How often and how much water do you change? changes?

Hawkian

OK this one is partly because I am curious and partly for fun. Mostly it is to get an idea of how others maintain their tanks.

I do a 20%-30% water change every week on my 32g freshwater tank, depending on the Nitrates (NO3) reading. I find that this works well for me. However, I often read posts where folks do 40% or even 50% and the frequency also varies between weekly to bi-weekly to monthly. I am not talking about "problem maintenance" but regular maintenance.

So... how big a tank do you have and how much water do you change at which frequency? And why?

Guess I screwed up the title there eh?

stephanieleah

29 gallons

40% wc 1-2 times weekly (twice if there's a lot of fish poo at the bottom!)

I'm glad you posted this thread bc i'm also curious. I was thinking about youtubing myself doing a water change and asking people if they thought i was doing it right

WisFish

55gal planted tank. 50-60% changed every-other Saturday. With my busy schedule and kids, that's about as frequent as I can get. It's also why I only have 1 tank setup right now.

kevincao

it depends on the filtration system and your tank size

too much water change can affect biological filter, and may destroy good bacteria colony, and filters should never be thoroughly cleaned, for the bacteria will have to re-colonize. and can have some dramatic changes to your fish.

i have 220 gallon, and i do water change once few month, because i use sump system, and my sump is 80 gallon so together is 300 gallon of water. but i do change first level filter matt bi-weekly

from the amount of fish you have there in your signature, i would suggest you to have...

15% water change per week
40% - 50% water change per month depended on your monthly food consumption.

kevincao

hi, personally i think you are changing the water too frequent, you should try 30% per week, but i'm not sure how crowed, or heavily planted your aquarium is. so i assume that it is very crowed and so you should do 30%

but really is not all about water change

Mikaila31

At least 50% every week.

You can never do too many water changes.

iamntbatman

Yeah, it really depends on the tank. My smaller ones get about a 50% change once a week while the bigger ones only get about 20%.

aunt kymmie

My tanks get a 50% water change weekly. (100gl and 2 little 6gls tanks) Once in a while the water change extends out to ten days rather that seven but that's not very often. Tanks are heavily planted, I use ferts for the plants. Based on the behavior of my fish following water changes I'm convinced I'm doing the right thing by them.

mrdemin

Ahem, I do a 17 % change every Tuesday in my 29g :)

stephanieleah

For some reason you just made me think about my plant to get a 55 gallon. Currently when I do a 40% wc on my 29 gallon, it only adds up to about 10 gallons of water being changed (my plants and decor take up a lot of space i guess!). So that's basically two five gallon jugs of water, and two five gallon buckets full of waste to dump down the toilet. But if I do a 50% wc on a 55 gallon, that's a whopping 5 bottles and buckets worth of new and waste water. yikes. Can my back handle all of that water???

And by the way I would change more of my water if I could...sometimes I still see floating matter in the water after my wc and I wish i had sucked out more of the old water.

IMHO...how can one go wrong with clean water? (never seen any problems with my bb...my params are very stable always)