Maybe A Stupid Question.. But Im Going To Ask Anyway Just Because I Ca

[J4G3D]

Now ive got your attention i have a quick question.

If your tank is showing perfect quality (such as 0 ammonia) and you do a 25% water change once a week, but you add all the good stuff like seacham prime to remove chlorine..ect. Why should you then test the water for ammonia, nitrite/nitrate... and so on EVERY week? I mean what are the chances of your perfect water quality going completely doodaly after 1 week?

I ask because mines been fine for 3 weeks with 3 water changes. Not sure how or why it would dramatically change.

Answers on a postcard.

 

[erk628]

You don't have to test your water every week actually you dont have to test it at all once you have a mature tank. When something doesn't look right or something goes wrong in your tank then you should test. If something goes wrong in mine I test it if the stats are bad I usually test every day or once week for awhile. Other then that once a month is what I like to do just to make sure everything is still good. Adding new fish or decor or things like that can change the stats. Or overfeed or dead fish can to.

Oh and one more thing the only stupid question is the one you don't ask!

 

[Assaye]

I test religiously until my tank is perfectly stable for a couple of weeks. Then I stop testing until I have a reason to suspect something is up - maybe I had a power cut, maybe I added new fish, maybe one of my fish is sick, maybe some of my fish have stopped eating, maybe some of them are behaving oddly, maybe I've noticed the flowrate on my filter has gone down, and so on and so forth . . .

I advise customers at work to test weekly as most of them are newbies who need to understand their tank, but I don't test unless I think I need to.

 

[BigFairy]

i test mine monthly, only because the amount of plants has increased significantly in my tank and i still worry whether the extra bio-mass from rotting plants etc is being handled ok.

 

[erk628]

I test religiously until my tank is perfectly stable for a couple of weeks. Then I stop testing until I have a reason to suspect something is up - maybe I had a power cut, maybe I added new fish, maybe one of my fish is sick, maybe some of my fish have stopped eating, maybe some of them are behaving oddly, maybe I've noticed the flowrate on my filter has gone down, and so on and so forth . . .

I advise customers at work to test weekly as most of them are newbies who need to understand their tank, but I don't test unless I think I need to.

Good examples you thought of alot more then I could.

 

[GreenEyedTerror]

I agree with everyone above, weekly tests on an established tank are excessive and unnecessary after you have a good feel for keeping fish tanks, unless of course something is iffy

 

[waterdrop]

I don't test a mature tank except for reasons like what Assaye mentioned above or the occasional random test when I happen to have time and feel like doing it. Sometimes I test in association with disturbances in my maintenance routine, to get a feel, for instance, for what a missed weekend water change will typically do.. that sort of thing.

Also, once a tank is more mature, nitrate(NO3) testing takes on more prominence than it did during cycling. Nitrate(NO3) tests are the "canary in the coal mine" which serve as a surrogate for dozens of other bad things that we don't want building up in the tank water but which are too difficult or expensive to test for.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[J4G3D]

Wow thanks for the replies guys. I had the impression you should test weekly, think it says it on the API master test kit? or i read it on here somewhere. Anyway glad to hear that you dont need to.

Thanks

 

[GreenEyedTerror]

the test kit probably tells you that so youll run out of chemicals faster and have to buy more