When To Do Water Changes?

[redbourn]

hi,

I started up a 35 gallon freshwater aquarium a month ago and recently added fish and all seems well.

There's an internal filter and an under-gravel filter.

The ph is around 7.6 and nitrite and ammonia are almost invisible.

I know that stable water quality is really important and wonder when I should do a partial water change, or vacuum the gravel.

No cichlids in the tank.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Michael

 

[Monty-2010]

Hi Michael,
Welcome to the forum.
I do my water changes once or twice a week. When you say that ammonia is almost 0 what are you using to test the water with? for the best conditions for your fish you should try to keep ammonia at 0 if there is even a trace of ammonia i'd do a partial water change to get rid of it, you can do a gravel vac at the same time that way you'll pick up decaying fish food and fish waste

 

[coldcazzie]

Hi Michael and welcome

You should do a gravel vacuum every time you change the water to remove as much built up muck as possible. Replace it with temperature matched (with your hand is fine) and dechlorinated water. As Monty said, once a week is fine if you find yourself with an ammonia or nitrite reading then do as large a water change as you can as quickly as possible. But for general maintainance, once a week should be sufficient

 

[redbourn]

Hi Michael,
Welcome to the forum.
I do my water changes once or twice a week. When you say that ammonia is almost 0 what are you using to test the water with? for the best conditions for your fish you should try to keep ammonia at 0 if there is even a trace of ammonia i'd do a partial water change to get rid of it, you can do a gravel vac at the same time that way you'll pick up decaying fish food and fish waste

Thanks for the reply!

Once or twice a week sounds incredibly excessive if one wants to keep water quality stable?!

Maybe you're making your life a little more difficult than is necessary?

I kept fish as a teenager for several years (50 years ago but fish haven't changed much) and I used to occasionally do a partial water change (25%), and only lost a fish to either old age or a new aggesive arrival.

Occassionally, meaning "every few weeks".

I bred all liver bearers, zebras, gouramis, fighting fish and some others too.

Test kits that I'm using:

Nutrafin for ph and ammonia and API for nitrite.

Nitrite was 0 ppm - and ammonia was around 0.6 or less

I did a gravel vac but there was almost no waste, but then the set up is very new.

Michael

 

[redbourn]

Hi Michael and welcome

You should do a gravel vacuum every time you change the water to remove as much built up muck as possible. Replace it with temperature matched (with your hand is fine) and dechlorinated water. As Monty said, once a week is fine if you find yourself with an ammonia or nitrite reading then do as large a water change as you can as quickly as possible. But for general maintainance, once a week should be sufficient

Thanks for the reply - please see my reply to Monty.

A couple of observations:

I had a tropical fish store back in the mid-70s but never saw the pink danios that exist today.

Irradiated I believe ;-)

I felt that one of my two angel fish was attacking other fish and isolated him/her in a net that's usually used for breeding overnight.

The second one of the pair who'd definitely been attacked by the isolated one, especially when I fed frozen worms, looked on mournfully for hours.

Co-dependency?

I released the captive one the next day and they both died within a fews hours.

I've read that angels have a "death to us part relationship" before but am not sure if this was the reason.

They were both seemingly very healthy before!

Michael

 

[fluttermoth]

Things have changed a lot in fishkeeping since the 70s!

Yes, we do bigger water changes more often now. This actually helps keep the water stable; it's what happens in the tank with the fish and the plants and their various processes that change the water (in general making it more acidic, less mineralised and higher in nitrates); what comes out of your tap is (usually anyway) much the same all the time.

More, larger water changes mean that your fish are living in, more or less, unchanged tap water that is frequently re-plenished so the tank never slides into the pH crashing, very acidic, low mineral conditions that used to make our fish and plants waste away.

It's also very valuable to be able to do massive water changes whithout shocking the fish; I honestly believe that saves more fishy lives than any medicine ever has.

I personally have noticed that I can keep a broader range of fish for much longer and have them grow much larger than in the 'good old days'

I don't agree that more frequent water changes is 'making your life a little more difficult than is necessary'. Times change; research moves on and teaches us new things and we should embrace that and learn what we can to make our fish's lives better and our tanks healthier and more successful.

The pink danios aren't irradiated or dyed; they're 'GM'; have had genes from other species (mostly jellyfish) that make them those bright colours (they glow in the dark too!) Not everone agrees with it, but it's not actualy cruel and does no harm to the fish.

As for the angels..there's a very simple explanation for that; they reached sexual maturity and killed each other. I'm afraid angels don't have a "death to us part relationship", however nice it would be if they did! The best way to keep angels is in a group of 6+ (and even then you may have to remove some fish as they mature and pair off) or as a single specimen. They're a suprisingly aggressive species!

Anyway, welcome to the forum and I'm sure you'll enjoy getting back into the hobby

 

[coldcazzie]

I kept fish as a teenager for several years (50 years ago but fish haven't changed much) and I used to occasionally do a partial water change (25%), and only lost a fish to either old age or a new aggesive arrival.

Things have changed since then. We understand more about how the nitrification process works in the aquarium environment: toxic ammonia produced by fish is processed into toxic nitrite, which is processed into non-toxic nitrate, which builds up over time, lowering the pH of the tank. After several years of living in a tank with few or little water changes the organic nitrate level will have slowly built up to a very high level. Then when a water change was done the mineral content of the water rapidly changed, which could send fish into shock and cause their deaths. It was reasoned that water changes must be bad for fish. In those circumstances (known to fishkeepers now as OTS - Old Tank Syndrome) water changes are bad - if the water is to change it must be changed bad to it's original parameters slowly: multiple small water changes over several weeks. Now, if you change 40% of the water once a week the dissolved minerals are replenished, pH stays roughly the same and nitrates are kept reasonably low (depending on what your tap nitrate reading is, and how often water changes are performed), meaning no OTS.

Nitrite was 0 ppm - and ammonia was around 0.6 or less

If your ammonia is 0.6ppm then you need to do a 80-90% water change asap. Ammonia can cause damage to fish at levels of 0.25 or above. You need to keep it as close to 0 as possible. To do that, you take the old water out and put fresh water in.

A couple of observations:

I had a tropical fish store back in the mid-70s but never saw the pink danios that exist today.

Irradiated I believe ;-)

I felt that one of my two angel fish was attacking other fish and isolated him/her in a net that's usually used for breeding overnight.

The second one of the pair who'd definitely been attacked by the isolated one, especially when I fed frozen worms, looked on mournfully for hours.

Co-dependency?

I released the captive one the next day and they both died within a fews hours.

I've read that angels have a "death to us part relationship" before but am not sure if this was the reason.

They were both seemingly very healthy before!

Michael

I have never seen a pink danio so I can't comment on how that colouring has come about. I doubt the angels died of love-sickness. More likely they bullied each other to death. Angels are aggressive! Pretty, but aggressive.

Things have changed a lot in fishkeeping since the 70s!

Yes, we do bigger water changes more often now. This actually helps keep the water stable; it's what happens in the tank with the fish and the plants and their various processes that change the water (in general making it more acidic, less mineralised and higher in nitrates); what comes out of your tap is (usually anyway) much the same all the time.

More, larger water changes mean that your fish are living in, more or less, unchanged tap water that is frequently re-plenished so the tank never slides into the pH crashing, very acidic, low mineral conditions that used to make our fish and plants waste away.

It's also very valuable to be able to do massive water changes whithout shocking the fish; I honestly believe that saves more fishy lives than any medicine ever has.

I personally have noticed that I can keep a broader range of fish for much longer and have them grow much larger than in the 'good old days'

I don't agree that more frequent water changes is 'making your life a little more difficult than is necessary'. Times change; research moves on and teaches us new things and we should embrace that and learn what we can to make our fish's lives better and our tanks healthier and more successful.

The pink danios aren't irradiated or dyed; they're 'GM'; have had genes from other species (mostly jellyfish) that make them those bright colours (they glow in the dark too!) Not everone agrees with it, but it's not actualy cruel and does no harm to the fish.

As for the angels..there's a very simple explanation for that; they reached sexual maturity and killed each other. I'm afraid angels don't have a "death to us part relationship", however nice it would be if they did! The best way to keep angels is in a group of 6+ (and even then you may have to remove some fish as they mature and pair off) or as a single specimen. They're a suprisingly aggressive species!

Anyway, welcome to the forum and I'm sure you'll enjoy getting back into the hobby

Some excellent answers from fluttermoth.

I know it is difficult to come back to something and discover that everything's changed, and you can't really see why because in your opinion is was perfectly fine the way it was before. There are people who still keep fish the way you used to. There are sales staff in shops who still perpetuate the same myths about fishkeeping: the bacteria are in the water, cycle your tank with a few hardy fish, don't water change too often you'll kill your fish. They are wrong.

In some setups it is perfectly possible to not do water changes for weeks, months, even over a year. But that does not apply to every setup: there are specific circumstances where that is appropriate, and the rest of the time it isn't. Certainly a new setup should be having frequent water changes. At least once a week. I would be wanting to do them more often. I am planning a new tank in the next couple of months, and even though I'll be seeding with media from my current tank and fishless cycling it before I put fish in, and heavily planting it, I will still be starting with daily/every other day water changes for the first few weeks. Yes it's a pain sometimes. But it's also worth it for healthy fish and plants.

 

[algir]

Weekly water changes are a must! However, since your tank is relatively newly cycled I would try not to "over vacuum" the gravel. Your beneficial bacteria has just been established, so try not to disturb it too much for a while! Good luck!