Daily Water changes?

[cation]

If that's what you want to believe, go for it. I have a biology degree, and I can tell you for a fact, a 50% water change will not reduce the ammonia concentration to zero. It's simple chemistry, and I'm not going to argue its validity with you, pick up a basic chem book and you can see for yourself. If there's continually ammonia in the (filtered or aerated) water, the bacterial colonies will eventually establish themselves.

This is not to say that cycling with water changes will not slow down the process, but it will not stop it.

As for the last reference, they are not suggesting a 50% WC starts the cycle again, but that if you are having problems, change 50% and start the process of adding ammonia all over again. There's a difference.

 

[ral]

Will stay with the small water changes for a bit, because it is hard to imagine why my girlfirends and sisters betta's (15) have suffered 0 cases of Ich or other illness sicne we started getting them (and they only do weekly changes)... while I have been doing large water changes mainly from what I have read here and in from having generally healty fish (when I did not know what) I was doing, had 6 cases of Ich with 8 fish over three weeks in December when I started to give them more water changes...(and eventually went with filters). I even reduced the number of my fish becuase of the time required by the additional water change load (bye bye Carl, Ryujin and Gir).

Well I will try the lower level of water changes since I have 4 of my 5 remaining fish recuperating or cured from Ich and Finrot (which seems to follow the Ich) and so they do not seem to have like the frequent changes (acutally Karl is about to get a bigger tank and fewer water changes too, but he is not to fond of the filter, even a weak sponge one).

One thing which does make sense to me is the amount of bacterai that build up will be equal to the amount of food available for them, so with more frequent changes, there will be less ammonia and hence less beneficial bacteria. So water changes would be necessary to the extent necessary to reduce nitrate/nitrites to healty levels or use plants or chemicals to do so.

 

[White Whale]

They live in under 1 gallon and I change 100% of the water daily. Lucifer, my crowntail, lives in a gallon tank, since he doesn't like bigger.

Caution, so you think it's a good idea to change it daily? They're new bettas so I really don't have any idea what their health is until I observe them for a time.

A rule of thumb I use is 1 gallon equivalent per week for a water change.