Large Tanks and Water Changes

[fishman61]

I clean my 150g weekly, I change out 50% of the water, I vacuum the sand and from start to finish it's about an hour to clean. We have a well so the water is free, except for the cost of electricity to run the water pump.

 

[Bderick67]

I dont agree that it is always good to do lots of water changes, because it depends on the quality of your tap water or were ever you get it, if it is not from the tap. I have a 300g tank and I make my water change only once every 2 months more or less, because my tap water is not that good, it has a ph of 8.0, and the gh is very high, so insted of spending money on water that is not good to put in my tank I got my self a very good filter that keeps the water in very good condition. To give you an idea of my water in the tank, I have the ph level at 6.5, the gh at 12mg/l the kh is 4 and the nitrite is less then 0.05mg/l. In my tank I have, black arowana, barbs, silver sharks ***.. just to give you an idea of what fish I keep with only one water change every 2 months. But like I sad before it depends on the water you put in the tank, if you have good tap water it might not be so bad after all Here are some pics of my fish hope you like them.

What about your nitrate levels? Get a R/O filter, then you'll have pure water to mix back with tap water to get your desired parameters.

 

[Judon]

I recently spoke with a custom tank designer here in Singapore and he says that he won’t change water more than once a year. Generally speaking, the tanks he builds are for well to do people who want to show off. The ones I’ve seen tend to be larger tanks ~+150 gallon and heavily planted. Fish so far have included mostly large quantities of smaller fish ie… rams, tetras, guppies, rasboras. He swears that if you set up the tank to be a proper ecosystem that it will take care of itself. He says most of his customers end up hiring him for the first year or two on a maintenance contract and he never does water changes unless some parameter starts to get out of specification.

Don’t know, I’m too new in aquarium science to call him a liar and a certain amount of his logic sounds like it makes sense. I like the idea of a self sustaining environment though.

Now, it would obviously be different if a person had a heavily populated tank with few plants.

I’d love to hear peoples rebuttals/ opinions to this ideology though.

 

[leeishom]

Some parts in Wa. charge a flat fee for water usage. I pay $64 a month.
I want to get into a AWC system hooked up to a rain barrel, still need more research into the actual rain water parameters.

 

[KyleStone]

What about your nitrate levels? Get a R/O filter, then you'll have pure water to mix back with tap water to get your desired parameters.

The R/O filter is a good idea, but I check my nitrates too, and also those are always very low. Sow if my water stays good for over 2 months why do I have to change it twis a week like lots of hobbiest say you should do ?

 

[KyleStone]

So how often do you guys gravel vac? I can imagine vacuuming anything 100Gal+ would be a pain in the butt every week...

I never do my gravel because I hive very fine gravel almost like sand and when you have very fine gravel the durt those not penetrate it so you dont need to vacuum it

 

[tableau]

WCs do not only contribute in lowering nitrates, they also replace many minerals needed by the fish. What are you considering to be a low nitrate level ? If the nitrates stay low after two months, I would realy like if you could tell me the secret !

 

[tableau]

Also, there are nitrites in your water, maybe you don't read nitrates because the tank is not cycled.

 

[Pandamania]

I'm wondering what's in your water that you don't need to pretreat it for chlorine/chloramines or whatever, and heavy metals? or does all of the filtering that you have get that out before the water reaches the tanks? And what about the temperature of the water? I realize that if you have a drip system like a few lucky people, that most of the nasty stuff in water probably disapates slowly and won't harm the fish. Just wondering about all this stuff!

 

[Egon]

I'm wondering what's in your water that you don't need to pretreat it for chlorine/chloramines or whatever, and heavy metals? or does all of the filtering that you have get that out before the water reaches the tanks? And what about the temperature of the water? I realize that if you have a drip system like a few lucky people, that most of the nasty stuff in water probably disapates slowly and won't harm the fish. Just wondering about all this stuff!

I think your exactly right. The drip system adds water so slowly that the heaters can stabilize temps and the chlorine and other chemicals dilute enough to not harm the fish. Dilution is the solution. I change out 168 gallons a week, one gallon an hour. The fish don’t notice a thing J