped out in my room and in less than 5 hours my tank went from 74 degrees to 86+ and I experienced no loss of fish. However, every fish was very very sluggish and inactive for several days after I stabilized the tank at 80 degrees for a week before I brought it back down to 74 over the course of 48 hours.

I mix my water from the hot and cold taps till it feels the same as the tank water, to touch. Never had a problem. You definitely should not be adding cold water to a tropical tank, for one thing it would drop your tank temp drastically, and take ages to warm back up, and directly pouring it onto the fish would be a massive drop in temperature all at once, and will most likely kill them.

Don't get why you would add it cold to be honest, makes no sense to me

I said, it wasn't cold water, it was room temperature water. I was just adding a few gallons to the tank, which wasn't enough to make the overall tank temperature drop more than a few degrees, though the water itself was, of course, 10 degrees or so cooler than the tank

As to why I added it that way, because the way I've done water changes in the past is to buy the cheapest distilled/spring water and use that. While it's expensive at times, I don't want to mess with putting tap water into buckets and then measuring out the declorinator...I'm not sure how quickly that stuff works.

Also, while I thought about heating it, I was worried heating in a metal pot would have hurt the fish, due to metals in the water being very bad for fish.

As an update, the guppy is still alive and breathing, though he's doing headstands at the moment.

 

[Tolak]

If you are adding 2 gallons to a 20 gallon tank, that is a 10% water change. If the water is 10 degrees cooler, you just dropped the tank temperature a whopping 1 degree. That's nothing to be concerned with, cooler water changes are a method used to encourage fish to spawn.

Dechlorinator works almost instantly, you could add it to your replacement water, give it a swish, & it's dechlored. I fill my tanks with a hose, and add dechlor on the fly without any problems.

Adding small amounts of dechlorinator can be tricky when they tell you things like "add 1 ml of dechlorinator to every 10 gallons of water". There are around 20 drops per ml, so at the previously mentioned rate you would add 2 drops per gallon. I double up on dechlorinator on a regular basis, you really have to go overboard with it to cause any trouble.

A dechlorinator like Prime locks up any heavy metals if you are concerned with metals leaching out of the pot you may be using to heat your water. The quality of bottled water is less regulated than tap water. Tap water is tested several times throughout the day, bottled water is tested once daily if you are lucky.

 

[Tetras]

I was having problems adding water back as well, to fast I guess. So I do the following:

I reverse the syphoning process: Adding the part that would normally suction gravel, into the clean water container, which I, in my case, can put on top of my aquarium, the tube where dirty water would normally come out, I insert into the tank, and close flip-lid so tube can't fall out.

Clean water drains automatically and slowly into aquarium, and I can sit and watch container empty. My container is see-throuh so I can see the water going down (holds 5 liters) Remember in order for it to drain automatically the container has to be higher up than aquarium.

If I were to get a bigger aquarium I would install a shelf for this purpose alone.

Hope this helps.

 

[SamUK]

i use the tap to get the temp the same on my smaller tanks but on my big tanks i jus pull the garden hose through the window and pump cold water in.


i do it slowly and the temp drops about 2 degrees over half an hour.


never had a problem and fish always look fine.

 

[demonmagus]

I sometimes mix a little boiiling water in. Not much at all

My danios always swarm around the syphon tube (that's how I put water back in) and I play a game of trying to hit them with the water stream, theyn love it

 

[sparklefuzz]

Do I need to warm up all water (on the stove or something) before adding it to the tank? Or should I pour water into the tank at an even slower rate?

I mix my water from the hot and cold taps till it feels the same as the tank water, to touch. Never had a problem. You definitely should not be adding cold water to a tropical tank, for one thing it would drop your tank temp drastically, and take ages to warm back up, and directly pouring it onto the fish would be a massive drop in temperature all at once, and will most likely kill them.

Don't get why you would add it cold to be honest, makes no sense to me

I said, it wasn't cold water, it was room temperature water. I was just adding a few gallons to the tank, which wasn't enough to make the overall tank temperature drop more than a few degrees, though the water itself was, of course, 10 degrees or so cooler than the tank

As to why I added it that way, because the way I've done water changes in the past is to buy the cheapest distilled/spring water and use that. While it's expensive at times, I don't want to mess with putting tap water into buckets and then measuring out the declorinator...I'm not sure how quickly that stuff works.

Also, while I thought about heating it, I was worried heating in a metal pot would have hurt the fish, due to metals in the water being very bad for fish.

As an update, the guppy is still alive and breathing, though he's doing headstands at the moment.

Oh, I am sorry. I misread that. Please accept my apologies.

You've been given good advice about the dechlorinator anyway, it is very easy, might save you some money on spring water too.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i just add water straight from the tap, either put dechlor in the first bucket or into the tank, never had a problem at all. unless your doing a significant water change or you have fish that are very sensitive to temp changes then you really don't need to worry about it. I don't even try and pour the water in slowly

 

[andywg]

Don't get why you would add it cold to be honest, makes no sense to me

Because as Tolak said, there is no need to warm up the ater unless you have super sensitive fish.

A large amount of ray keepers just plumb cold water straight into the tanks. A 20% water change with the new water at around 7 degrees C and the tank at 24 degrees C can only mathematically reduce the temperature by 2.4 degrees C.

I do 40% water changes on my largest tank and use pure cold water from the tap. It has never dropped by more than 2 degrees yet. And as the tank is sumped, it has no heater heating the water until all the water is in the tank.

 

[skiltrip]

save a couple of those distilled water jugs and use them for your tap water...

what i do, is run my faucet till it feels right... then i stick an aquarium themometer in the stream coming out of the tap and adjust till it matches my tank temp. then i leave the tap right where it is and keep it pouring...

i fill one gallon jug up, squirt a few drops of Stress Coat dechlorinator into the jug (2-3 drops). meanwhile i've starting filling the 2nd jug up... i go to my tank and pour in the same temp water, fully dechlorinated (stuff works pretty much instantly), i pour it at a steady pace so by the time i get back to jug #2 it's just about filled, and i keep going back and forth, not touching the tap, until i'm refilled. no stress, no temp changes, no chlorine, no troubles.

Dechlorinator really is THAT cool. it's awesome stuff. don't be afraid of it. it may seem like voodoo that it works that fast and that well, but it really does. i've never ever had a problem.

 

[CFC]

You can tell the majority of people here dont keep large tanks or fishrooms because if they heated all the water for water changes they would never have time to do anything else

As Tolak and Andy have said unless you are changing very large ammounts of water (over 30%) then there is really no need to heat water before you add it to the tank, a drop of 2-3 degrees is insignificant unless you are keeper extreemly sensative species, in which case you wouldnt be asking this question (i hope).

Water changes for me means draining the tank water down a hose and into the garden and then refilling the tank with the same hose attached to the garden tap, i chuck half the dechlorinator in first and the other half when the tank is full and the water goes in direct from the hose and isnt warmed, i dont even have heaters on my tanks as the room is heated instead. I have never lost a fish due to a water change despite keeping some fairly sensative species such as stingrays and pimeloid catfish.

 

[Irf]

I'm embarrassed to say that I have also lost a few small fish (neons, guppies) by not being careful enough with my water changes. At least that's what I think was the reason.

I went through a phase of losing a fish more or less every time I did a water change. I just couldn't figure it out. I was mixing warm tap water with cold into my bucket, and adding dechlor at the same time. Then I'd simply pour the water into the tank, at a reasonable speed so it didn't take several minutes but also so that my plants and gravel didn't get thrown around.

I found the smaller fish certainly liked to play in the water stream. This is the problem I think, because I simply did a "temperature feels right to me" test with my fingers. I think some of the smaller fish were getting chilled too much, and couldn't recover from the shock of even a degree or two difference.

What I do now is I use a floating thermometer in my bucket, and add small amounts of boiling water to the cold tap water. I add the dechlor as before. I add the water to the tank in the same way as before also.

Now I don't kill any fish. The only things I have changed are:

1. measuring the temperature properly
2. I used boiled water (instead of warm tap water) to warm up the cold

So to my simple mind, the lack of fish deaths must be something to do with one of those. The measures I'm taking now have added just 30 seconds to each bucket processing, so not too bad. My water changes are around 6 buckets, so that's roughly 3 minutes longer...... not too high a price to pay for the sake of the fish I think!

That's what I do, anyway.

Irf.