Water Change Advice

[Aqua Tom]

I did a major water change at the end of my cycle to clear the Bicarb & nitrates & it totaly screwed the readings for a couple of days. Once it had settled down I restarted my cycle, testing etc & once it was using ammonia & nitrites again I changed the water again (the Nitrates had risen to 160ppm so it needed to be done).
AGAIN it screwed my readings. I was obviously doing somthing wrong & upseting the A-bacs & N-bacs.
I think i know where I was going wrong, your opinions will help so dont hold back.
Its a 180 litre tank so a full chnage is a long proccess, so i think i may have cut corners too much.
Here is the method I used.

1. Turned off heater & filter.

2. Drained the tank with 10 meters of foodsafe clear hose straight into my outside drain, taking the opotunity to clean the sand at the same time.

3. Reffilled tank with water from garden hose, dosed with tetra aquaclear & added kettles of boiling water to try to keep the tempreture up.
This is where I think i have been going wrong. I dont think I dosed the chemical correctly, probably put WAY too much in. The garden hose was probably not very clean inside. The tempreture when i had finished was way below the green "safe zone" on the thermometers (I know that filters work in cold water but it was like a 9 degree c drop from the cycliing temprature, that is enough to shock anyone, let alone the microscopic bacs). I turned on the heater to heat it up but got paranoid about my bacteria dying off so probably turned it on to early.



Here is my new method that i will be using later today or tomorow. Again, your opinions are aprreciated.

1. turn off heater & filter

2. drain tank as above

3. start adding closely temrature matched water. i will be doing this by reverse syphoning from a 3 gallon bucket into the tank, this in turn i will be topping up with nicely warm water from a 2 gallon bucket filled from my shower. Its going to be hard work as my shower is upstars & my tank is in the living room.

4. during the water change I will be treating the water with Seachem Prime. It is 5ml dose per 200 litres. Waterdrop has reccomended initial dose to be 2x that but no more.
Using my shaky maths it works out at 0.025ml per litre x 180 litres = 4.5ml x 2 = 9ml. Minus 1ml to be safe I have a total of 8ml.

5 check temprature as water change is going on & adjust acordingly.

6.Buy some fish


How does all that sound?

sorry for the long rambling post but I realy want to get this corrct at last.

 

[markandhisfish]

could of been caused by such a big drop in temps yes. heres how i do it . turn off filters but not the heaters ( i have these positioned horizonatlly lower than the level i drain to) drain the tank to requuired level. add the prime ( dose based on whole tank volume not volume of water removed) refill from the tap vis hosepipe but slowly ( literally just a trickle) with heaters on. this way doing a 30% w/c ( which on my tank is around 35 to 40 g) only drops the temp by about 2 to 3 degrees.

oh and then turn the filters back on of course

 

[Aqua Tom]

could of been caused by such a big drop in temps yes. heres how i do it . turn off filters but not the heaters ( i have these positioned horizonatlly lower than the level i drain to) drain the tank to requuired level. add the prime ( dose based on whole tank volume not volume of water removed) refill from the tap vis hosepipe but slowly ( literally just a trickle) with heaters on. this way doing a 30% w/c ( which on my tank is around 35 to 40 g) only drops the temp by about 2 to 3 degrees.

oh and then turn the filters back on of course

unfortunatly I have to turn the heater off as it is a FULL water change.

 

[Uriel]

Depending on how understanding your family is, I jury rigged a connection to connect my hose pipe to my shower connection. Means i can just set shower to right temp and fill up tank.

 

[JoshuaA]

I usually only did a water change on my cycles if the pH plummeted below 7. My tap water is 7.6 and below 7 I am under the impression from experienced posters on this forum that bacteria doesn't multiple very fast if at all.

Nitrates are not something to worry about in a cycle you can expect them to be like up to 1,000 on some cycles. You can do the maths actually through chemistry and roughly work out how much there should be neglecting loss.

Anyway, when I did a 100% change I always put my filter in a bucket of the tank water I was removing so it didn't dry out and I temperature matched the water I then added 2/3x the normal amount of dechlorinator and dosed the water with ammonia before putting the filter back in. I never saw any irregularities from doing this but I might of just been lucky.

AFAIK at this stage the bacterial colony is "fragile" and small changes can upset their efficiency and reproduction.

I'm currently cycling a nano tank but I'm using the soil as the ammonia source. The only problem with this is I have no idea when the soil stops releasing ammonia and or the bacteria are capable. It's only going to be a shrimp tank so the bioload is pretty low to begin with and the soil was above 4ppm of ammonia within a few days. I've taken this opportunity as I am in no rush as it is already looking pretty and planted to see how long it takes with no intervention at all. So far it is processing ammonia though I have no idea how much and Nitrite is slowly being processed and I am only 2 weeks into it without touching it.

 

[Aqua Tom]

Depending on how understanding your family is, I jury rigged a connection to connect my hose pipe to my shower connection. Means i can just set shower to right temp and fill up tank.

Fantastic idea, cant see the wife being too please though

 

[Harlequins]

Has Joshua said if its an internal filter put it in a bucket of tank water while you'll doing a re-fill.

I've emptied tanks before & refilled with cold water in the past with no ill effect on the stats.unless you're disturbing the sand which is letting off trapped ammonia/nitrite...

 

[symon_say]

Why not do several small changes instead of a massive change, that way the disturbance to bacteria won't be all of a sudden. Just let the heater running, change 25% wait for the the water to heat to its temp and then 25%, and again and again until you fill comfortable with your parameters.

 

[BIG BAD BARRY]

How about getting a plastic water container and cheap submersible pump. Come in various sizes. I have a 55 litre one with secure lid and handles.

Use gravel syphon or sub pump to remove water from tank.

Then use sub pump to refill tank with treated temp matched water.

No buckets, no spills, less effort and quicker so less stressful for fish!

 

[Rynofasho]

Thank God for gas hot water heaters so I don't have to go through all that trouble!

 

[Aqua Tom]

Depending on how understanding your family is, I jury rigged a connection to connect my hose pipe to my shower connection. Means i can just set shower to right temp and fill up tank.

Fantastic idea, cant see the wife being too please though

I actualy used this idea to do it, wife wasnt to happy but is chuffed now we have fish in the tank.

 

[Uriel]

Depending on how understanding your family is, I jury rigged a connection to connect my hose pipe to my shower connection. Means i can just set shower to right temp and fill up tank.

Fantastic idea, cant see the wife being too please though

I actualy used this idea to do it, wife wasnt to happy but is chuffed now we have fish in the tank.

Glad i could help and my apologies to the mrs It was the only viable way for me. My water is too cold to just run pipe from cold tap and buckets, Well just don't get me started on buckets.

 

[Aqua Tom]

Depending on how understanding your family is, I jury rigged a connection to connect my hose pipe to my shower connection. Means i can just set shower to right temp and fill up tank.

Fantastic idea, cant see the wife being too please though

I actualy used this idea to do it, wife wasnt to happy but is chuffed now we have fish in the tank.

Glad i could help and my apologies to the mrs It was the only viable way for me. My water is too cold to just run pipe from cold tap and buckets, Well just don't get me started on buckets.

thanks again for the tip