need advice/water changes for 400G

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He has an armatus and some others its in his profile 80% would most likely shock and kill his fish try 25% regularly and dont feed a lot of live
 
indiana.dutton;3487326; said:
He has an armatus and some others its in his profile 80% would most likely shock and kill his fish try 25% regularly and dont feed a lot of live


I can tell you don't keep ATF's or Armatus. It's honestly the other way. 25% is no way's near enough. I keep the same fish he's talking about. ;)


Were talking about Monster fish. 25% is for Guppy's. :)
 
I wouldn't do 80% no matter what the fish. Test your nitrates regularly and do 50% water changes frequent enough to keep the nitrate levels as you desire.
 
I would stick to 25-35% weekly. Also python makes some pretty long gravel siphons you should take advantage of to reach the bottom... Just a thought.
 
Some of you guys have done your research....you are correct I am keeping preds......

To me 80% seems NUTS....your talking about going through 1000 gallons of water every month if you do it every 10 days.....but I will do so if that's what the doctor ordered.

I do believe those fish need clean water because they are river fish.

So we are not talking about cycling this tank...we are talking about keeping fresh water on the constant and not paying any mind to cultivating any sort of bacteria for the nitrogen cycle?

One thing to keep in mind though is that it took me a day or so to get this up to temp. Is this a serious issue? I may have to do less water more frequently to keep a steady temp.

I will look into a long @$$ syphon because eventually I'm not sure putting my hands in the tank will be safe.....
 
With 400 gallons.... I would look at a drip system.
 
i dont know much about a drip system, but i agree with bigJ, if you have big fish and big appetites, you'll need big water changes.
i do about 70% every 7-10 days on my 180 and i'm not even feeding that heavy

however, it sounds like there are only a few fish in the tank, so depending on size and amount of food, maybe you could do less?

if you're worried about getting the water up to temp, you'll just have to add heaters
 
(drip) You think I should be worried about chlorine?

Why is it that I should be more or less concerned due to the size of the tank. Explain the relation to me. Is it because of the frequency of water changing I'm going to have to do? Or because you believe that the filtration will not be able to remove the chlorine from that volume of water in a sufficient amount of time?

Take into consideration that I have carbon in the FX5, the sump and the 2229 even though it is not highly looked upon.
 
M.Carfi;3488307; said:
(drip) You think I should be worried about chlorine?

Why is it that I should be more or less concerned due to the size of the tank. Explain the relation to me. Is it because of the frequency of water changing I'm going to have to do? Or because you believe that the filtration will not be able to remove the chlorine from that volume of water in a sufficient amount of time?

Take into consideration that I have carbon in the FX5, the sump and the 2229 even though it is not highly looked upon.

Chlorine can be eliminated from the equation with a simple chlorine filter.

Drip systems will save you the time of WCs, plus it will keep the water levels down. You could end up using less water than you would if you just did water changes.

As a general rule, the bigger the water volume, the more stable the environment is. You could theoretically go a bit longer between water changes compared to a much smaller tank. But, that will also depend on stocking as well.

Best way to know how much water to change is to monitor it for a while. Know how long it takes for the parameters to get to an unacceptable leve and then set that as your routine, minus a day or two.
 
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