50% water change

i fully agree. but i would like to point out that stable water quality not only comes from water changes, but also from light stocking, good planting and good filtration.

however good water changes are, however, i believe it does more bad than good to do over 50% a week (50% a week still fine ;) ), unless of course you are raising young fry which do need prestine water conditions.
 
I think most know this, but then again some may not, and it's worth repeating, and repeating.... :)

It's important to keep your water changes very close to the same temperatures --- tank water and 'new' water....
 
thom - I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'd really like to know as this topic comes up so often - Why do feel that frequent larger-scale changes (>50% per week) does more harm than good? I don't understand? What is the downside you see?

I don't do changes at that level (other than fry) myself as I have too many tanks to tend, but I don't see any downside.
 
With regards to changing out water and maintaining constant temperature with the replacement water and tank water....I thought I have heard of people adding water of a slightly lower temperature which supposedly aids in triggering spawning. Just a thought, but I could've sworn I've read about that in numerous publications claiming that it "simulates natural post-rainfall " conditions. I don't have much experience with breeding fish, other than some livebearers, but I just thought I would throw that out there....

steve
 
i can see where you are coming from - but i can also see that you can have 'overly clean' conditions. It is being suggested by many experts that dirt in the gut actually helps aid a fishes digestion - but if you are changing more than 50% of the water per week (with the exeption of course of the discus fish, another topic completely) then this dirt required doesnt have time to accumilate. Also plants would benefit from less frequent water changes - dont get me wrong, i am in NO way suggesting against water changes - they are VITAL. but i do believe you can over do it.
 
sorry stevie, i skipped over your post there in answering RTR. it can help to trigger spawning by carrying out large water changes, and in certain cases with cooler water - but never more than afew degrees cooler than that of the aquarium. It can also be beneficial to fish in the summer months to recieve a 'cool shower', but again never more than afew degrees cooler.
 
that's pretty much what I figured....just wanted to make sure that I was on track. thanks for the input.

steve
 
Perhaps we need a definition of "dirt" - do you mean soil? If so, does this mean those of us with soilless tanks are killing their fish? Should we be adding soil to out tanks? How much and how often?

Organic waste in the tank is not "dirt" by any scientific definition I know. And fish do not normally eat such so how does it get into their gut?

I'm afraid this sounds like a myth in the making to me.
 
Wouldnt doing water changes too frequently/too large over time tend to reduce/destroy the bacteria colony? For example, if you had an established biological filter that was balanced to support the daily ammonia generated by your fish load, but you were constantly changing large amounts of the water, the bacteria would never get fed (or get fed much less ammo than needed) hence it would starve. Then if you stopped doing the massive/frequent changes you would get an ammonia and possibly nitrite spike.
 
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