How many times do you?

[Blackhawksfn0286]

How many times should you be cleaning your tank? like once a week or once every 2 or what? I am not sure.. i don't wanna do it too much it effects my fish or do it too late so my tank is very dirty? Someone please tell me?

 

[Grim Reaper]

i do 25% every week, well most people do it once a week

 

[BobK]

partial water changes of 10-25% can be done weekly. at the same time vacuum the gravel. Don't wash the filter media. if the filter ever slows down, swish the media around in a bucket of aquarium water (chlorine in tap water will kill your beneficial bacteria in the media) and replace. Check out the pinned threads in this section and welcome to the forum!

Have you been checking your water parameters?

 

[Blackhawksfn0286]

Thanks

 

[gale]

I've been doing about 10-15% water change every week (without cleaning the gravel much, if any) and about 25% once a month (cleaning the gravel too). I hung a fish themed calendar near my tank and tied a pen on it so that I can mark when I do a water change, when I feed what, water parameters, etc.

 

[glolite]

I've been doing 20% weekly water changes with gravel vac aswell. The fish don't seem to mind a bit.

 

[yvez9]

I'm cycling my tank so I do a 20% water change every day

after 3 weeks, ammonia wnet down to 0
I'm now waiting for nitrites to go down

 

[astroboy]

I change approxiametly 50%-60% along with a thorough cleaning of my sand each week.

 

[thapsus]

Need of waterchanges depend in your stock. With full stock you probably need to change 50% of water every week to keep nitrate under 30. With lighter stocking you can change lesser amount of water every week or change water every two weeks. You should thought change water once in two week althought you have very few fishes to keep watergrades more equable. This way your fishes will not stress from bumping watergrades and they will be more hardy.

Waterchange it self will not stress fish if you do it right, the grades and changes do.

thapsus

 

[smithrc]

there are no hard a fast rules in this game

if you test your nitrate levels regularly you'll know when you need to do a water change.

we rotate our cleaning - and its normally 25% ever 2-3weeks.

our planted tank stays nearly 0 on nitrates so in theory - waterchanges are not needed. but fish poo dictates otherwise

 

[blue_ram]

Depends on quite a few things:
1) Stocking density. Large number of fish means more frequent water change is needed.
2) Live plants. Fast growing, plants can reduce the need for water change by half. Slow growing plants may not be much of help.
3) Size of fish. Bigger the fish, more water needs to be changed.
4) Feeding. If you let the fish pig out, then more frequent water change is needed.

The easiest way to see if you need water change is to get an accurate nitrate test kit and use the nitrate reading to decide if you need a water change or not. I do water change when my nitrate reading reaches 40mg/L. Until I added a snail, I only had to do water change every other week in my 10g. Now I have to do one twice a week.

 

[Aquascaper]

Coldwater Tank - 20% water change every week + gravel vac
Tropical Tank - 20% water change every week + sand vac
Brackish Tank - 25% every two weeks + gravel vac
Marine Tank - 20% every 4 to 6 weeks with weekly top-off