Boy are you wrong about a lot of things. You attack my advice with the word HOGWASH and then call me nasty. I can take being told I'm wrong but I wasn't wrong as I easily prooved above. Then you try to insult me with the the words no offense to cover yourself. Come on man, I wasn't born yesterday though at my age I'm beginning to wish I was. LOL! I've been taking care of fish for over 40 years straight so I think I know what I'm talking about and there is no old world new world when it comes to water chemistry.
Now for some more facts:
If you have a 10 gallon tank and take 8 gallons out leaving enough room for the betta to swim (as you say) and this water is at 7.0 pH. you are doing an 80% water change. Then you put in fresh tap water at say 7.6 pH generaly speaking. You will end up with your fish seeing an instant ph change of .48 ph. It is never a good idea to let them see more than a .3 pH change in a 24 hour period so what do you think a instant .48 ph change will do to the fish? It's not good.
Here's the math:
7.6 - 7.0 = .6 pH change for a 100% water change
.6 * .8 (80% water change) = .48 ph increase instantly
You said I was speaking hogwash when I said to let the water stand and be sure to treat it to remove the chlorines. Now you say to use some warm water provided your pipes are not made of copper to match the teperature and also that letting water stand is old world because now chemicals are added. Sorry but this is bad advice also.
First, leting it stand helps to evaporate many of the chemicals that are added and treating it DOES remove the Chlorine that is most certainly added to tap water. NEVER USE WARM WATER because the coils in the water heater are almost always made of copper but also because old water heaters will have all kinds of sediments collected at the bottom of the tank. This is covered in just about every basic fish care book yet you claimed I should go back to to Basic training and then YOU call me nasty.
You say with the Vase 50% minimum is needed and 25% may not be enough. That may be true but we don't know the habbits of the humans caring for the fish so we have to speak in general terms. Lets say he doesn't get around to the water change for two weeks and his fish is in this little vase probably less than a gallon but suppose it it one gallon. In two weeks the Betta will be swimming in his own urine, very acididy, something around 6.6 pH. Lets say his tap water is at 7.6. like mine is and most of the water in my area. Maybe it's not but, remember we must speak in general terms when we don't know all the conditions. So if he does a 50% water change his fish will see an instant pH change of .5pH. Not healthy for the fish. If he does a 25% water change he only sees a instant .25pH change. Still too high by my standards but much better than a .5 pH change.
The Vase has a plant it in that will help eat the ammonia and slow down the build up of ammonia so ammonia is not the urgent problem but yes you are right that the ammonia is why we want to do the water change at this point. But why risk killing the fish with an instant .5 pH change when he can just do daily 25% water changes and not stress the fish and still keep the ammonia from any harmful levels.
Once the beneficial bacteria is established in the tank, ammonia is never the problem unless you over stock the tank. The reason we continue to do the water changes after the beneficial bacteria is established is to keep a constant pH by removing the pissy water and the uneaten foods and poopoos. The pH will drop as more waste is added to a tank. The best way to measure how you are doing with water changes ie: how frequent and how much per change, is by monitoring your pH levels. If they start dropping then you need to increase the amount or the frequency of the changes you are making. It's also a good way to insure you don't do too much of a water change in one change.
When I worked in a fish store I heard this story so many times it made me sick:
I got so tired of seeing my dirty gravel that I cleaned out the whole tank washed the gravel, put in new water and put the fish back in and within a few days the water got cloudy and all the fish were dead.
We all know this story and what 2 things killed the fish. Obviously if their gravel was that dirty they weren't doing proper maintenance so the pH was very likely down around 6 or lower. The new tap water even treated probably had a much higher pH and thus the fish saw an instant pH change much greater than they can handle.
The second problem was they removed all the beneficial bacteria with the total tank cleaning. So the water got cloudy from the ammonia not being eaten up by any beneficial bacteria. The fish were stressed from ammonia and saw a major pH change. They didn't have a chance.
I've seen this so many times so yes, I do try to give advise ALL the time maybe more than it is welcome. But when I do give advice I give it in general terms with worst case senerios unless I know more details because it's better to be safe than sorry. Also, I do try to teach water chemistry because people that want to take the time to understand it will have a much easier time understanding what is going on with their aquariums and with have much happier fish.
I'm not trying to fight with you or anyone and I do believe most of what I say is known by most of the readers here because MOST of it is BASIC fish care but we do see posts here that say first time Betta or first fish tank so we do get newbies and if I don't mind typing out all this advice I don't see why it would bother anyone because it is not wrong. They can always ignore my posts. Some of my advice may be on the cautious side but that will be good for those that aren't as keen as we are as far as maintaining their tanks. If I can save just one Betta from dying from a human that just didn't know better than it's all worth it to me.
