Water Changes

[dwhite93]

I have a new tank (almost 3 months old) it is a 30 gallon feshwater w/a Penguin 330 Bio-Wheel filter. As far as fish go, I have:
2 angelfish
1 dwarf gourami
6 skirted serpae tetras
4 zebra danios
1 baby bandit catfish

OK. Here's my question. At the aquarium store where I bought the whole setup, they said to do a 25% water change once a week. That way it would be a complete water change at the end of each month. I have been doing that with no problem, until this past weekend. I did the gravel vaccuum as normal, and added the new wate(conditioned, of course), and then about an hour later the water was cloudy like skim milk.

I went to a different fish store and they told me that it was a bacterial bloom because I am changing the water too often & I upset the balance. They said to do a 25% water change once a MONTH, not weekly.

I have been looking online & am finding conflicting advice. I realize that everybody has their own opinions about things, but there has to be a right & wrong way somewhere. If I only do a partial water change once a month, won't my nitrates get out of control?

HELP!

 

[platypus]

Hi,

I agree, there is loads of conflicting advice out there - you'll find there's no hard and fast rule and different strategies can work just as well for different people.

The general consensus seems to be that 'little and often' is best though. I do a 20% water change once every 7-10 days and this works just fine. In your case, the problems you're having may be caused by the gravel vacuum. A lot of the beneficial bacteria in your tank that causes the ammonia to be broken down into nitrite and then nitrate lives in the gravel, so if you are too good at cleaning it then that could be what's caused the bacterial bloom. My approach to doing this is to clean one part of the gravel one week, one the next, one the next etc, so I'm not getting rid of all the bacteria in one go.

Hope this helps!

 

[Squimps]

At the aquarium store where I bought the whole setup, they said to do a 25% water change once a week.  That way it would be a complete water change at the end of each month.

This is actually incorrect. Assuming that you had a 100 gallon aquarium and changed 50% of the water every week, you would still have about half a gallon of original water left in the tank after 8 weeks. Assuming that you did a 10% change during the same time period, you would still have over 40 gallons of original water after 8 weeks.

Don't ask me for the equation because I picked this information from a chart in one of the books I own. It's not overly important but I just didn't want you to feel you were acclomplishing more than you actually were with your water changes.

How often are you changing your filter media?

By the way, I'm not advocating 50% water changes. I'm only using this as an example. I change 15-20% of my water weekly.

 

[dwhite93]

Filter media? Do you mean the activated charcoal Rite Size filters? I change those once a month. There are "media baskets" behind the charcoal filters, but they are empty. Is there supposed to be something in them too? Nobody told me about those.

 

[Squimps]

The filter "media" is really anything that you use in a fiter to either extract physical particles from your water, to house beneficial bacteria, or to remove chemicals or toxins. Substances like filter floss and the other synthetic screening materials are referred to as "mechanical" filter matetrials in that they help remove bits of uneaten food or other unwanted pieces of debris floating in your water. Mechanical filters can also house some of the beneficial bacteria that eat ammonia and nitrites but most of today's filters have a separate chamber or a biowheel that is dedicated to this purpose. If a filter, like a canister filter for example, has a separate chamber, it is often filled with porous substances that are designed to house a large amount of beneficial bacteria in the smallest amount of space. These chambers can be filled with a variety of things including but not limited to: lava rock, ceramic pieces, gravel, or variously shaped pieces of plastic that are designed to have a large surface contact area. These chambers can also be filled with activated carbon or ammonia chips. Things like activated carbon are referred to as "chemical" filtration substances in that they actually trap and remove chemical substances from your water such as medications or toxins.

So back to the reason I asked about your filter media changes - Some people are too anxious to change their filter media in a new setup. It's hard not to fiddle with things but I advise people not to even touch their filters for at least the first 6 weeks unless there are really large amounts of crud trapped by your mechanical filter. If this is the case, you're overfeeding your fish anyway. The "biological" component of your filter(the biowheel in your case) has not had a chance to fully establish itself and some of the biological filtration duties are being done by your mechanical filter(blue mesh screen, filter floss, etc.) Therfore, if you change your mechanical filter too often during this time, it will upset the bacteria colony and cause an ammonia spike along with a bacteria bloom. If you can afford to, try and put a smaller second filter into your system and change the media in them on alternate schedules. This way, you'll always have one stable filter running strong with too much fear of upsetting your equlibrium. Hope some of this helps.

 

[floater]

with the bio wheel it keeps a fair amount of bacteria in the filter. I wouldnt change the activated charcoal pack 0nce a month I would go more like once every 6 weeks for the first year just untill your tank matures then switch over to once a month. As far as water changes go with 10 % once a week again for the first year untill you have a mature tank. Then you can bump it up to 20% once a week.

Good Luck!!

 

[Squimps]

I mentioned this in another thread but just in case you didn't see it - I personally haven't used carbon or any other chemical filtration media in any of my filters for years. Using carbon, ammonia chips, or any of the other products is not necessary for most of us. I use carbon only if I need to remove any unwanted medications.

I use polyester filter floss by itself in the grey chambers of my Emperor 400; I don't even use the other available slots designed to hold the blue carbon sleeves. My Magnum 350(filtering the same tank) contains only ceramic tubes surrounded by the filter sleeve. I have crystal clear water and I have zero readings for ammonia and nitrite. My nitrate readings are between 30 and 40 ppm. If it makes you feel better to use carbon then go ahead but it has a limited lifespan and should be changed regularly. The problem is, there is no real way of knowing when carbon's effectiveness is depleted. Some people claim that once it has exhausted it's capacity to filter toxins, then it can be used as a biologocal medium. In my opinion, there are much better types of media for this purpose and this is just a lazy way of saying that you don't have time to do it right. It's also been argued that carbon will become supersaturated with toxins and then begin to release them back into the tank. I'm not sure whether that has merit but I'll never be one to find out.

 

[dwhite93]

Thanks everybody for your advice. Boy, just when I think I'm getting a handle on this aquarium thing, something new pops up and bites me in the ass.
I think I'll try taking out less water for my water changes and just really keep an eye on my levels. I won't change the carbon filter as often either and see what happens. The bacterial bloom cleared up in like 3 days, but I'm going to give the tank a couple more weeks before I do another partial water change. Just to make sure the bacteria had time to grow enough. Does that sound like a good plan?

 

[smb]

Thanks everybody for your advice. Boy, just when I think I'm getting a handle on this aquarium thing, something new pops up and bites me in the ass.
I think I'll try taking out less water for my water changes and just really keep an eye on my levels. I won't change the carbon filter as often either and see what happens. The bacterial bloom cleared up in like 3 days, but I'm going to give the tank a couple more weeks before I do another partial water change. Just to make sure the bacteria had time to grow enough. Does that sound like a good plan?

I think I'll try taking out less water for my water changes and just really keep an eye on my levels.

Why? I would stay with the water change quantity you were doing before. Just make sure you clean your filter media in the tank water you take out.

I won't change the carbon filter as often either and see what happens.

I don't use carbon but I wouldn't wait longer before you change it. The best carbon out there only last 12-14 days and most carbon you buy in lfs's only last 3-5 days anyways.

The bacterial bloom cleared up in like 3 days, but I'm going to give the tank a couple more weeks before I do another partial water change. Just to make sure the bacteria had time to grow enough. Does that sound like a good plan?

If your tank is cycled then you shouldn't have that problem if you rinse your filter media in the discarded tank water.

Just to let you know, I do a water change twice a week on my 75g tank. I do a 35% water change the beginning of the week and then 3 or 4 days later I do a 50% water change and I never experience cloudy water. Sometimes I do 2 50% water changes or sometimes I do 3-4 35% water changes in a week. It all depends on what I feed and how much. It's never the same for me week to week but as you can see I do it 10 times more than your quantity and I don't have a problem.

Some weeks I do a 5% water change daily for a few weeks or so, but that's if I choose to only feed my fish 1-3 times in the week.

The problem isn't with your water changes, it's because it's either not cycled or you are killing off the beneficial bacteria with the chlorinated water you are adding.

 

[Alien Anna]

Thanks everybody for your advice. Boy, just when I think I'm getting a handle on this aquarium thing, something new pops up and bites me in the ass.
I think I'll try taking out less water for my water changes and just really keep an eye on my levels. I won't change the carbon filter as often either and see what happens. The bacterial bloom cleared up in like 3 days, but I'm going to give the tank a couple more weeks before I do another partial water change. Just to make sure the bacteria had time to grow enough. Does that sound like a good plan?

I'd do regular partial water changes if I were you. The bacteria mainly live in the gravel and filter so you won't do any damage to the cycling by swapping out some water.

If you are cycling with fish I recommend daily water changes of 10-15% (twice a day if you have ammonia in the tank). If you are doing fishless cycling you can leave well alone until its finished but personally I found that caused the nitrate levels to shoot up and I got algae bloom, so regular partial water changes kept the nitrate levels down. With a matured tank it depends on the sensitivity of your fish: with mine (rummynosed tetras, chain loaches, cardinals etc) I do once or twice weekly 10% water changes, but my larger molly tank only gets about 15% every fortnight.

 

[Moe]

I was having bacteria booms every time I changed the water in the beginning 20% weekly. I think my problem was not the water changes it was over cleaning the gravel. I would go over all the gravel every week. I was trying to get it really clean. I thought this would be a good thing. Then someone here told me not to clean the gravel every time I change the water or to section off the tank as someone here already mentioned. Not I change 20% of the water every week and clean one half of the gravel one week and the other half the next. I have not had the problem since. Good luck.

 

[guppymonkey]

Whats wrong with cleaning the gravel every time you do a water change. I always clean my gravel, especially since I was doing a cycle and had fish in the tank. It made the cycle longer but cut down on the ammonia levels so my fish didn't die.

 

[Alien Anna]

Whats wrong with cleaning the gravel every time you do a water change. I always clean my gravel, especially since I was doing a cycle and had fish in the tank. It made the cycle longer but cut down on the ammonia levels so my fish didn't die.

There's a difference between cleaning the gravel (as in removing superficial rotten food and dead plants etc) and cleaning the gravel (as in practically sterilising it). As long as you do the former, not the latter, you should be fine.

 

[dwhite93]

Hrmmm...OK. I'll keep with my 25% water change once a week. It has been working fine for me for months - I think that maybe I did overclean the gravel this past time now that I think about it. It was really mucky do I cleaned it pretty deep (only about 25% of the area of the tank though). But now I've run into a new problem. I got brown spots on my plants - even the plastic ones! Is that algae? I thought algae was green???

 

[Alien Anna]

). But now I've run into a new problem. I got brown spots on my plants - even the plastic ones! Is that algae? I thought algae was green???

That's what they want you to think B)

Seriously, its probably brown slime algae (aka "diatoms"). Its usually a symptom of insufficient light and too many nutrients (nitrates and phosphates). It's pesky stuff.