Change water once a week VS continuous drip.

[CarissaT]

Unless you have suckermouth catfish in the tank, there won't be that much gunk on the substrate. Plus the filter will trap a lot of it.

A lot builds up on my substrate but I do have a bristlenose pleco. Usually the first 5g bucket I take out is brown. Without a vac all that crud would have to break down into the water column before ever being removed, which would bring the daily average amount of crud in my tank up quite a lot, I would think. I wonder what the math would be on a tank having both weekly and daily water changes?

 

[CarissaT]

I made a spreadsheet to answer my own question. On the y axis, the number there represents the # of days of crud buildup. So a value of 7 indicates 7 days worth of pollution, etc.

Adding a 5% daily water change to a regular regimen of 50% weekly does reduce the maximum pollution in the tank from 14 days to less than 10. But just doing a 10% daily keeps levels around 10 all the time. So 5% daily + 50% weekly is better than 10% daily.

If anyone wants me to run certain numbers just let me know.

 

[CarissaT]

I am in my fact finding stage, to drip or not to drip. The lack of popularity could be too much work to set up, or it doesn't work, or both. It seems like fish farms use the concept, few home hobbyist adopted it.

I am in California, a state experience drought regularly, For my future 100g tank, changing say 50g per day is not something I want to do. I am more like 7 g per day, and 49 g per week, or use the same amount of water as a 50% weekly wc.

Would 7g per day work as well as one time 50g after 7 days? I am starting to think that constant drip maintains water parameter better, but 50g removes more toxin etc., May be something like 5g per day, than a 30g on the 7th day? Whole thing on timer, so that is possible.

thinking out loud.

Here is the answer to your question.