Water Changes? Neglected Tank.

[beany_bot]

We used to have a tank when i was a boy and it went against just about everything said on these forums. it was a 4 foot tank and it was rather neglected, in about 5 years it NEVER had a water change, the fish were fed about once a week and no nitrate/ammonia levels or anything like that was ever checked. It was a community tank with a variety of fish in it such as corrys shark cuppy molly swordtail danio, etc.

But the thing is in those years of neglect i dont think we ever lost ANY fish, the tank just took care of itself.

Are people on here sometimes over dramatic with their tanks? testing ph and changing water and such like? be good to know.

I have just got a new tank and want to do things right, so how much water should i change and how often (its a month old) and is it really neccesary?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i think a lot of people will have had similar experiences, fishkeeping has moved on a lot in the last 20 years or so.

what you would probably have found, and possibly don't remember, is that at the start of the tanks life there were a fair proportion of deaths, then everything settled into a natural balance. this is somethng a lot of the planted tank bods aim for (not the first bit, but the natural balance bit) and is entirley possible and involves very little maintenance. (research diana walstead for further info) It's also what happens in tanks now really, we've some nice mature tanks that have been runnng for years, if i miss water changes for a couple of weeks it makes no difference whatsoever, likewise i never test the levels, cos everythings mature and stable. It's really when first settin up a tank that you encounter all these problems, and we now have a number of methods (such as fishless cycling and good maintenance) which can help avoid the problems.

however a lot of the popular fish now have been massivley overbred and inbred to produce all the fancy strains, this means the species are now quite weak and as such can't handle the nitrate levels that would have been in a tank 20 years ago.

inevitably as humans the more we know the more we will worry, it's human nature and yes invariably some people do take it too far.

 

[backtotropical]

Agreed, Miss W.

It's commonly called 'Old Tank Syndrome'.

I found this article to be very informative. Have a read.

http/www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html