Water changes

[FishFanMan]

Mesto, when I initially setup my tank the TDS did steadily increase over time due to increased conc. of salts and other ions I assume. TDS was my trigger to do a WC.

But since then I have done many things to improve my tank (lots of plants, good lighting, a bit of ferts, liquid CO2, not over feeding, algae scrubber, over filtration, Purigen, high quality carbon). The chemical filters should be adsorbing organics such as hormones.

With all this my TDS is relatively constant as you can see from the previous pic.

So at this juncture, I am going to wait months to see where my measurements head and not do WCs and per suggestion previously I will not vacuum my sand. My last thought on this was if I had a pond, I certainly would not be doing 30% WCs and many ponds do just fine right?

 

[THE V]

Natural ponds always have some water exchange and turnover. Otherwise they turn into places for brine shrimp to hatch.

When my grandfather was alive he dug a couple of ponds on the lower 200 acres. This is in a river valley in montana. He wanted to see If he could keep trout in them. So he had it tested for water turnover. 100% of the water turnover in 4 hours. He planted them with trout and they have been spawning in there for the past 20 years.

This amount of turnover is very rare but most ponds turnover at a rate faster that evaporation and erosion can increase the TDS.

Small outdoor ponds also need occasional water turnover. They generally have a lower fish to water volume ratio so the need for water changes is less. Many people also get a thing called rain that sonetimes will overflow the pond.

 

[FreshyFresh]

Your are correct Joel. No cube of water could be successful if it is over populated with fish, as the majority of fish keepers try and do.
What we are discussing are triggers to determine when a water change is necessary. We have been discussing this from a nutrient perspective. What are your concerns?

John, I get what you're saying. If I only kept one or two fish in each of the tanks in my sig and fed them lightly, and only every few days, nitrates would stay low for a long time. I just don't see the point in having one fish in a 55g.

My concern is nitrate control. With my stocking and maintenance, I wouldn't know how to control it w/out WCs.

I would think fresh, regularly changed water is going to most closely mimic the fish's natural habitat.

 

[dhvService]

John, I get what you're saying. If I only kept one or two fish in each of the tanks in my sig and fed them lightly, and only every few days, nitrates would stay low for a long time. I just don't see the point in having one fish in a 55g.

You are beginning to expose one of saddest and most common practices in this hobby. What exactly is the point in stocking as many fish as your heart desires.

We have been defining maximum stocking levels for a particular tank as either so many fish per gallon or so may inches of fish blah blah blah... This trend begins as soon as somebody enters the hobby. The first instinct of the new hobbiest is to load the tanks with as many fish as seems visually satisfying, without any knowledge of the mayhem and death that is about to ensue.
After that lesson is learned (if it is learned) then lower stocking levels are accepted and hopefully biological filtration becomes understood, and a regimen of water changes is also accepted as a periodic ritual. Biological filtration is commonly referred to as the nitrogen cycle. Oxidizing ammonia into nitrate only represents half the cycle. The rest of the cycle involves reincorporating nitrogen either into atmospheric nitrogen or for consumption by vegetation. If you look at the sticky in this forum, you will see a time when the hobby did not even understand that much. We only learned this over the last couple decades.
This is the place were most hobbiest will plateau, satisfied with the stocking levels and water changes. What we would like to explore is the next deeper level for the hobby. We would like to discover what other cycles are occurring in our tanks. We have already identified the nutrients and the sources. Now we need to develop the methods to monitor them and tweak them. What tools or test are best deployed to do this? What nutrients should we be watching for? What is the optimum balance between plants, fish, feeding? These are all wonderful things we can explore about the hobby, but we must have a place to do this without the water change nazis imposing their beliefs on us.
if somebody is happy with their stocking levels and water change regimen, fine, I am very happy that they are enjoying the hobby, I just wish they would be respectful of how other people try to enjoy the hobby.
Most people here are to young to remember (including myself) what a zoo was like 50 years ago. They were just metal cage boxes with depressed animals circling around in them. Today zoos are designed with large outdoor space that closely resembles there natural environment. In the old days, zoo keepers really believed it would be too dangerous to let the gorillas have a tree in their environment because they thought they would hurt themselves by falling out of it.

Here is the last of my thought, and thank you for reading this far. And thank you Joel for responding with an olive branch, for I was about to abandon this forum for one more tolerant of these ideas.

It would be easy to get everybody to agree that overpopulation of fish leads to dead fish. But would everybody agree that a number just lower than fish dying leads to fish that are quarrelsome and constantly competing for space? And that a number just lower than that has fish that are not very active, because they are trying to stay in the small corner of the tank so as not to venture and be chased away from a territory belonging to another fish? What really is a good stocking level that is only concerned with welfare of the fish.

Here is what I think is a beautiful tank and one that I am working towards...

I would like to observe a species of fish in an aquarium identical to its native environment. Stocked with plants and other life forms in quantities proportionate to nature so as not to affect the fishes natural behavior. I would like to see the fish hunt, feed, mate and raise young, just as they do in the wild.

I would like this aquarium to be so well in balance that the electrical power could be out for a week or more, and life in the tank will sustain without any stress on the inhabitants.

But to get there, we must have a deeper understanding of the ecology of the aquarium.

 

[FreshyFresh]

All valid points.. Best I can tell! You do have an interesting perspective on this. Out of curiosity, what size tank(s) do you have and how do you stock them?

 

[FishFanMan]

John,

Very good points you make. I too think that we need more tools and information on how to create and maintain a balanced/eco self sustaining tank environment so we don't have to do so much WCs. ATM, I believe most people do WCs because they believe something harmful is building up in their tank even when all measurable params are fine (I know is more complicated than that with plant dosing, another subject perhaps). Can't hurt but to me it's a waste of H2O and perhaps time. Like you said we need our aquarium science to advance more to allow us to create the tank environment that can perhaps eliminate WCs.

 

[jpappy789]

The attempt to create a "self-sustaining" aquarium, while a noble task, is always going to be inherently limited in some respect. Not saying that it's a worthless endeavor, but you have to come to that realization before you begin...we like to cherry-pick different ecosystem processes and concepts and apply them to our tanks in a simplistic manner, but natural systems are not nearly as limited as a glass box. And I love experimentation as much as the next person, but at some point I want to sit back and enjoy my tank...I can look through forums and such and find certain stocking plans or fert dosing schedules or foods or whatever, and see what has worked for other people. Is it 100% scientific? Not at all, but at the end of the day this is a hobby...I get enough of this in a more professional setting as it is! A weekly water change, or whatever, at the very least puts my mind at ease while hardly taking up more than an hour or two on a Saturday afternoon...

 

[cicrush13]

I do them once a week regardless of the test. Some multiple times a week since they have fry and are very heavily stocked and overfed.

 

[Rbishop]

The attempt to create a "self-sustaining" aquarium, while a noble task, is always going to be inherently limited in some respect. Not saying that it's a worthless endeavor, but you have to come to that realization before you begin...we like to cherry-pick different ecosystem processes and concepts and apply them to our tanks in a simplistic manner, but natural systems are not nearly as limited as a glass box. And I love experimentation as much as the next person, but at some point I want to sit back and enjoy my tank...I can look through forums and such and find certain stocking plans or fert dosing schedules or foods or whatever, and see what has worked for other people. Is it 100% scientific? Not at all, but at the end of the day this is a hobby...I get enough of this in a more professional setting as it is! A weekly water change, or whatever, at the very least puts my mind at ease while hardly taking up more than an hour or two on a Saturday afternoon...

:thm::thm:

And not everyone wants a planted tank and some of us like fast flowing waters because the fish we keep do. Walstad is okay, if your into that. Just like folks prefer different fish. Sometimes we want to drive the hobby so much, the investment in time and sacrifice just isn't worth it. Without having to track all the stuff to get even a low tech Walstad tank to fruitition, a simple water change allows me just to enjoy the tank.

 

[dhvService]

For any future posters and readers, let me summarize.

This is not a debate. There is no argument that water changes are an effective treatment for poor water quality. Everybody agrees that poor water quality can not support life.

This discussion is not to determine If a water change needs to be done, but rather WHEN a water change needs to be done.

What makes this discussion difficult is that WHEN is dangerously entangled with WHY. We understand WHY to be the senseless killing of livestock. It is time we put WHY under a microscope and determined its mechanisms.

How will this benefit EVERYBODY? Some people will benefit from doing water changes only when necessary, be that once a week, month or year. Everybody else will benefit when frequent and/or large water changes no longer seem to working, and they start to wonder WHY?

I need to stop that thought right here. Nature is calling, a water change is required. LOL

Piece out my friends