Are Water Changes Actually Necessary?

[kazvorpal]

undergravel filters do not kill fish. they do no more harm then improperly maintained than a regular filter.

water changes are necessary to remove everything that the test kit can't pick up. even if your nitrates are 0, there are still so many other different dissolved organics in the water that you need to change at least 25% of the water every week.

Upon what do you base the specific 25% per week minimum claim?

How do you know that no tanks would not do well with 25% per month? Or 10% per week?

You are talking about some vague bogey-man that you cannot test...how do you know so precisely what the minimum amount of time is?

With people on here saying they've gone years without water changes, and had all healthy fish, it's clear that there is a CURVE of average time interval needed for a tank, and that not you, nor anyone else, has the slightest idea what the generic minimum actually is.

 

[Fishfriend1]

I haven't put this in for a wile now :
"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." - Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[chefjamesscott]

WOW so amazing to see how fast the cloud of B.S. clears when the ignore feature it used!!!!

 

[kazvorpal]

So the truth of a fool being revealed in his words rings loud and clear with the above red text. How sad you wish to have cake and eat it.

Thank god for the ignore feature

Before you relegate yourself to blissful ignorance of the discussion, let's get this on the record, officially:

You actually think that ALL tanks accumulate ammonia, ALL the time.

Right?

That ammonia is not normally broken down into nitrates in a tank with a healthy nitrogen cycle established.

Right?

How many of you guys agree with that?

While we're at it, do you also agree that catfish mostly live in clean, salt-free water in the wild? That it's crazy to say that some of them live in mud, and that most "fresh water" in the wild is at least somewhat brackish?

 

[DGalt]

sigh...Kav, the only points that you seem to be responding to are the ones made about the nitrogen cycle, even though several people have brought up the fact that other organic and inorganic substances can build up over time if water changes are not done on a regular basis.

the basic question here is quite simple: why is the conventional wisdom to do water changes on a regular basis?

What you fail to realize is that the people on this forum are not the typical aquarists. The guy who goes down, buys a simple HOB, a 10 gallon, and a goldfish for his 8yr old's birthday is your typical aquarist. We as hobbists hope that this person at least googles "taking care of a fish" and understands that weekly water changes are an important component to taking care of a fish because it is likely that this same person is the one that will overfeed his/her fish, overstock the tank, not keep plants, not clean the filter on a regular basis, etc. etc.

Now maybe your response will be "oh well...that person should be more informed." Well yes, that is true. But now let us look at the people here on this forum. As I said in an earlier post, water changes allow us a simple, timely, and effective way to keep a balanced environment in our tanks. Is it the ideal solution? Maybe not but then again neither is keeping fish in little glass boxes. Many (if not most) of us are keeping our fish in situations that are appealing to us but certainly not to their typical settings (the simple idea of population density is something we all overdo in our tanks), but what is the purpose of a fish tank if it is not aesthetically pleasing to us?

The burden of proof is not on us though. Until you can account for every possible variable WITHOUT having to do a water change, then your arguments will be incomplete and subsequently flawed. Until then, recycling the water on a regular basis is our best option. (ironically enough, this is mother nature's way of doing things too)

 

[msjinkzd]

Not a single bit of evidence has been given, even circumstantially, that actually supports generic water changes at a specific interval.

You keep dodging. Where is YOUR evidence that you are so certain of? I have yet to see ANY citation of any sort from you beyond your constant insistence. Anecdotal "its like that in the wild" does not support your claims.

What we have is people arguing that conditions can exist that MIGHT call for water changes. Nobody ever denied that. But there's no reason to think that doing one every day or week, just because an amount of time has passed, is necessary.


The best anyone has proposed is that it's easier, for those who cannot be bothered with anything more complicated. And that's fine, but such people shouldn't go around telling other people that you MUST change ANY tank's water every N interval.

This is a case where you who claim otherwise must offer the proof. You are making the positive claim. Skeptics need not prove anything but that you have not given that solid proof.

But we are skeptical of you, if you are so certain, why zero proof?

If you were saying that a banana must be floated in any tank containing charicins, it would not be up to your opponents to prove that it is not necessary, but you to prove that it is. That is also the case, here.

A deep sand bed, alone, is more than enough nitrate disposal for most situations. In fact, with saltwater there is some concern that the nitrates will end up TOO low for certain corals.

I don't think that deep sand beds work the same in fw as in sw. Anaerobic gas pockets can be dangerous to fish as well.

And, anyway, nitrates are the cheapest, easiest thing to test for. No need for a set interval.



Yes, discus are crazy-delicate, like rams, seahorses, a lot of hard coral, et cetera.

Discus are not any more sensitive than any other wild caught fish. In fact, I would argue that domestic discus are easier to keep than alot of wild caught fish and invertebrates by far.


I kept plants with my africans for a while, the only problem was when my kid's pacu got too big and ate everything in the tank except the fish.

I am really interested to see your tank and hear its exact size in stocking, including how deep and what kind of sand. What sort of plants you are maintaining now to keep this balance you talk of. Also, do you routinely test your water? What is your gh/kh? How stable is your pH? If you are going to say it can be done, perhaps you could enlighten us further on how YOU do it so that it could be a potential model.

 

[platytudes]

Ok, Kaz, it seems to me you are arguing two different things. Sometimes you say that it is foolish to do water changes at specific intervals - the equivalent of superstition. Other times, you say that it is not necessary to change water, period.

Back in the day, water changes were bi-monthly at best, monthly being more common. Now weekly water changes are generally recommended. I can understand your beef about weekly water changes being too generic a suggestion.

You are right that in a planted tank, you can go longer without water changes. How much longer depends on the flora and fauna being kept. Even in a non planted tank, you could theoretically go much longer...10 zebra danios in a 55 gallon tank certainly wouldn't need weekly W/Cs to remain healthy. Perhaps what you are railing against is really the "rules of thumb" in this hobby, one of them to do weekly W/Cs.

Weekly W/Cs are now recommended because most people have greater success with their fish keeping when they change water more frequently than before, in the days where UGF, activated carbon and salt were must haves. (I suspect that most people casually keeping fish actually change their tank's water more like every 2-3 weeks on average, but this is pure speculation on my part.)

The reason being that most casual fish keepers overstock and overfeed their tanks. "Dilution is the solution to pollution" is the old adage - it's the simplest, most cost effective way to keep a tank balanced, a FW tank particularly.

Should everyone do weekly W/Cs? Not necessarily. No argument there. But...

Are you *really* arguing that W/Cs are not good for fish? That they, as you say, "stress" them? Do you really think that cories don't mind swimming in their poop? Because the bottom of a riverbed is not, as you say, "mostly poop" - there aren't blue whales in the riverbeds pooping in there. The bottom of a riverbed is not mostly made of poop.

And most FW fish are definitely not brackish, as you assert. At the pet store, they are very often kept in salty water (Petco and Petsmart all recommend and use "aquarium salt" in their tanks) so an extended salt period is obviously not fatal to them. But is it harmful? Yes, I believe it is. But that's a whole 'nother thread.

 

[Fishfriend1]

:iagree:opcorn:opcorn:opcorn:opcorn: opcorn:opcorn:opcorn:opcorn:

 

[kazvorpal]

So Kav - you didn't change water for a year and a half, you fed your fish twice a week...:22_yikes:

I don't know how it is that no one is saying it so plainly, but this is neglect on your part, plain and simple.

And that's why it's good that most places don't have "animal cruelty" laws that include fish. Because people are determined to impose their ignorance on everyone else.

In fact, not a single fish died, in that year and a half, nor the next year and a half that I intentionally kept up the same regimen, except one very old molly.

MOST people overfeed their fish, especially casual tank owners. Charicins simply don't need the thrice-daily feeding, or even once-daily, that the fish food sellers list on their products (in order, obviously, to get you to use more of their food). Even cichlids generally don't need more than one feeding per day, though their needs are much greater than charicins. In my main tank, I actually feed cichlid food once per day, but the community fish their separate food (as their mouths generally don't fit around the cichlid food) only every two or three days.

This is GOOD fishkeeping, my friend. Overfeeding is among the worst things you can do to a tank. I suppose if some of you are feeding your fish far more often than is necessary, then a routine water change is a very simple, though clumsy, way to compensate for that.

The fish may not have died, but neither do people in vegetative states. Fish obviously enjoy stimulus, and it appears you gave them none except for twice a week. What is the point of keeping an aquarium if you don't interact with it?

What is concerning me, right now, is the realization that trillions of fish out in the wild suffer from not interacting with people on a regular basis.

How can we do this to them? We all need to don SCUBA gear right now!

Oh, wait, that's right, I'm anthropomorphizing. In fact, fish don't need to interact with people AT ALL. They can feel normally stimulated without it.

That's as silly as the "you wouldn't want to have to breath your own pee" comments. Fish are not people. Many fish eat each other's poop on purpose, in the wild, because it's good for them. I wouldn't want to breath water, AT ALL, urine or no. Fish are not people.

Metabolites build up in aquariums, plain and simple, and they stunt the growth of fish. Perhaps they cause other harm - all we have observed is that a stale tank yields stunted fish. Raise a tank full of guppy fry with no water changes next to a tank full of guppy fry with small, daily water changes. Pack them both full of plants and sponge filters, maybe even use high a quality GAC like Chemi-Pure to cope with pollution. Feed them identically. See which one has more runts and S curved spines.

You say that, but have you actually done it? Neither has anyone else, here.

I'm with the Mod who suggested that you've never kept "difficult" fish. I think this just proves how tolerant the community fish you kept are, just like those poor crape myrtles which get butchered year after year...

Since marine tanks and cichlids are not difficult, you're correct: I avoid difficult fish. I already said that. And have said many times that some specific fish (I keep using rams and seahorses as examples) need very special care, perhaps including weekly water changes.

But people who take that and start insisting that everyone must, all the time, impose weekly water changes on all tanks have absolutely nothing on their side.

 

[platytudes]

And please excuse any grammatical errors on my part...my central heat is broken (on my day off of course, which is either a good thing because I can take care of it today, or a bad thing because it's always toasty at work!) so my fingers are freezing and it's making it difficult to type and concentrate