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I'd like to have an open and honest discussion: water changes


Jeff
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I would like get a general consensus about why people don't like water changes. I've been on lots of forums over the years, and this is by far the most hated part of the hobby, in general.

With that said, let me clarify a few things. This question is geared towards the person who has one or two tanks. When you get into a fish room level, I get it. The more tanks you have, you're going to want as much automation as possible. 

I also would like to clear out the folks who have a heavily planted tank. You can get away with not doing them.

For the remaining people, why do not like doing them? I really would like to know what the real reasons are. I'm honestly curious, as I would like to learn more about people in the hobby.

 

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For me, what I hated about water changes was lugging buckets, hooking up pythons, and the cleaning up -- either slopped water in my room, or gunk left in the sink from the python, dumping buckets of waste water down the toilet, etc. The whole set-up and break-down stinks. Add to that, dragging gear and buckets up from the basement and then bringing it all back down. Tank size and number compounds this a lot. Total PITA. The actual gravel vacuuming part of it is fine and I don't mind that part at all. 

Edited by tolstoy21
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For me, I manage 40+ systems at home on average. I don't like losing the time to water changes. I prefer to spend it cleaning filters, feeding fish, enjoying. This is why I have auto water changes setup, but still believe minimal water changes are best. In my experience adding dechlor, diff water temp and the like causes stress on fish, I like to minimize this where I can.

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Oh, that's easy: I'm lazy! Fortunately, I have got my current tank well balanced enough with cleaner fish and snails that I don't have to do much with the substrate, just drain out 25% of the water and replace it and change the filter if needed. Honestly, lugging the buckets isn't such a big deal but the straightening of all the deco and reburying the plastic plants is a pain. But, yeah, I'm just lazy.

Edited by morphy1701
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I don't mind the gravel vaccing and then the emptying the bucket into the bathtub. But its when I have fill up a bucket , poor it into my aquarium then relize I didn't fill it with enough water, go all the way backup stairs fill it back up, spill all the water. 

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Me, I have 4-5 tanks ranging from 5 to 36g at home and I change water roughly once every week or two depending on what's going on. I have to say I almost enjoy water changes. Me and my little 3 gallon bucket get to give back to my fish and make sure they're happy, and I get to water my plants and seedlings with The Good Stuff.

I've worked on a sheep farm and if you think lugging a bucket of water or a small hose through your house once a week is bad, you should try lugging dozens of them outside through the frozen mud every morning at like 7am in February (and that's far better than a quarter mile of gritty, heavy hose that you have to watch carefully and drain and re-coil perfectly or else it'll freeze and be useless til May) . Aquarium water changes are downright genteel by comparison.

But, that said, it helps that all my tanks are on my first floor and it's easy to fill up buckets from my bathtub faucet. None of my aquariums are huge, so 25-30% water changes go pretty quickly. I think it gets a bad rap of Responsibility when we're kids, like cleaning the cat's litter box, and that sticks into adulthood. 

And, staring down the barrel of 2 weeks of daily water changes to treat the ich outbreak I have is also not so fun. Will definitely be excited to have that done with.

Edited by Kirsten
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Ooof, I am out on both counts! lots of plants and lots of tanks! 🙂 But if I get an honorary mention, my only complaint is time, and water on the floor. I dream of a fully plumbed in system that can run to every room in my house. I have a really, really cool refill system built off this post here (thanks again, a thousand times, Bill!!): 

 

But I need to rig some kind of pump system to move water out (due to distances and elevations involved), and I do still like gravel vacs. The python has not worked for me, so I am still stuck with buckets.

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44 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I also would like to clear out the folks who have a heavily planted tank.

But I wanna be part of the cool kids 😞

I actually love doing water changes and often I count the days till I can do it again. Most of my tanks I say are moderately planted (depends what you consider heavy) and I enjoy watching the plants grow faster and who doesn't like to see pearling?

Although water is relatively cheap, I can't stomach pouring water down the drain. So rather than minimizing my water consumption I look to repurpose the water by proxy of gardening. I guess in a way I am reducing water consumption cause I don't run my sprinklers.

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

I've been on lots of forums over the years, and this is by far the most hated part of the hobby, in general.

I understand what you are saying I just wanted to bring up a better contender. The Fish Police!

 

 

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I don't mind water changes if I only do 1 -2 tanks a day.  I will keep on lugging 5 gallon buckets and lifting as long as I can, because who doesn't want upper body strength... use it or lose it!    Besides the fish are always so happy after and swim their hearts out. :classic_smile: 

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To me, I think @Brandy sorta hit on something in another post. I find its more about balancing your system for the best quality of life i can give my fishy friends. I only have the 1 tank and i actually enjoy my interactions with my wet pets, water changes and all. However i must confess i am a bit of a tinkerer. Every time i look at something I think how can I make it better. With my tank, I have to be careful sometimes and ask myself “is this better for the fish, or for me?” I dont want to remove water changes completely, but as i learn and try things that improve my water quality, i end up with a system that could go with smaller water changes or less frequently. My goal was for a better water quality, reduced water changes was a side effect of my original goal. 

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I only have 6 tanks (7 when the QT is up), and I've simplified water changes with utilizing a 6 gallon bucket on wheels, a pond pump and a long hose. I enjoy doing any sort of maintenance on my tanks, and even though I don't "need" to do water changes weekly (I have planted tanks), I usually just do a small one anyways just because I want to. It's a part of the hobby I find very calming for whatever reason. Sometimes I spread the work out all week in case I don't feel like doing it all in one day. I definitely don't want to go back to lugging buckets like I did when I first started out.

That said, I think the work load I have with 6 tanks is limiting how many tanks I want to run. The amount I have now is enough to feel satisfying without becoming a chore. 

Also, I have run tanks that didn't need a water change for months - nitrates always below 20 ppm. I can see the appeal of having a little ecosystem that takes care of itself, it's a neat idea.

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4 hours ago, Jeff said:

For the remaining people, why do not like doing them? I really would like to know what the real reasons are.

Technically I’m not allowed to answer this question, but I’ll answer for my mom (who was in charge of fish care when we were little) and for my high school self, who had a betta in a vase. 🙈

For my mom of course she was busy raising four kids, and the fish wasn’t her buddy, it was something she was doing for us. So it was one more on a long list of chores. Plus I imagine she was not a fan of fish poop or fishy smelling water. Not only was it a chore, it was a gross chore.

For my high school self, I was stressed and felt too busy already, and I honestly didn’t have much of a personal connection to my fish back then. I liked having him, but it isn’t like now where I feel like I have a relationship with my fish. Plus it’s really annoying to do a water change in a vase that has a pothos growing out the top. I feel sad for my betta looking back. He did not have the best life. But I had no idea that fish had differing needs that I could research and accommodate like I did with my gerbils. I didn’t mind changing the gerbils’ bedding as much as I minded changing water for my fish.

I think there’s also a factor that a lot of people don’t like getting wet. I was one of these people until I got back into the hobby, and then I got over it petty fast!

I also found that as I found ways of making water changes easier (like learning about siphoning! 😆) I minded water changes a lot less. I wonder if a lot of the people who dislike changing water so much are actually changing water in a really slow, painful way, like pitcher by pitcher for a 40 gallon or something.

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Here in Western Australia we have a relatively hot, dry climate and fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce. So for me it's all about finding the right balance between healthy conditions for the fish and water conservation. I can't justify large, weekly water changes; instead I try to monitor water quality closely and do the changes when necessary 🙂 

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For me it’s not having upper body strength for lugging buckets anymore.  My arms aren’t as strong as they used to be—so lugging buckets that hit my legs and slosh water on my shoes and floors is not fun.

I am coming up with ways to make it easier as I get ideas from others.  Now I use a flexible expandable hose from my basement.  But that is a hundred feet of hose through the house.  Maybe the summer will be better when I can pump the water out my windows and doors.  But I would like to get a spigot and filters installed under my kitchen sink to get water from, but for me—that means hiring a plumber $$$.

I definitely like the idea of more plants and less water changes.  So far I monitor it and try to make changes that are good for my fish and my back.

I have worried a lot about getting the temperature of the water just right, but maybe I don’t need to so much.  I try to change between 20 and 25% at a time.

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I just have one tank that is fairly recent.   It's just a betta tank, and I'm trying my best to have it established to the point I don't have to do as many water changes.

That being said, I actually enjoy it.   It's just that if it became a weekly thing, it becomes a burden to find the time to do it.  Before I had the betta, a few years back, I rescued a goldfish.  Of course I knew nothing about fish keeping.  I bought a 10g for it.  Little did I know that was too small.  The bioload was horrendous.  I just couldn't keep up with the weekly water changes.  Dumb me also added another goldfish to keep it company, thereby making the bioload even worse, and the water changes even more critical.  The fish lasted a year, and then I retired the tank until last month as I got it set up for the current betta.   I wanted a fish I could enjoy taking care of, but at the same time, not be burdened to the point I just can't take care of it.

 

 

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I don’t consider it work.  I consider it my time.  I enjoy looking/watching the fish.  I have had as many as 35-40 tanks (now only 6) but I truly enjoy the time.  Sometimes listening to YouTube, sometimes just in quiet thought.  
Once I hook up the python and gravel vac I will turn off the water and let tank drain slowly (gravity).  While doing this I will clean filters, lids, lights or trim plants.   Whatever.    
Thanks .

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I have four tanks and I don't mind doing water changes, but the ammonia content of my tap water (well water) is off the scale high. That makes adding "fresh" water more stressful for the fish. I keep my tanks heavily planted and mostly just top off the evaporation with water I store in old kitty litter containers where bacteria in the containers have largely eradicated the ammonia and nitrites, but left behind nitrates, the very thing I'm supposed to be removing with a water change. In most cases the "new" water is of poorer quality than the "old" water I'm supposed to be removing. My fish are thriving in my tanks and so are my plants. (With a few exceptions.) 

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@Hobbit, that's me - pitcher by pitcher in my 45-gallon (also the 20 and 10 gallons). I heat some in the microwave and mix with aged water (stored in gallon milk jugs) in a bucket, and pour from there. But really it doesn't take very long unless I'm also gravel vacuuming. I can get a WC done in 10 minutes on this tank. I do empty using a siphon. The real work is filling up the milk jugs and storing them on the floor, but I do that while doing other kitchen chores.

I get in about a hundred leg squats and lift 8 pounds many times, twice a week doing this - great exercise that I'd be hard-pressed to want to do without some motivation. I can now throw the ball with my dog and not suffer knee pain every time I squat to grab the ball, so I know something good is happening!

20210305_072343.jpg

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21 hours ago, Cory said:

For me, I manage 40+ systems at home on average. I don't like losing the time to water changes. I prefer to spend it cleaning filters, feeding fish, enjoying. This is why I have auto water changes setup, but still believe minimal water changes are best. In my experience adding dechlor, diff water temp and the like causes stress on fish, I like to minimize this where I can.

Yeah, I totally get why people like you with fish rooms don't like it.

This was geared towards the people with 1 or two tanks. 

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20 hours ago, Celly Rasbora said:

I like doing it. My rasboras dance in the fresh water and it makes me happy.

Same. I guess we're in the minority. Part of "my enjoy time" with my tank is maintaining it. I don't consider it work. If any part of this hobby was work for me, I would get out.

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I have two tanks, and only started keeping fish in mid January. I had a disastrous start, but everything is great now, thanks to the help I have found here. I got my tank and all my equipment for free. Including a really long vacuum hose. It's long enough that it stretches all the way from my tank in the back of the house to the sink in the front of the house. But I did not know at first that it could attach to the sink, and did not know that the suction would be greatly increased if I did attach it. I also did not know that I could attach it to the bathroom sink about 8' away. I watched a video that Cory did on cleaning, and it was a great video but I was not getting the suction that he got. Also the tubing was so long it was all over the floor and it was really hard to get it to go in a bucket. I was paranoid about getting water on my hardwood floors. It took a long time. Plus I had to do it everyday to try and save my fish. Literally the only reason I kept going was because this was a gift for my son, and the kids just loved the tank. I had them help me with the super long hose. Then one day I looked up how to use the hose with the sink and that blew my mind. I hooked it up and holy smokes it was so easy to both pull the water out and put the water back in. (We have pristine well water.) It was done so quick. 

So then I got a second tank, AND the bathroom 8' away is getting remodeled. So I could not hook up the long hose to clean the fry tank. I'm trying to do water changes and keep the water clear on the baby tank but I couldn't use the vacuum. I could see all the dirt and grime building up in the rocks and it was really frustrating. So I ordered a new vacuum, it's much shorter, but the length of the actual vacuum was too long. I could get it to start siphoning but then it would stop because it would lose it's suction. So I was just doing the water change on the fry tank with just a cup and bucket. The tank is so cloudy, and everything got kicked up. So I cut the vacuum down to make it work and it works great! So doing the water change was super easy. I'm only taking out about 1.5 gallons to 2 gallons on this tank. The water is going into a 5 gallon bucket, so carrying it out is not a big deal. I am dumping it outside on to plants. So again not a big deal, when I was dumping it into the sink it would splash, but dumping it onto plants is way easier. 

So I think the biggest issue is not having the right equipment or not knowing how to use the equipment. I am doing water changes often with my fry tank and weekly with my big tank. I don't think of them as being an issue or problem. 

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