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Water Keeper

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Hey peeps,

How long does it take yourself, from own experience or estimation, to complete weekly routine maintenance tasks such as a scrub and WC etc?

In particular a tank of 55-100 gallons, with say; two Oscars and a Pictus Catfish? :huh:

Many thanks
Water Keeper
 
Wow does it really take that long, thanks for the reply?! Do you find that the maintenance part of your fish keeping ever out-weights the visual benefits?
 
Not at all. I think it's quite rewarding to clean the tank. You get a feeling of satisfaction that the fish and plants will be happy for another week :good:
Weekly maintenance consists of- cleaning the filter, vaccing the substrate whilst removing the water, wiping the glass, pruning (if needed) the plants.


If you would prefer to spend less time changing the water, systems such as pythons or using a pump to transfer the water straight to a sink can be used. They're especially usefull for larger tanks :good:
 
I'd say it takes no more than 20 minutes to do the water change on my 55gal. We can do all four tanks in under an hour if we're focussed but it does take both of us.
 
I enjoyed cleaning and performing maintenance on my tanks, it's part of the whole experience. Kind of like when a person restores an old car, they don't do it just to see it completed, they do it for the whole experience. It's quite rewarding.

That's why I recommend not only keeping fish, but also breeding them. It can be a challenge, but it's also another facet to the hobby. It will sharpen your fish keeping skills and rekindle a bored fish keeper.
 
takes me about half an hour to gravel vac, empty the water and refill. filter maybe takes 10 mins but im not doing that atm.

and thats for a weak armed woman :)
 
lol takes me ages, at least an hour :rolleyes:

But I'm a weirdo and shouldn't be considered the norm in any topic of conversation :p
 
^ It takes me quite a while too! But I use a hose to refill and don't have a mixer tap, so I have to trickle the new water in very slowly as it's cold.

It might take me an hour or more to refill a 240l tank, but as I'm not having to lug 20 or so buckets back and forward, I'm happy. I can sit next to the tank and have a coffee, knit, read or whatever. Speed isn't everything ;)
 
There are ways of speeding things up. I'm in the process of hard plumbing a drain point under the main display tank. A few tweaks in the piping and I can vacuum the tank and empty water out with no buckets to make a mess with. Add to that a sump to pour the top up back into and things get a lot quicker.

Pruning tends to be what takes my time up.
 
Takes me around 45 minutes to do a weekly water change and sand vac on my 125 gallon, 15 minutes for my 30 gallon and around 20 minutes for my 40 gallon. I don't have my 55 gallon, 46 gallon or one of my 30's anymore so that saves some time lol. As noahs ark6 said it is rewarding to know you are looking after your fish and plants.

I never clean my filter weekly. I have 4 externals in all now. I give them a clean once ever 3 months or so.
 
It takes me ages to do all of my tanks (about an hour per tank) but I get a little OCD when cleaning.

As others have said, maintenance isn't really a chore. It can be a lot of fun. I love dabbling around in the water. Any larger fish that I've kept are always very intrigued to see what's going on and often brush up against my hand.
 
45mins - 60mins for a 50% water change and gravel vac on a 70g system.
 
I do a 40% (180L tank) water change with a python system, it's the draining that takes the longest because I syphon into the sink and there's not much of a drop. I could syphon it a LOT quicker out my back door but I like the control of the slow syphon (say for example, a rasbora decides to go on a water ride... :rolleyes: ) The filling takes under 10 minutes since I have a hose connected to my kitchen tap. But after all of this I still need to do my substrate cleaning for which I use a battery operated vac since I get the weak syphon via python.
 
Takes me anything from an hour to an hour and a half depending on how much needs doing (cleaning filter, pruning etc). But I do have the fry tank to clean as well as the main one.
 

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