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Large water change necessary?

SDIESEL77

Member
Joined
6 Aug 2018
Messages
159
Location
Celbridge, Co. Kildare
Hi All
By reading multiple posts I can see that most of you are doing large weekly water charges (50%).
Is it something that can be decreased 20/30%?
Let's say by maybe dosing less fertiliser or or adding carbon in filter or something else...
 
If you have high lighting and are injecting co2 the large water changes are needed to remove waste organics. In fact to begin with you are doing them more often than once a week. Without these you will more than likely have algae issues.

With medium lighting and no co2 and a reasonably low level of fish the lower water change amount is quite the norm. That said still more the better in my eyes.
 
Yes, they are necessary for beginners.

Once you are experienced, you can change the routine to suit the tank.
 
As an experienced hobbiest I have always done 50% wc's on all my tanks, even ones without EI dosing regime on them. This is for best results IMO. Tom raised me that way lol. However some tanks can go even without water changes, I have never done this nor have the intention to ever but I have seen some neat low tech results.... generally and this is the "easy" way to put it... The higher the tech, the higher the WC (50% being the regular basis maximum) and the lower the tech, the lower the WC count, (25% to sometimes nothing on a regular basis)
 
With tanks that might also house numerous fishes along with daily feedings of same,50% water changes each week produced best result's for me for close to four decades.
With plants also.(Saw no harm from it)
Have seen no reason in my tanks to change from 50% weekly.Just a habit now.
Trick is to make the process of changing the water as easy as possible.
Small pump and hose or Python water changing tool sure beats bucket brigade I employed when I first began in early 1970's.
 
Depending on your set up / location / skills, you may want to look at ways to reduce the burden of the changes. Lugging around the containers of water meant I got lazy with it.

My current and old tank I hooked up so can fill and drain by just opening a valve.

Less high tech is to get a longer tubing on the syphon so you can drain directly to nearest sink / door / window. Hose pipe or tap connector to fill back up from mains too.
 
Nope not necessarily necessary. It's a high tech EI dosing habit. You can certainly run a low tech tank with less big water changes. You do need to factor in how much stuff you are adding to the tank - ferts and fish food. If you are heavily stocked you might need bigger changes even if you aren't adding a lot of ferts as you'll be adding a lot of food. Low tech, lightly stocked, lots of plants 20-30% is probably going to work out fine. Doing an extra change or large change now and then helps make sure you are resetting too.
 
My mate runs a low tech planted'ish 120litre tank. Single T5 tube, with a few foil rings reducing the light, a x3 filtration rate, adds EI ferts in 1/4 dose maybe once a week, if he remembers. No carbon source addition, rotting fish poo & fish food appears to be fine. Changes water when ever. Plants grow, fish swim and no algae, but looks dim in my eyes.
 
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