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Reduce water change frequency with EI ?
- Thread starter eminor
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Karmicnull
Member
Tank details? Low tech or high tech? Stocking?
zozo
Member
If it's low tech you can get away with far fewer water changes, look up the Waldstad Tank Concept. A sufficiently planted and healthy low tech can be pretty self-regulating. It's not my personal take on it but personally, I do know such an aquarium and it rarely gets a water change only top-off what is evaporated. If it gets a water change it might be once a year. I find the owner rather lazy than tired and she never complains about any issues. And the tank remarkably looks rather ok to me when I see it. Proof in the pudding. 🙂 With loads of different opinions... Take a pick...
If it's high tech then it gets tricky and the plants will produce a lot more waste in a very short period. And that can make you run into issues... One of the most common pieces of advice given when you run into issues with high tech is better husbandry also concerning more frequent water changes.
A common analogy is the High Tech Aquarium is like a sports car it runs 10 times faster than the low tech tractor. The best way to get around not maintaining a sports car properly is don't get one.
Not saying you can't get about with fewer water changes than recommended, it's a trial and error you have to find out how and where it goes. Most of us simply take the WC's for granted to stay a step ahead and narrow down the diagnosis when issues present.
If it's high tech then it gets tricky and the plants will produce a lot more waste in a very short period. And that can make you run into issues... One of the most common pieces of advice given when you run into issues with high tech is better husbandry also concerning more frequent water changes.
A common analogy is the High Tech Aquarium is like a sports car it runs 10 times faster than the low tech tractor. The best way to get around not maintaining a sports car properly is don't get one.
Not saying you can't get about with fewer water changes than recommended, it's a trial and error you have to find out how and where it goes. Most of us simply take the WC's for granted to stay a step ahead and narrow down the diagnosis when issues present.
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high tech, only 2 tetra amandae, red cherry shrimps and snails, 15 gallons tank
What if i reduce the light, the plant will grow slower right ?
zozo
Member
One would think so!? 🙂 But it's hard to say... Without a PAR meter all you can say you have light. All plants have regarding their genetic preference a different Light Compensation Point and accordingly more or less CO² preferences. And this divides the plants into 3 groups, easy, medium and advanced to grow. Obviously, the easier they are to grow the less light and less CO² they will require. Your weakest link is the most advanced plant.
Anyway since not all specific data is available about all plants we could grow it again comes down to trial and error.
But you could also tune down the CO² contents... In general, people aim for 30ppm since this is the maximum to add and is still relatively safe for the fish. Going higher isn't bad for the plants but the fish will suffer. But it also means you can go a lot lower than 30ppm and it still is beneficial for the plants. There are people that reported adding only 15ppm of CO² and didn't experience the plants growing slower or less healthy. But this again highly depends on which types of plants were grown I guess.
As said before trial and error, there are many ways that lead to Rome. Just try things out and see where it leads to. And there is very little written in stone in our hobby... We have general guidelines to optimize it based upon average data collected and gathered by experiences. It doesn't say deviating from it is a guarantee for failure.
For example, a general rule for CO² tanks is a sufficient turnover for CO² distribution, recommended 10x the tanks volume and you can't go wrong.
I kept a CO² tank for years with a 4 x turnover and didn't really notice negative effects... On the contrary, some plants such as a water lily and the fish I kept in it liked it better. 🙂
And no 2 tanks are the same.
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It's as Marcel mentions. There is no formula to determine how much light, what kind of flow/distribution and so forth will be required. You just have to experiment and see what you can get away with. You might get lucky, or not.
Cheers,
Cheers,
