Water Change Frequency

[MermaidMel]

Oooh I have a good one for you right here....

I have never been one to do w/c on a certain day, each week for a certain amount because my life isn't like that, but my fish have always been very well cared for.

However, last May when I found out I needed emergency spinal surgery and wasn't to lift or do housework etc. for so many weeks, my first thought was that nobody else but me could take care of my tank (had a 4ft tank at that time). The week before my op I did a big maintenance job on it. Then just prayed!! I didn't do a water change or clean my filter for weeks and weeks. I didn't lose a single fish. I devised a little gadget - I took one of the kids toy brooms, took the broom part off and kept the long plastic handle. I took a small fine mesh fishing net and shoved it up the plastic handle and every day, 2-3 times I day I swished and swished all visible waste such as food, plant matter and detritus out of the tank. The sand was always gleaming but the water remained the same.

Now obviously this isn't an ideal situation but my hands were tied and I had to just take the chance. My tank was mildly understocked and over filtered, which obviously helped but I still have those fish with me now, apart from ones I've sold or swapped and I even battled a cauliflower growth on a fish that was medicated in the main tank with the other fish and survived. Funnily enough he later died following the start of routine maintenance again!!

So meh. Bitteraspects you are wrong.

 

[Truck]

Anything less then 25-30% weekly is poor husbandry. If someone can't make time AT LEAST once a week to make sure their fish arent swimming in their own waste, then they have no business keeping fish imo.

now that i have a marine tank and do 10% weekly im a bad fish keeper... what a sweeping statement! theres much more that can go wrong on a marine tank yet i only remove 10%, thats less than i did on my tropical! does that make me a bad fish keeper?

saying that they live in their own waste is a bit hit n miss, you can remove more detritus in a 10% change than you can in a 30% water change if you actually want too.

if you think about it we live in our own waste, our environment is full of methane and CO2, and we live in houses full of dead skin cells, we dont live in a sterile lab, and neither do your fish. its okay you saying they live in detritus, but i bet youve never actually seen a wild habitat have you? because im telling you now, a fish tank is a damn site better than a native habitat in terms of sanitation.

its another case of im better than you because i do a bigger water change, it reminds me of pathetic little arguements young boys have about...well you know

 

[Ren&Stumpy]

My FW oscar tank is 400L and i do minimum 50% change a week Most weeks its 75-80% change and i also vacum the tank for fish waste if there is a noticable build up. Filters get rinsed once a month. ( in old tank water)

I have just started on the marine side of things but i plan to change 10% minimum a week but this could change depending on what suits the tank. It is yet un inhabited as i have been away and it finished its cycle just before i left the country.

 

[aquila]

On the big goldfish tank I do a 90% water change every Sunday without fail - if you ever need to convince someone not to buy fancy goldfish, point them to this post, lol! They grow huge and they are unbelievably messy, even with just the three of them in there.

The heavily planted 90l tropical tank gets a 30% change every two weeks, and the heavily planted 27l nano gets a 20% change every week or so.

 

[AdAndrews]

on my biorb 15litre i do 30% weekly
on my rekord 60litres i do 25% weekly
on my planted arc 35litre i do 50% weekly,

for me i dont mind doing water changes, in some ways i enjoy it, creating a clean enviroment for my fish.

 

[robmol]

i know nothing as im a bit of a noob, but surely doing water changes like once, twice, three times a week or whatever will be detrimental to the fish? Wouldnt the water stats be constantly fluctuating? I do it once every 2weeks/10days at the most which seems to keep the stats well in line with what they should be, and all my fish seem happy!

my 2cents

 

[NaughtyT]

I do a 20% change in my cichlid tank twice a week and clean the filter in tank water once a month,my 2 small tanks get 20% water change once a week and my big tank gets a 50% change once a fortnight,seems to work fine for me.

 

[gaz gun man]

I do 20-25% every 7 to 10 days.

 

[aaronnorth]

i know nothing as im a bit of a noob, but surely doing water changes like once, twice, three times a week or whatever will be detrimental to the fish? Wouldnt the water stats be constantly fluctuating? I do it once every 2weeks/10days at the most which seems to keep the stats well in line with what they should be, and all my fish seem happy!

my 2cents

as long as the stats are fine then do it as frequent as you want. Some poeople may stock at higher levels so they will find toxins build up quicker and a weekly water change may be necassary, some stiock very lightly and only do a water change every couple of months.
It will change the water chemistry slightly, however, the positives far outweigh the negatives that a water change brings.
Water changes remove algae spores, toxins, waste but it also replaces minerals which fish need to live & grow healthily

 

[nickelplates]

i know nothing as im a bit of a noob, but surely doing water changes like once, twice, three times a week or whatever will be detrimental to the fish? Wouldnt the water stats be constantly fluctuating? I do it once every 2weeks/10days at the most which seems to keep the stats well in line with what they should be, and all my fish seem happy!

my 2cents

The more often you do routine water changes the less they change the water chemistry. This is because (in a stable tank) your chemistry will gradually drift at a more or less steady rate and then make a step change (hopefully for the better) when you do your water change, the more often you do it the less the drift and the smaller the step.

The extreme expression of this effect is old tank syndrome which we used to see when fish keepers were a little less scientific than now and used to do very few water changes. The result was that the fish would adapt to an environment with high nitrates and a pH quite different to the tap water, once it gets to this point water changes have to be treated with great caution since the shock of the sudden chemistry change would often kill the fish. Nowadays of course we all know enough to stop it ever getting to that point.