Water Change

Hi,

I am not sure when to start doing water changes on my 55 gallon fish tank. I started this new tank 14 days ago and I have 11 fish in this tank and no live plants. I was told by petsmart not to change water for at least 30 days (as the bacterial cycle will establish in 30 days).

I was thinking of changing approx. 1 gallon of water from the tank.

Do you think I should wait for a full 30 days or should I do a small water change now?

Your input will be appreciated.

Thanks.

p.s. I feed my fish twice a day

Majid said:

Hi,

I am not sure when to start doing water changes on my 55 gallon fish tank. I started this new tank 14 days ago and I have 11 fish in this tank and no live plants. I was told by petsmart not to change water for at least 30 days (as the bacterial cycle will establish in 30 days).

I was thinking of changing approx. 1 gallon of water from the tank.

Do you think I should wait for a full 30 days or should I do a small water change now?

Your input will be appreciated.

Thanks.

p.s. I feed my fish twice a day

Click to expand...

petsmart has given bad info to you!

You should do more water changes in the cycling time if ever!! The bacteria will obviously not be affected as it is in the filter. Your fish will suffer hug ammonia spikes and nitrite spikes, and then nitrates will build up. So water changes are needed to minimalise the pressure on the fish.

25% weekly is a must.

First read http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=10099

Sometimes I don't know where to begin when a person new to aquatics has to deal with wrong info from a shop like Petco or Petsmart. They care about money way more than fish.

In a cycling tank you a re converting ammonia to nitrite, & nitrite to nitrate with your growing colony of nitrifying bacteria. Ammonia is bad for fish, nitrite less so, and nitrate the least harmful of the three. In a traditional cycle with fish, which is what you are doing, water changes are needed for the health of the fish.

You need a water test kit, the liquid kind are better than the strips. Test the water daily, you will see an ammonia spike, a nitrite spike, then a nitrate spike. The chart below should help explain this a little better;



I would be doing water changes at least every other day, of at least 25%.

Thanks for your feedback. I just did a water change on my 55 gallon tank. I used the blue bucket (see picture below) to empty the water from the tank. The bucket image will give you an idea how much water I removed from the tank. When removing water from the tank, I filled up bucket to max. (I think it's a little more than 1 gallon).

Do you think I should have removed more than just one full bucket? And should I be doing this once a week?

Your input will be appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Yes! Much more than 1 bucket. I have a 55 gallon tank and a 2 gallon bucket. In order to do a 25% water change I would have to do 7 buckets. A 1 gallon water change in a 55 gallon tank is not going to do much at all. Thats less than a 2% water change. Your test kits would probably not even know the difference, and neither would your fish.

I would suggest you get a larger bucket. A lot of people use 5 gallon buckets but I can't lift one when its full. I use the 2 gallon so I can just pick it up and pour it into the tank when I replace the water. I have 2 of them. It makes life easier. Fewer trips to the sink, and I can carry one in each hand. Fish are a lot of work! And I do this once a week. I actually don't usually do a 25% change, I do 20% in my tank but it is not new, and while cycling 25% is probably a good idea, and more often than once a week.

I don't know why the pet store would give you such bad advice. The bacteria do not live in the water, they live in the filter, so doing water changes is fine. Just make sure that when you clean your filter, you rinse it in old tank water and don't replace all of the filter media at once.

Tammy

EDIT: In fact, I wouldn't clean my filter at all until cycling has been completed for at least a week.