minnesotagal866 said:
I strongly disagree with the previous article. I don't know any long term experienced and successful fish keepers that would agree that a 25% water change once a month is sufficient.
Umm... I think keeping fish, on and off for 20 years, fresh and salt, and having done quite a bit of reading on fish while working at an excellent LFS in Washington DC when I was younger, qualifies me as a 'long term experienced and successful fish keeper'
In my current African Cichlid tanks and other community tank, which have been running 2.5 years, I have 0% loss due to some unkown mysterious reason.
True, be discerning about whatever reading you do and if so inclined, do some of your own research to find 'the truth'. It's always good to understand both sides of an argument.
I still maintain that 50% water changes should only be performed in an emergency. Obviously it is working for some people, but if you consider the attached image, my contention is that frequent and/or large water changes disrupt the the normal growth of 'beneficial' bacteria that break down ammonia and Nitrites.
Think back on when you first cycled your tank, it took a month didn't it?
So it takes about thirty days for a complete cycling.
Water changes introduce uncycled water (no beneficial bacteria).
Risnsing filter media and gravel vaccuming will seriously disrupt the concentration of the bacteria.
Process of re-establishing colonies begins.
Before colonies are fully re-established, a week later, another water change is performed, again disrupting the cycle because remember, it takes a full thirty days.
This is a simplified view of how I see what is going on in a tank. The article I posted previously is, as MinnesotaGal pointed out, written by a commercial source and I too am suspicious of anything written for commercial purposes, but as I said in my posting, I only did a quick search on Google. (
http://www.pets-warehouse.com/waterchg.htm)
So if you disagree strongly enough, please educate me, but with more that just an opinion which assumes what an indiscrimminant number of other experts would say. Seriously, I would appreciate further education on this because I have learned that only one thing in life is for sure.... everything I know is subject to revision.
