Thanks to everyone that advised me back in the springtime. regarding my dying fish. I followed advice and ran a fishless cycle for a couple of months and with a lot of patience, it has worked perfectly! I now have 25 to 30 healthy fish again and as yet, I haven't needed a major water change. I just remove a couple of inches of water to rinse clean the filters as chemical analysis is always spot on. so, thanks again to everyone that contributed to the above thread. Peter
Dead tropical fish
- Thread starter Peterxr
- Start date
You do water changes for 2 main reasons.
1) to reduce nutrients like ammonia, nitrite & nitrate.
2) to dilute disease organisms in the water.
Fish live in a soup of microscopic organisms including bacteria, fungus, viruses, protozoans, worms, flukes and various other things that make your skin crawl. Doing a big water change and gravel cleaning the substrate on a regular basis will dilute these organisms and reduce their numbers in the water, thus making it a safer and healthier environment for the fish.
If you do a 25% water change each week you leave behind 75% of the bad stuff in the water.
If you do a 50% water change each week you leave behind 50% of the bad stuff in the water.
If you do a 75% water change each week you leave behind 25% of the bad stuff in the water.
Imagine living in your house with no windows, doors, toilet, bathroom or anything. You eat and poop in the environment and have no clean air. Eventually you end up living in your own filth, which would probably be made worse by you throwing up due to the smell. You would get sick very quickly and probably die unless someone came to clean up regularly and open the place up to let in fresh air.
Fish live in their own waste. Their tank and filter is full of fish poop. The water they breath is filtered through fish poop. Cleaning filters, gravel and doing big regular water changes, removes a lot of this poop and harmful micro-organisms, and makes the environment cleaner and healthier for the fish.
Do regular water changes
1) to reduce nutrients like ammonia, nitrite & nitrate.
2) to dilute disease organisms in the water.
Fish live in a soup of microscopic organisms including bacteria, fungus, viruses, protozoans, worms, flukes and various other things that make your skin crawl. Doing a big water change and gravel cleaning the substrate on a regular basis will dilute these organisms and reduce their numbers in the water, thus making it a safer and healthier environment for the fish.
If you do a 25% water change each week you leave behind 75% of the bad stuff in the water.
If you do a 50% water change each week you leave behind 50% of the bad stuff in the water.
If you do a 75% water change each week you leave behind 25% of the bad stuff in the water.
Imagine living in your house with no windows, doors, toilet, bathroom or anything. You eat and poop in the environment and have no clean air. Eventually you end up living in your own filth, which would probably be made worse by you throwing up due to the smell. You would get sick very quickly and probably die unless someone came to clean up regularly and open the place up to let in fresh air.
Fish live in their own waste. Their tank and filter is full of fish poop. The water they breath is filtered through fish poop. Cleaning filters, gravel and doing big regular water changes, removes a lot of this poop and harmful micro-organisms, and makes the environment cleaner and healthier for the fish.
Do regular water changes
How much poop do you think a fish produces. If you have 100 liters of water and 30 Neon tetras. How much waste do you think those 30, 5 gram fish can produce. you have 150 grams of fish producing how much waste daily. Say if they produce 10% of their body weight that is 15 mils of waste into 100 liters of water. Your local swimming pool will have more pee in it than that. 25% water changes are all you need to do.
I can't help myself. If a fish poops as much as is suggested here, why is there no Ammonia reading on your tank. Really your tank only needs water changing when you can measure the fish poop. So, if you don't have an Ammonia reading you don't have a fish poop problem.
You do water changes for a couple of reasons.
To remove microscopic organisms like protozoa, bacteria, fungus and viruses that kill fish.
To dilute nutrients like ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, nitric acid.
To remove/ dilute chemicals/ hormones released by the fish.
I feel sorry for your fish if they have all of that going on in their lives.
All aquariums have that.
Similar threads
Most reactions
-
456 -
280 -
278 -
258 -
234 -
174 -
172 -
150 -
149 -
132 -
120 -
90 -
80 -
F
64
-
64