100% Water Change (urgent!)

[waterdrop]

I agree with MW there, and Tolak, Andy, Schmill and many of the others.

Since all these different comments about how large water changes can be fine will help with understanding, I'll throw in my own angle on the same ideas. To me it seems handy to split my thinking into two basic ideas:

1) A mature biofilter that's been kept maintained and a substrate that's been maintained nicely will help to ensure that any big disturbance like a 100% water change (and with conditioning and reasonable temperature matching since its large) will go smoothly and not cause a mini-cycle.

2) As Tolak mentioned, the water parameters need to be reasonably the same. Any good aquarist should have an awareness of the potential differences between his/her source water and the tank water. The typical things of concern will be ammonia or high nitrates in the tap water, or tanks where the KH and/or pH varies greatly from the source water. Aquarists with these usually learn to apply more caution to large water changes.

If these two areas are *not* found to be of significant concern then very large water changes should not be a concern. And if this is the case for the OP then my personal hunch is that a series of 50% changes with as little as an hour between, not even turning the filter off, would be such an easy approach that it should be tried first before taking elaborate measures.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[petertr]

While I agree with what Wiggle has said, I think that's more for those times when you simply must empty the tank.


If you have another option, then I'd go with a number of smaller changes. As you're only trying to remove a colourant, why not do daily 20% changes until its sorted?


No stress to fish, no need to turn anything off, water quality will actually improve no end - and more importantly, it will only take a couple of minutes every night to do.
Simple!

 

[Madhousedavy]

ok cheers i kind of bottled it and didnt do it in the end im going to try the 50% a few times a week for the next 2 weeks and wait until i only have one or two fish in the far future before i tery something like that

 

[backtotropical]

The ONLY time I would agree with Helterskelter is if you had water problems, ie. were suffering from "Old Tank Syndrome" where the water hasn't been changed correctly in a very long time, and as such the water parameters are all way off and vastly different to your tap water. The fish in the tank will have coped with the gradual change in parameters, and although they may not be great parameters the fish are 'coping'. In THAT circumstance if you do a 100% water change you will likely shock all your current stock of fish. In THAT case you do have to do several smaller changes over the course of a week or so.
Of course if you have been doing regular water changes anyway along with good maintenance, then changing 100% water shouldn't cause a problem

+1

There is no instance I can think of where too much water can be changed other than Old Tank Syndrome, as Schmill points out.

So long as the vital parameters are kept stable (pH, kH, gH, temp), no amount of water change is too large for any fish. In fact it will only ever be beneficial.

I do however also agree with Mikaila that in this situation, 100% change isn't really required. A series of 50% changes should see you right.

BTT

 

[Madhousedavy]

Close please mods i would change the title of this thread but dont know how!

 

[vinylman]

50% weekly for me, too. I'd rather do several of those than a 100% change, unless it's a DIRE emergency.

 

[OldMan47]

Resurrected thread. Let it go, anyone who originally had a problem has either solved it or given up.