Good quality

[Josesilva]

Hello,
Is it still necessary to change the water. Even if the water is in "GOOD QUALITY"...?



Hagen test:
----------------------
ph---------7.0
Gh--------180
Kh----------60
No2--------0.1
No3---------10

[Aquaskilz]

ABSOLUTELY!!! If you want to maintain good water quality you should do a partial water change at least every other week. (experts reccommend water changes 1x wkly!) Nitrates,ammonia can build at any given time. They're not on a schedule so play it safe and do your water changes!! Good luck!!

[NJ Devils Fan]

Yes, you always want to do water changes every week to keep nitrate down.

[wetmanNY]

The only good-quality reading for NO2 is undetectable. You have a trace of nitrite there.

Keep up the water changes!

[superstein61]

While I agree its good practice to do weekly or bi-weekly water changes, I believe its incorrect to say absolutely or always do water changes.

I was surprised to learn from reading these boards that in some situations (albeit limited) you should not do water changes.
Seemed odd to me - but on the plant thread, Tom Barr advocates for low tech, heavily planted, non CO2 injected tanks to only do top-offs for 3-6 months - no water changes. Now again - this is for a heavily planted setup - but differs from the always do a water change every week thinking. Just wanted to throw that out there

[carpguy]

Originally posted by superstein61
…Seemed odd to me - but on the plant thread, Tom Barr advocates for low tech, heavily planted, non CO2 injected tanks to only do top-offs for 3-6 months - no water changes. Now again - this is for a heavily planted setup - but differs from the always do a water change every week thinking. Just wanted to throw that out there

Its good to keep all the angles out in the open, but its important to keep them in their context as well. Tom is not so much an expert as the expert on planted tanks. I think he sometimes uses the slogan "fish are fertilizer". He's also an advocate of mulm (aquariacompost) in the substrate. And in that limited case it makes perfectly good sense. At the same time I think you need to understand a good bit of what your doing in order to be able to do it right.

For fish only, definitely regular water changes. In a well planted tank, I think the low maintenance approach works best for folks (like Tom) who can look at the tank and say "Hmm, looks a bit off. I'd better change the (small factor x)". I can't do that. As a plant newb, I'm too ignorant to not pay close attention and try to get a handle on what's happening in the tank. Tinkering is learning.

There's that old story about the 12 pennies that balance Big Ben. That's low tech, but its the low tech solution of someone who really understood the clockworks.