PlanetCatfish.com

Water changes can be a chore, especially if you have lots of tanks! Yet they are an essential part of good fishkeeping.

The conventional wisdom on the subject has shifted, from an emphasis on the importance of "aged water" to a new emphasis in some quarters on the virtues of frequent and large water changes.

Of course, optimal frequency and quantity depends on a lot of things: stocking level and type of fish, stocking level and type of plants, filtration, specific objectives such as spawning, etc.

But let's keep this poll simple. How much water do you change weekly? (If you don't do weekly changes, prorate it to a weekly basis, e.g. 20% every two weeks would be equivalent to 10% weekly).

I do 40% weekly.

Dinyar

i do 20-30% change every 3-4 days, depending on which day i'm free.
thats abt 40-50% weekly.

I change 50 % every sunday in my sparsely populated tanks. Sometimes I do the same on thursday, too. Tap water parameters are great in Helsinki area: very soft and neutral water. In addition to keeping nitrates down, one of the key ideas behind the habit is to keep the aquarium water and tap water quality close to each other all the time in order to avoid abrupt changes when changing water. Or that is how I have reasoned it at least. And then... changing water in my tanks takes so long that I have time to do the hoovering when waiting for the tanks to empty...

40-50% every Wednesdays and Saturdays
20 plecos of various sizes in a 120g tank

Revisiting this poll after a while, I must confess to being pleasantly surprised by the results! I thought I was doing large water changes at 40% a week. When I posted something to this effect on the Cîchlid Forum some time ago, several people thought that was way over the top. But according to this poll, I am within the first two standard deviations of respondents! Perhaps catfish keepers know something other fish keepers don't.

Dinyar

We are constantly topping up our aquariums due to fish being sold. Recently we have had no choice but to use a purifier as the mains water is terrible and was causing a lot of problems when frequently water changing. 40% weekly changes are ideal with good water as the benefit to the fish will be visible in growth rate alone.

15-20 % weekly. 55 gallon with three small pictus,two small raphaels,and a small geophagus. It has pretty heavy duty filters and not many fish so i dont worry about doing too much.

15-20 percent weely in my planted thirty five, i dont do much in this tank either because the plants are a help in filtering and i try not to disturb them very much with frequant large water changes, The only fish in this tank are small tetras,barbs,corys,and kuhlis.

I do 10% daily and 20-30% at a weekend. This is mostly because my clarius produces huge amounts of poo and creates an awfull mess so I try to siphon it off daily or at least every other day. The other thing is I have a small but fast growing L001 which produces even more poo!

jason

Some people may flame me for saying this (actually someone from this forum already has). Poeple think that I am way way over but I change 30% water every other day. And once a week, I do 50%. I am just a sucker for clean tanks. Can't stand to see poop most of the time.

I usually change about 10-15% about 4days a week. I change more in tanks with baby fish so anti-growth hormones can't set in and the fish will grow faster.

I change at least 30% a week but no more than 50% so i'm 39-40-45 WHO KNOWS!!

At about 10% weekly I am right at the bottom of the scale! And I have quite a small tank - do you guys have some secret method??? Even doing as little as I do, traipsing back and forward from the kitchen with buckets of conditioned, temperature-adjusted water is a REAL CHORE + the fishies don't look too happy about it either

...oh and I was going to say - with powerheads etc located near the surface, making large changes seems too intrusive ...