Am I crazy for not changing water?

9

99SH

AC Members
Jan 1, 2003
35
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Lk. Hiawatha, NJ
I have a 90 gallon tank which I've had for about 8 months. I've never done a water change on it so far, I only let the water level go down about 1/4 and then fill it again. I've heard and read many things about this so I'm not really sure if this is wrong or not. The tank has:

penguin bio-wheel 330 filter
fluval 304 filter
2 common plecos
2 clown loaches
6 giant danios
4 rainbows
2 platys

So far I've never had any problems with the tank so maybe it's ok? Maybe the stress load isn't that high? Thanks.
 
Maybe your tapwater isn't very alkaline to begin with. Maybe you don't overfeed with flakes. Maybe you change your filter often. Maybe you have lots of plants that are using the dissolved solids and you are pruning them regularly. Maybe none of the above.
 
Welcome to Aquaria Central

When you do a water change, it lowers the nitrates and lowers the stress of the fish. You should do one every week. You should get something like a python and clean both the gravel and change the water at the same time. Then, you could easily refill it.

HTH

BTW, is your tank heavily planted? (little concern about inadequate filtration)
 
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wow NJDF, you've become very informative, ever since Cindy helped you out... keep up the good work. ;)
 
IMO, if the tank is unplanted, sooner or later you're going to have problems. One thing I noticed is that most of the fish you are keeping are relatively adaptable to their conditions. So you might not have problems for a while...I heard of people going years without changing their water...but then all of the sudden the whole tank dies off. (as a matter of fact, someone on here posted a few months ago that had not changed water in something like a year and was just starting to have problems).

Some of the things that will happen if you aren't changing water:

1. Your nitrAte levels are always increasing. Sooner or later, high nitrAtes will affect your fish. It's just a matter of when.
2. You're also not vacuuming your gravel. There would be a buildup of solid waste in your substrate. The natural breakdown of this will additionally increase your nitrAte levels.
3. By always "topping" off your tanks, as wetman alluded to, you're adding in ions that don't leave your tank (evaporation leaves the dissolved ions behind), which is constantly increasing the KH, GH, and pH values of your water over time.

I'll reiterate that the significance of these is all relative to your other fishkeep habits and your choice in fish...but it sure seems like it's worth the little work to insure the health of my fish.

So there's my 2 cents. Hope it helps...
 
it doesn't look like your bio load is to big, yet, so you could get away without doing it once a week. However there really, isn't a reason not to, and its good to get in the habit anyways.
 
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