Water Changes

[mepiscool]

can you do a water change to often? what is the result by doing very often?

 

[rami]

Yes, you can! if you keep your tank "too clean" you won't have enough "good" bacteria in the tank. Also, water changes are stressful on the fish...change i water temp, kicks up a lot of debris etc. I personally do about 25% every two weeks. It keep the tank nice and clean, but ( I don't think) its over kill. I may even switch to every 3 weeks in a bit.

 

[OldMan47]

As long as you don't do more than 3 or 4 of the 50% water changes each day, it won't bother the fish much and the bacteria will be fine. The "good" bacteria that we try to develop in our filters and substrate live mainly on surfaces so removing water will not bother them at all. The only negative effect I have seen with way too many water changes is that I need to turn off the filter and heater to do a big water change which lets things slow down a bit and maybe even dry out a bit in the filter. A dry filter, one that does not keep all of the media moist, can lose a bit of its bacterial colony. The bacteria will not survive drying out. Another minor problem is if I clean the substrate excessively and don't allow any biological activity to develop in the gravel. Although we don't usually look very hard at the processes in our gravel, it is a place that wastes often break down into useful plant fertilizers. Since I run most of my tanks planted, I want that breakdown to happen.

 

[Tolak]

Your nitrifying bacteria reside in the filter media, not the water. Anything considered bad, such as disease carrying bacteria do reside in the water. Fresh water is the best preventative medicine there is, and probably the cheapest. I've done countless 100% water changes while moving tanks, setting up tanks that were empty, and so forth, with no problems. Fry tanks get 70% to 80% of the water changed daily for the first week or two. This results in fish growing like weeds, with few losses.

My tanks with larger fish get 50% to 75% once or twice weekly, depending on the stocking level. If water changes stressed fish they would all be sick, but they aren't. Many people deal with sick fish in a reactive manner; meds and such. If you are proactive, with plenty of fresh water this rarely happens.

 

[waterdrop]

For me too water changes have seemed to clearly be a game changer in beginner fishkeeping. We generally change 50% each weekend on my son's tank and the times when I've been able to change twice during a week, things (tank cleanliness and fish behavior) have seemed even better. By contrast, the times when we've been gone on weekend trips and not done the gravel-clean-water-change for two weeks, the tank begins to show it, its just not as clean and well-kept.

~~waterdrop~~