Preparing New Water For The Tank

[daizeUK]

I've been thinking about how to perform weekly water changes after my fishless cycle is complete.

I know that the water should be temperature matched to try to minimise shock to the fish and I'm also concerned about my pH which is pretty mad. It's about pH 7.4 straight out of the taps but rises to around 8.3 in the tank. I've been reading horror stories about fish dying from sudden pH swings so I think I ought to let the water sit for 24 hours in a bucket before adding.

I have a 65 litre tank and a 10 litre bucket, so one bucket would be about a 15% water change, is that sufficient for weekly maintenance or should i get another bucket?!

Then after the water has been sitting for 24 hours and pH is stabilised, how do I bring the temperature up to match... a bit of boiled water from the kettle and check with the tank thermometer?
Then dechlorinate the bucket before adding to the tank.

Have I got the right idea?

 

[CezzaXV]

I'm incredibly lazy - I just run a hose from the tap to the tank, turning the taps so that the temperature is roughly the same (it will never be spot on, but as long as there's not a huge difference it's fine) and putting a big dose of dechlorinator directly into the tank, enough to dose the whole tank and not just the water I'm adding. There's also a reasonable difference between tank and tap (about 6.4 tank whereas 7.2 tap). I dribble it in slowly over an hour or two. I always do massive changes (50-75%) just because I can and my fish are no worse for wear.

In the wild fish would experience drops in temperature with nightfall, and they may also experience pH changes from moving to different parts of a river/lake, so they're more capable of dealing with it than we give them credit for.

The key point is that you do it slowly. Shock occurs when the temperature or pH changes dramatically and suddenly, as it would if you were to pour a bucket in. If you trickle it in slowly then you shouldn't have any problems. I certainly never have.

 

[Livewire88]

Well the easiest way I find is to use the hot and cold tap (on a mixer tap) to fill up three x 25l water containers, I add 1mm Prime to each container and just pour the water into my half emptied tank. Both taps on full blast and the water come out tempeture matched there or there abouts.

My water straight out of the tap has a PH of 8.2 and the tank stays at this level even after a water change. I do get PH swings with using pressurized Co2 but it is not the type of PH swing that will harm fish, or so I have been led to beleive.

If I were you I wouldnt bother letting the water sit for 24 hours, what fish do you have and how many? if you are stocked correctly you could get away with 20% water changes per week and at that amount any PH swing will be minimul.

 

[JenJ]

I have a hot water tank so am nervous of using hot tap water in case of any nasties. I've found that one boiled kettleful per bucket, with cold tap water to fill it almost to the top, to be a good rough temperature match. I add Prime to the first bucket (dosed for whole tank) then the others straight from tap/kettle-bucket-tank.

I usually do 2 buckets for my 60l and 6 for my 160l.

 

[PrairieSunflower]

Any idea what is making your pH go up once water is in your tank? Or does it do that regardless, if you left a bucket of tap water overnight does it also go up in pH?

 

[Livewire88]

Any idea what is making your pH go up once water is in your tank? Or does it do that regardless, if you left a bucket of tap water overnight does it also go up in pH?

My guess would be that her tap water contains a lot of disolved C02, therefore once it gasses off the PH rises.

 

[daizeUK]

Cezza - " I just run a hose from the tap to the tank... and putting a big dose of dechlorinator directly into the tank"

I think if I had a bigger tank I would probably do the same, but with such a small tank it's probably less hassle for me to fill a bucket or two than it would be to set up a hose
I'm a bit wary of adding tapwater straight to the tank... maybe because it's taking a long time for my tank to cycle and I don't want to risk exposing my precious bacteria to chlorine or anything that could kill them even for a second! I'm sure it must be okay because you haven't had any problems with it, but if I'm using buckets anyway I may as well put the dechlorinator in the buckets. I may use a bit too much dechlorinator for one bucket but I don't think you can overdose on dechlorinator... can you?

Livewire - "If I were you I wouldnt bother letting the water sit for 24 hours, what fish do you have and how many? if you are stocked correctly you could get away with 20% water changes per week and at that amount any PH swing will be minimul."

No fish yet, tank is cycling, but I plan to get platies and guppies. They should be perfectly happy at whatever pH I can throw at them, I'm just trying to reduce stress by avoiding sudden pH swings.
I did a little experiment just now, since my tank was looking a bit low so I topped it up with 8 litres of fresh water. I checked the pH before and after and it looked like this:

Tank pH 8.1
Tapwater pH 7.3
Tank after top-up pH 7.6

So the tank experienced a drop of 0.5 pH for that small top-up.

JenJ - "I have a hot water tank so am nervous of using hot tap water in case of any nasties."

I'm a bit worried as well, but I think the dechlorinator removes the nasties from the hot water so that it's safe to use... I just used a mix of hot + cold tap water anyway so I hope I'm right about that?!

PrarieSunflower - "Any idea what is making your pH go up once water is in your tank? Or does it do that regardless, if you left a bucket of tap water overnight does it also go up in pH?"

Yes, it's stuff dissolved in my tap water and not the tank making the pH go up. Hence if I left it to sit in a bucket overnight the pH should stabilise nicely. Or I could just do as Cezza says and add it slowly, but I suppose it would be cooling down while I wait.

 

[CezzaXV]

Cezza - " I just run a hose from the tap to the tank... and putting a big dose of dechlorinator directly into the tank"

I think if I had a bigger tank I would probably do the same, but with such a small tank it's probably less hassle for me to fill a bucket or two than it would be to set up a hose

I'm a bit wary of adding tapwater straight to the tank... maybe because it's taking a long time for my tank to cycle and I don't want to risk exposing my precious bacteria to chlorine or anything that could kill them even for a second! I'm sure it must be okay because you haven't had any problems with it, but if I'm using buckets anyway I may as well put the dechlorinator in the buckets. I may use a bit too much dechlorinator for one bucket but I don't think you can overdose on dechlorinator... can you?

Yes, it's stuff dissolved in my tap water and not the tank making the pH go up. Hence if I left it to sit in a bucket overnight the pH should stabilise nicely. Or I could just do as Cezza says and add it slowly, but I suppose it would be cooling down while I wait.

I started doing this with my original 60L tank. It definitely makes things easier for me. I wrote a tutorial on it (link in my signature) if you're interested. I like changing more water than I need to and this made things much easier. It takes much longer, but all I have to do really is unreel a hose then sit there and watch it.

I always turn my filter off while the hose is refilling to make sure that no chlorine comes into contact with it. As long as you dose enough dechlorinator to dose the whole tank rather than just what you're adding, it's fine. I like to add a little more than that though. My bottle of Prime says it's safe to overdose up to five times the normal amount, though I can't talk for other dechlorinators.

If your heater is still submerged, you can leave it on while you're refilling. I've done very slow water changes before with completely cold water to encourage my cories to breed and it's been fine. I certainly don't foresee any problems with the size of the changes you're doing and the type of temperature drop you'd be talking about.