Good or bad to change water every other day?

[Zoidar]

I like doing smaller changes, like 5% every other day, rather than doing one change a week. My shrimp didn't seem to handle it very well on weekly changes, started to die on me, that's why I changed to smaller more frequent changes. I also have neons and corys in there. I have this nagging question, if these small water changes is enough. 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Zoidar

[Cory]

I personally feel less water changes are better. Without knowing your exact tank. I'd be looking at how I could change water once every 3-6 months.

[Isaac M]

Hi @Zoidar, I agree with Cory. With aquariums, I find that minimizing the amount of changes leads to a balanced consistent aquarium. I tend to build and stock my tanks so that I have a lot of live plants both in the water, outside of the water (riparian plants) and floating plants so that they can help remove ammonia and ultimately nitrates out of the water. This tends to require much less maintenance in general. Less algae growing on aquarium walls and less water changes for instance. 

In the end, if you want to know how often to water change your current aquarium and if what you are doing is enough, you need to test the water. I will provide a link to an aquarium co-op blog post that will help with this in a step-by-step fashion:

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/water-changes

I hope this helps! 

 

[Mmiller2001]

I'm in both camps. I'm currently changing 50% every week due to my fertilization method. However @Isaac M is spot on. I would highly recommend Amazon Frogbit, it's a nitrate hog. I'd also get a good TDS meter. It will let you know if something is building up or needs to be added to the tank.

 

[gardenman]

In a perfect world you'd have a constant stream of fresh water going into your tanks in a flow through fashion. A YouTuber is building a fish warehouse on a stream for exactly that purpose. He's going to divert the water from the stream into his facility and then run it through his tanks and then back out into the stream. Some fish keepers use a drip system that constantly adds fresh water to the tank as the old water overflows out. I'd considered doing that until I did the math and discovered at the rate I wanted I'd go through over 17,000 gallons of water a year. I was looking at using a half gallon per hour emitter on each of my four tanks. That would use two gallons per hour in total, but at two gallons per hour I'd end up using 17,520 gallons per year. That's kind of a lot of water. I don't generally do water changes due to bad well water and by and large my fish do fine. My tanks are heavily planted. The fish are well fed. Which helps to replace trace elements as any that aren't absorbed by the fish get pooped back into the tank. I just top off the tanks when they lose water to evaporation. Whatever you do, I'd recommend being consistent at it. If you do a 5% change every other day, you should be fine. You probably don't have to do that much though if the tank is well established and nicely planted.

[lefty o]

depends on many factors. a smaller tank will require more frequent maintenance. my own personal belief is to mess with it as little as often. once a tank is up for a while, and well established they dont tend to require as frequent of water changes as people feel compelled to do.

[ChefConfit]

It depends on your stocking, amount of plants and fertilizing method. If you're doing some form of EI dosing then it usually calls for weekly 50% changes. If your tank is extremely heavily stocked than a drop system doing constant water changes might be best. If you are supper heavily planted then you might only have to do top offs weekly and a change once a month or even less often. 

Outside of EI dosing or extremes in stocking or plant density the best way to determine how often to change water is test often. Once nitrates get above where you want them it's time to do a change. How quickly they build up and how tight of a range you want to maintain will determine how often and large your water changes are. 

[BenA]

22 hours ago, Isaac M said:

Hi @Zoidar, I agree with Cory. With aquariums, I find that minimizing the amount of changes leads to a balanced consistent aquarium. I tend to build and stock my tanks so that I have a lot of live plants both in the water, outside of the water (riparian plants) and floating plants so that they can help remove ammonia and ultimately nitrates out of the water. This tends to require much less maintenance in general. Less algae growing on aquarium walls and less water changes for instance. 

In the end, if you want to know how often to water change your current aquarium and if what you are doing is enough, you need to test the water. I will provide a link to an aquarium co-op blog post that will help with this in a step-by-step fashion:

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/water-changes

I hope this helps! 

 

It is all good but there is one problem.

My API test kit showed '0'ppm, as I did not trust APIkit I bought a Salifert kit that showed 50ppm. I used to have a Tetra test kit that consistently showed 25-50 ppm, the API kit was all over the place. 

Therefore the problem is which one to trust?

[anewbie]

I know several discus keepers who do 50% water change daily; i do 50% water change twice a week on my 29; but on my 5 gallon tank with shrimp i do a 15% water change once every 6 weeks or so.

[Medkow74]

2 hours ago, BenA said:

It is all good but there is one problem.

My API test kit showed '0'ppm, as I did not trust APIkit I bought a Salifert kit that showed 50ppm. I used to have a Tetra test kit that consistently showed 25-50 ppm, the API kit was all over the place. 

Therefore the problem is which one to trust?

If you're reading zero Nitrates with the API liquid test kit unfortunately you did something wrong. 

I caught myself years ago not shaking the 2nd bottle as per the directions so I was getting zero nitrates.

I spoke to API about it and since the 2nd bottle is a chemical compound if you use it once without shaking the whole bottle is compromised.

[Isaac M]

@BenA I agree with @Medkow74 at what the likely culprit is here, the 2nd bottle must be shaken for 30 seconds minimum before placing the drops into the test tube. If you do not do this, you will get a false zero reading every time. All 3 of those kits should be within reasonable range. 

As far as the discussion about water changes,  if your tank is balanced, which is not always the easiest as a beginner, water changes are not needed as often. Some of my aquariums do not even require me to scrub the glass of algae for a month. The others do not require me to scrub the glass hardly ever, maybe every 3 months just for biofilm. My personal belief is that most people either have too much light on their aquarium, have too little plants for their fish/ inverts stocking, overfeed, do extreme dosing like the EI method to grow plants fast (which will need to be maintained, trimming plants is similar to a water change as the plants being removed are a made of the nutrients it grew from) and are constantly making changes to their aquariums. This is fine as people should do whatever makes them happy and enjoy the hobby, I just think it creates more work. I am a busy person so I like to let nature take care of the work. Plus, I like the look of jungle scapes and riparian plants haha 

[BenA]

On 5/3/2021 at 11:56 PM, Medkow74 said:

If you're reading zero Nitrates with the API liquid test kit unfortunately you did something wrong. 

I caught myself years ago not shaking the 2nd bottle as per the directions so I was getting zero nitrates.

I spoke to API about it and since the 2nd bottle is a chemical compound if you use it once without shaking the whole bottle is compromised.

So just to make sure that I got you right.

When I used it for the first time I did not shake it but shook it last time. Do you mean that the kit now is good for the bin? 

[Medkow74]

24 minutes ago, BenA said:

So just to make sure that I got you right.

When I used it for the first time I did not shake it but shook it last time. Do you mean that the kit now is good for the bin? 

Unfortunately yes. When I spoke to API they were going to send me a new Nitrate test kit but I had already bought one.

When you don't shake them before using it since it's a compound chemical you don't know if more of one compound was used more then the other compound(s).

Edited May 5, 2021 by Medkow74

[tonyjuliano]

Two words...

Walstadt method.

No filter, no heater and haven’t done a water change in over 4 months.

White Cloud Mountain minnows, gold barbs, and a single blue paradise fish with LOTS of shrimp (cherry, yellow bumblebee & amano).

Just pay attention to the lighting, plant heavily and let the “green stuff” (plants) do all the work.

 

 

[Marc]

I feel the less water changes the better especially for shrimp, I never change more than about 10% a week unless its an emergency. I just keep an eye on PH, hardness and nitrates. If nitrates are high or PH is getting low I will change. Some tanks I have not changed water for a few months, all are well planted, mostly the reason I change is the slowly lowering PH.

 

[BenA]

Thank you!