Changing water in planted tank

[maverick786us]

Way back in July - August when I was planning to have my first aquarium, I did lot of research on internet checked YouTube. When I discovered that a tank has to be fully cycled before introducing live stock. I saw some video from "Father Fish" where he said that a fully cycled heavily planted tank, is like a self sustaining eco system, in which Ammonia is broken into nitrite, which is further broken into nitrate and plants consume those nitrates to clean water. So it only needs water change once or twice an year. Then I got some advice from an experts that the fish release hormones under the water as they grow and the nitrogen cycle consumes the carbonate hardness and once it's completely depleted, the nitrogen cycle will stall so it's much easier to maintain a tank if I do some water changes. He changes water every 2 to 4 weeks at the moment. He thinks it's too much work to do more than that and that's what it takes to keep his tanks around 80 PPM nitrate which is the upper limit and he is comfortable with it at the moment. He doesn't advocate water changes to fix algae issues because he doesn't believe it works most of the time.

I have 5 tanks and in 2 of those tanks I hardly change water, and yet the water stays clean free from algae and the fishes are healthy. Those tanks are planted. But in 2 of my aquascape tanks I change 15-20% water every week and sometimes twice a week if I see white powdery stuff floating on the surface of the tank.

Theoretically more the plants, less water cleaning but the filter is has to be cleaned more frequently. Whats your best suggestion on water change on fully cycled heavily planted aquascape tank?

 

[hypnogogia]

Weekly. If it’s high tech, change minimum 50%, if not then 20-30%. Water changes remove organic waste from the water.

 

[Little]

I believe you have got a little mixed up regarding the approach for high tech vs low tech aquariums

People like fatherfish (personally am not a fan of) and dianna walstead (who I am a big fan of) are using low tech systems that rely on nutrient rich soil substrate. Also referred to as dirtied tanks. These tanks have very low maintenance requirements. They leverage a sort of ecosystem mentality. Growth will be very slow as they have low light (also won’t look as bright as high tech tanks). They need far less water changes as less energy is going in to them.

People like MD, MJ, Jurijs etc… are typically using high tech systems - Even if not using CO2 - as they are frequently dismantling the tank and doing a lot of maintenance. They use much brighter lighting to get a faster and more visually impressive result for pictures / videos etc…

Think of it as a bouquet vs a wildflower garden.

Your tanks are very much in the high tech aquascape category. This means you need to do a lot of maintenance, water changes, fertiliser etc… more so due to the high livestock levels you put in your tanks.