From what I have understood about the things I have read about Old Tank Syndrome is the theory about water parameters slowly drifting out of line. A tank kept for several years where at least one, most likely more, aspects of water chemistry gradually drifts to an quite an extreme out of the norm. Making that tank extremely toxic to any new fish introduced to the tank, while the long time inhabitants show no stress at all.
The thing that has made me wonder about this is water evaporation from my tank.
I have a piece of tape that marks the 25% of water capacity on my tank that I use every week when I do my partial water change. I can tell there is a noticiable amount of evaportion between these changes which only reduces the clean water not the nitrAtes( and whatever else) builds up between my changes.
This seems to me that it would gradually make water changes remove a smaller amount, every week, of nitrAtes and whatever else before being replenished with fresh water.
Does anyone have a possibly way of preventing OTS? Like maybe once every so many months doing a water change 7 days in a row to reverse this process?
The thing that has made me wonder about this is water evaporation from my tank.
I have a piece of tape that marks the 25% of water capacity on my tank that I use every week when I do my partial water change. I can tell there is a noticiable amount of evaportion between these changes which only reduces the clean water not the nitrAtes( and whatever else) builds up between my changes.
This seems to me that it would gradually make water changes remove a smaller amount, every week, of nitrAtes and whatever else before being replenished with fresh water.
Does anyone have a possibly way of preventing OTS? Like maybe once every so many months doing a water change 7 days in a row to reverse this process?
