# How often do you water change?



## Robin Conor Sallade (Jan 26, 2017)

So after dealing and looking over my tanks I've learned that I need to water change maybe once a month to maintain good levels. When I change more than 2x a month I get algal blooms, Im just wondering how other peoples tanks behave water change wise, especially after watching Aquarium Co-Ops water change video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhfETXoVm18).


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## allthingslife42 (Aug 24, 2017)

Never had an algae bloom after a water change, generally after i forgot ive already put a dose of ferts in and put another one in soon after lol
I generally only water change if my nitrates keep a high ppm, i test weekly on a sunday morning and if my ppm is burgundy red its time for a small to medium water change

In a non-planted tank preferably change weekly as no nitrites are used but really depends on your tank, biowaste vs plants and size of the tank
To reduce water changes aquire high nitrite demanding plants or big plants

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The addition of co2 will also help increase nutrient absorbtion in plants including nitrites

BIG TIP!! Always test BEFORE ADDING FERTS, ferts are generally high in nitrogen and will throw out your true water conditions

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## Robin Conor Sallade (Jan 26, 2017)

I don't dose ferts or co2 which is why I don't water change often as it turns out I maybe a wee bit understocked them combine it with fast growing plants and pretty alright tap water I stay within good nitrate levels, pH is rock solid I've only seen it moved when I add tannins, and I have hard water so it's good most of the stuff I need. Except my water is kinda copper-y not enough to kill but enough to make me paranoid for inverts. The only issue I've had is a melt off of plants which spiked my nitrates per month, then I water changed too much lowering to then get cyanobacteria algae.


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## Tsin21 (Sep 24, 2017)

Mostly once or twice a month and I just top off the water lost to evaporation. I only do frequent WC only when I'm medicating the tank. And I regularly test the water for nitrates but It's usually below 10mg/L and sometimes zero. Maybe because of my carpet of hygrophila which we're grown from seeds.


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## cobra (Feb 4, 2005)

40-50% WC every 7-10 days with a regular dosing regime. No algae issues, but I do strip silicates from my water and run a UV system.


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## DigityDog70 (Jan 20, 2017)

Since EI dosing you really should do a 50% once every 7 days, and I have. My tanks and algae problems have improved tremendously, of course, it's a lot of work sometimes and I try not to do that with tanks where I have fish that suffer from a fresh water change, swimming in their own waste for too long, it starts to smell up my fish room. I do use a room deodorizer though and a product called Damp Rid as I just don't want any mold issues down the road (especially in my attic) since I own my house.


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## allthingslife42 (Aug 24, 2017)

If you need to change water weekly you should check to make sure you nitrogen cycle is complete and re-evaluate your biowaste vs plants and how much surface area you have for bacteria to grow on
Especially if its smelling your room, your bio waste is too heavy for your tank to break everything down

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## Frank158 (Oct 1, 2013)

Now that I run CO2 and EI dosing I do a 50% water change weekly. I will do one today in fact to reset the tank. 

Before I ran CO2 in that tank I still did regular water changes but was not so anal about the frequency but never went for more than 2 weeks without one.

I love the way the fish act after a water change and it is not much of a chore. I don't alter my tap water and use a python so most times it is just a drain and fill.


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

I tend to run from 3 to 10 tanks and that makes it almost certain that I need to log what's going on in each tank. No way I try to remember all the small points. But water changes are the one best way for me to keep things steady. just letting plants take care of nitrate is not going to work for me due to fish load. 
I do try to shoot for weekly but it does run into ten days at times. The logical thing for me was to make those changes easy. I have a softener in the garage and the fishroom was chosen due to that location. Easy to tap in before the softener to have a supply in the fishroom. I placed a food grade barrel under so tanks and use a pump to feed the other tanks in other rooms. The ready made siphon products are better than buckets but not very well thought out for lots of situations. 
If changing water causes algae blooms I might guess it is stirring the sub way too much.


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## StevieD (Jun 17, 2017)

Maybe cut back on the ferts if you are adding them. I have read several varying reports on what should be added and when.

I have found that five drops of Thrive once a week in a 48 gallon after a 40 - 50% water change keeps everything doing well. I did get a little algae when starting up but I haven't noticed any since.

My current set up is LOTS of plants, and few fish with 2 Marine Penguin 350 filters.

Lighting is 2 tubes that are probably good for nothing and a bog standard LED from Wally World. 

I was SO tempted to go with CO2, and it is a constant lurker at the back of my mind but the old saying keeps coming back, *if it ain't broke don't fix it*.

Good luck and keep us posted as to your progress.


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## doylecolmdoyle (Sep 22, 2015)

50% every week, but I have only ever run co2 / high tech tanks.


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## Oughtsix (Apr 8, 2011)

Robin Conor Sallade said:


> So after dealing and looking over my tanks I've learned that I need to water change maybe once a month to maintain good levels. When I change more than 2x a month I get algal blooms, Im just wondering how other peoples tanks behave water change wise, especially after watching Aquarium Co-Ops water change video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhfETXoVm18).


What do you consider "Good Levels"? Are you just measuring Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate? The reason I ask is because I can go pretty much indefinitely without changing the water and not have any Ammonia, Nitrite or Nitrate build up.

My question is if my Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate levels are pretty much zero indefinitely what other build ups that I am not testing for do I need to worry about harming my fish?

My tank is very heavily planted with dirt under gravel. I dose very low levels of Excell and do not dose anything else. My plants are healthy and growing very fast. I do not have an algae problem. I have pretty high lighting levels for about 10 to 12 hours a day with about an hour of sunlight. I started with 6 guppies and now have more than I can count (they are still pretty small fry).


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## GraphicGr8s (Apr 4, 2011)

All of my tanks have plants in them. In my breeding tanks I do a change every other day depending on the fish in them and bio load at the time.
My grow out tanks I try for every day. At most every other day.
My display tanks once a week. (75, a 90, two 55s, a 45 and a 20L)


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## negen (Aug 20, 2017)

I do the ei dosing and have co2 injection I change water 40-50% once a week in my kids non planted 10 gallon I also change once a week I live in king county wa and have water that isn't really even safe for humans let alone fish I should probably be doing more water changes but do not have the time.


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## JJ09 (Sep 11, 2014)

I do wc for each tank once a week. My two low-tech tanks that get EI dosing I do 50% every friday. My third tank I don't dose ferts, it's very low light I feel okay letting that one go a little longer but I usually give it a 20 or 25% wc once a week also, just because it's easy to do on the same schedule as the others. Friday is Fish Day in my house (and no we are not catholic). My fish always seem to appreciate the fresh water- the cories especially get really frisky!


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## Robin Conor Sallade (Jan 26, 2017)

Oughtsix: Yes I test every thing with a liquid test every other week and with strip tests in between. My main issue is nitrates everything else is consistent. Other than topping off for evaporate me tanks run like well tanks.


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## nel (Jan 23, 2016)

Oughtsix said:


> My question is if my Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate levels are pretty much zero indefinitely what other build ups that I am not testing for do I need to worry about harming my fish?


Fish hormones mostly. Which we can't measure at home. Hormones produced by adult fish can even stunt the growth of the fry. All fish can gry stressed etc.


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## DigityDog70 (Jan 20, 2017)

PlantedRich said:


> Easy to tap in before the softener to have a supply in the fishroom.


Just curious, do you use sodium or potassium chloride? Have you ever tested your TDS on the water after it goes through the water softener? I have a water softener in my house as well and when I test the hot water, I noticed the TDS is about 465 whereas cold water is about 395, but I use pottassium chloride. It seems that most people have "more" than enough sodium in their diets back more frequently are low in potassium and my tanks seems fine.


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

DigityDog70 said:


> Just curious, do you use sodium or potassium chloride? Have you ever tested your TDS on the water after it goes through the water softener? I have a water softener in my house as well and when I test the hot water, I noticed the TDS is about 465 whereas cold water is about 395, but I use pottassium chloride. It seems that most people have "more" than enough sodium in their diets back more frequently are low in potassium and my tanks seems fine.


I use sodium due to the expense of the potassium. Never test TDS but the GH and KH are always way low coming out of the softener. But then I am not sure there would be too much problem if I used the softened water in the tanks as we are now using it outside and it seems to be no problem with those plants. The best way to tell which side is getting the hard and which the soft is looking at the hard water marks on the fence. In places where the irrigation sprays the fence, there is always a semi-circle of hard water deposits! It would be kind of nice not to have the same marks on my tanks?//


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## GraphicGr8s (Apr 4, 2011)

Anyone looked into the citric acid water softeners? It doesn't actually remove the calcium etc but surrounds them so they can't interact and leave scale. Supposedly the treated water will actually clean the scale off of fixtures in about 1 month.


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## drewzaun (Sep 13, 2015)

I was changing 50-80% every 3 days on all my tanks. I enjoy “fully” stocked fish tanks and feeding, so I need to change a lot of water to keep it clean.

I’ve only ever had so/so plant growth, perhaps from removing too many nutrients from the water column?

I’m changing to 1 time a week on my main display tank and get on a specific dosing regime and add co2 and go from there. 


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## AbbeysDad (Apr 13, 2016)

In my heavily planted 60g low/med display tank with very modest ferts I do a weekly water change of 20g of pre-filtered water*, which considering rocks, substrate, etc. is a bit more than 33 1/3%. I also follow the wwc with a Marineland Internal Polishing Filter (micron cartridge charged with diatomaceous earth) for several hours. 
In a 10g bare bottom grow out tank I was changing 5g (50%) 2-3 times a week.

*Note: My well water has high nitrates (40~ppm [fluctuates]) from a 95 acre farmers field across the road so I filter water for water changes through a DIY denitrate filter (an API Tap Water Filter cartridge that's filled with API Nitra-Zorb) followed by an in-line activated carbon filter. (I get about 200g of zero nitrate water thru the filter, then recharge with brine).

Also note: I've become an 'accidental breeder', having peddled over 50 fish to the LFS with another 2-3 dozen or so soon to go. So my 'display' tank is also a grow out tank.
(It amazes me that my Angels will hunt new born live bearer fry the first couple of days, then ignore them as they grow out! - although in a heavily planted tank. there's lots of escape routes).

I feed high quality fish food so there is very little fish waste. I let algae grow on a sidewall behind a bubble bar (pseudo algae scrubber) as I feel this further purifies the water. 
My filtration in the 60g is two AC70 HOBs with AC50 impellers set to low/med flow, both filled with bio-sponge material and sponge pre-filters (so they are basically HOB sponge filters).
Cleanup is handled by a couple of pepper Cory's and a bazillion MTS that live in the silica (pool filter) sand substrate.


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## Kaiede (Sep 11, 2017)

I’ve been doing the rule of thumb weekly changes of 25% on my 8.5g, but the number of plants means that it’s actually hard to avoid the Nitrates from completely bottoming out at 0ppm that way. Even with weekly dosing of Thrive/Easy Green. So I probably should adjust something, but I probably need to research which lever to move: more dosing, same water changes, or same dosing with fewer water changes (every 2 weeks).


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## Tessa (Dec 8, 2015)

I have four low tech tanks, all get a 30-50% water change once a week.


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## deepgreen1 (Mar 15, 2015)

I do 50% water change every one to two years or so. 90 gallon heavily planted tank, CO2, RO water regularly filled up, moderate macro and micro ferts, moderate Osmocote+, little fish load. 2.5 year old ADA AS. Moderate BBA and GSA. Keep plants like Pantanal, Ammania praetermissima, Cuphea anagalloidea, Cabomba furcata, Erio setaceum, Syn "Belem", A reinecki variegated and more. Main problem is getting rid of detritus which I do by vacuum and filtering in a large container and pump back water. Started using Purigen for removal of organics which seems to help with BBA.


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## JusticeBeaver (Oct 28, 2017)

Kaiede said:


> I’ve been doing the rule of thumb weekly changes of 25% on my 8.5g, but the number of plants means that it’s actually hard to avoid the Nitrates from completely bottoming out at 0ppm that way. Even with weekly dosing of Thrive/Easy Green. So I probably should adjust something, but I probably need to research which lever to move: more dosing, same water changes, or same dosing with fewer water changes (every 2 weeks).


Depends on what you're trying to accomplish. You could probably cut down your water changes if you want to be more hands off or increase your your dosing if you want more growth.


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## Nigel95 (Mar 5, 2017)

70% a week (co2 tanks)


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## KrypleBerry (May 23, 2017)

Nigel95 said:


> 70% a week (co2 tanks)


Any reason for the added 20% above the norm? Just curious, Ive seen your tanks and really like the forrest build you recently put together.


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## zerodameaon (Dec 2, 2014)

KrypleBerry said:


> Any reason for the added 20% above the norm? Just curious, Ive seen your tanks and really like the forrest build you recently put together.


I used to do that because it came out to about a even 5 gallon bucket on one of my tanks. Now with the python I do about 50% as buckets don't matter.


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## Nigel95 (Mar 5, 2017)

KrypleBerry said:


> Any reason for the added 20% above the norm? Just curious, Ive seen your tanks and really like the forrest build you recently put together.


Thanks

Trying to keep the water clean as possible because it is full of slow growing plants and want to reduce the chance of algae. Thats why I do 70% water changes.


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## IntotheWRX (May 13, 2016)

deepgreen1 said:


> I do 50% water change every one to two years or so. 90 gallon heavily planted tank, CO2, RO water regularly filled up, moderate macro and micro ferts, moderate Osmocote+, little fish load. 2.5 year old ADA AS. Moderate BBA and GSA. Keep plants like Pantanal, Ammania praetermissima, Cuphea anagalloidea, Cabomba furcata, Erio setaceum, Syn "Belem", A reinecki variegated and more. Main problem is getting rid of detritus which I do by vacuum and filtering in a large container and pump back water. Started using Purigen for removal of organics which seems to help with BBA.


water change every year? thats a balanced tank.


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