Bright Water Tank syndrome ( extension to water change thread.....)

[Lajos_Detari]

I fully agree with Sean.
If I am not wrong, people who have bad experience with large water change are people who don't use water conditioner.
So, when do large water change, the Chroline or Chrolamine will kill their fish.
This happened to some people who wanted to save cost by not using water conditioner.
I know of a colleague and people in my country who did that. My colleague told me that even big fish will die if you don't put water conditioner.

As I explained in my previous post, large water changes occur all the time in the rivers, streams whenever there is heavy rain.
Big rivers like Amazon and Orinoco have thousand of gallons of water being replaced every minute.

 

[itiwhetu]

I agree but it is not being replaced with tap water

 

[mbsqw1d]

You don't use tapwater do you @itiwhetu because you have the resources to collect plenty of rainwater? And, as discussed previously, elsewhere. Your environment doesn't suffer like some of us (remember the pollution in the River Mersey, Liverpool, UK?). If you lived in an environment like that, would you question using rainwater? Would you think tapwater is better? Would you decide you couldn't keep fish at all because you have no suitable water to keep them in?

 

[itiwhetu]

I don't use tap water now bit I have only been on this property for three years, before that I only ever used tap water. I always water change with care. And sometimes have asked questions about water quality, only because that is what are fish rely on to live.

 

[GaryE]

This is an odd thread to time travel back to. There are some good voices we no longer hear from.

Bright water. I think that there is an element of interest there, but a strange perspective I often hear from 'fish industry' people (but not the scientific ones), that fish disease is only from immunity.
Fish have bodies as complex as ours.They have diseases as complex as ours. Just because we are really deeply ignorant about this and lack the tools to learn in spite of our understanding that (to those who finance studies, they're just fish, after all) doesn't mean ammonia is the only issue. You'd think so from stores, but. Blaming diseases on unchallenged immune systems certainly contradicts the limited research that shows different pathogens and dangers live in different water conditions. So a blackwater tetra from a low hardness environment put in with hardwater mollies will encounter new diseases (acid water doesn't support a lot of problem to fish bacteria). Chances are, we get a posting about all of someone's older fish dying when the news ones thrive. Sound familiar?
Right now, I don't have one single farmed fish in my tanks. If I put one in with my homebred and wild caught fish, experience says my fish will die while the store fish may thrive. New contact pathogens have been a big part of human history, and older aquarists didn't connect the dots.
It's not water. It's biology.
It may not be time without immune challenges adding up, but slow working Mycobacter infections thriving on crowded fishfarms.

Over cleaning is deadly though. Like humans, fish can't live without bacteria. You must see your entire aquarium as an organism. It's how a tank works.

But you also have to see what happens in a continual overflow system using dechlorinated water. I have never seen such vital and quick growing tropical fish as I saw in a friend's house with continual water changes. All he changed was the water though - the plants and substrate, as well as an impressive filtration system, were treated like they would be in a regular weekly water change tank.

Opinions often turn out to be worthless and misleading. I don't care what an opinion is unless the person is prepared to say why and give backup, even from an interpretation of an experience. Yes and no in a discussion are useless, and blind faith in what you've been told is a vice. We look back on the balanced aquarium era of the 50s to 70s with a bit of a sneer because they knew nothing of the cycle, but I suspect in 30 years people will be snarky about us, as the test kit tells all era. All these approaches have value, but they aren't simple answers. These fish and tanks are incredibly complicated once you start to dig in to what's going on.