caged Lid/No Lid Evaporation = water change?

[jo3olous]

I forgot to mention in my 5 week new tank post that I was using no lid until I got my RTshark, which is a jumper so i slapped something on. Anyway, in either case the water still evaporates so I have to add water every weekend (about 1-2 gallons) to keep the water level constant. Does the evaporation of water and addition of new water qualify as a water change?

 

[Orion]

Absolutely not. All your doing there is toping off the tank, replacing the missing water. All that waste build up is still there. When you preform a water change, you remove the old water along with waste and debris, then replace that with clean water.

 

[jediinthedark]

Nope. You still have to do a water change.
You want to aim for weekly water changes of about 30%.

Water will evaporate, but it will not remove the waste with it. That's what the WC does.
When you just add water you are slightly lowering the toxicity levels of the tank because there is now more water to contain the waste, but it is still there.

 

[DesignsOnYou]

I've read multiple places that either weekly of 10% or bi-weekly of 20% is good maintenance once the tank is cycled. jediinthedark, you do 30% weekly? That seems like a lot, any reason that you know of for the varying % recommendations that can be found?

 

[Orion]

There is no set "this is how x is done in everyone's tank" for nearly anything in this hobby.

I do about 50% changes on my 75 gallon every two weeks or every week, and I plan on 30-40% weekly for my 65 gallon.

The 75 gallon gets so much because it is a bit over crowded, I have lots of growing fish that need lots of food, and there fore I've got lots of waste. Got to get rid of it and allow the best possible water conditions possible. I run 2 large canister filters on this tank plus it's planted, so no major worries about water quality with my maintance schedule, but it can go bad quick if I don't keep up with it.

My 65 is in a similar shape. Several juvie fish and lots of frozen food. I want them to grow up nice and strong so they need lots of food and lots of clean water.

This isn't anything out of the ordinary. It's not uncommon for discus keepers of juvies to do 50%+ WC every day lol.

Each tanks schedule depends on the tank.

 

[jediinthedark]

Orion's spot on.
You don't want to change all of the water at one time (unless there is a reason), but beyond that you just have to figure out what works for your tank. The maintenance schedule is also going to be something that you fall into. You can't force more hours in the day/week to do maintenance.

I try to do about 20% or so each week... but more then that I just try to get the detritus/gunk out. By the time I'm done skimming the gravel to grab all of that it's about 20%.
If I'm going to be honest... I am bad at weekly changes. I try, but this weekend will be 3 weeks without a good water change in my tank. Definitely time to force the maintenance into my schedule. Three weeks is an exception for me, most of the time I'm much better then this. Keep in mind though, that I've got a very well established tank, not stocked to capacity, and heavily planted. That makes a big difference.

I believe in experimentation too. One member we had on the forums -NoDeltaH2O - (I have no idea where he went) had a tank very lightly stocked, and very heavily planted. He never did water changes, but he paid for it in the number of fish he was able to keep in the tank.

Jonathan

 

[jo3olous]

awesome, thanks guys. I guess I will be doing my water change this weekend. I did notice the heavy ''debri'' floating action going on when I add water to the tank.

 

[skratikans]

for example I do wc every 3 weeks...but I also have tons of plants and get blue green "algae" outbreaks if I change it too frequently...my in my other tanks I do wc weekly...so it depends on the tank...check your parameters...levels of nitrate and nitrite to tell you when its time for a wc..bc while 10% migth work well for others it may be different for those with larger or smaller bioloads

 

[DesignsOnYou]

That makes sense everyone, once again, thanks for the information. I think when I had a 55 gallon before, about 3 years ago, I didn't know what I was doing, and was only doing changes when it "looked like it needed it". Surprisingly enough, everything was pretty much fine until I got an outbreak of something that killed several fish. Now that I'm trying to be a much more responsible fish owner, I think I'll try the 10% weekly, but after reading all of this, now I feel comfortable adjusting as needed.

 

[Cichlid-Man]

Agreed with everyone. Saltwater is the perfect example. Consider the salt in the water the wastes. When water evaporates the salt does not, so it is just concentrated in the water that is left. You must manually remove/replace the existing water.

 

[roark fishies]

I usually do about 40%. Right now I'm only doing about 15-20% because I have to replace meds with every water change.

 

[MatthewLaw]

additives to water during WC?

when you perform these weekly WC, assuming the tank is cycled and the fish are healthy, do you add anyhting to the 'new' water? ex. Conditioning salt??

 

[Orion]

The only thing you need to add to new water is a quality dechlorinator. I really like Prime because all it does is remove contaminates from the water, chlorine, chloramines, and heavy metals. It's concentrated so a little goes a long way, and even if you do overdose, it's not going to hurt anything. I always add it as I'm starting to add water back in the tank.

That makes sense everyone, once again, thanks for the information. I think when I had a 55 gallon before, about 3 years ago, I didn't know what I was doing, and was only doing changes when it "looked like it needed it". Surprisingly enough, everything was pretty much fine until I got an outbreak of something that killed several fish. Now that I'm trying to be a much more responsible fish owner, I think I'll try the 10% weekly, but after reading all of this, now I feel comfortable adjusting as needed.

I can see that happening. I think someone coined a flashy name called 'Old Tank Syndrome', and this is sort of what happend to yours I think. The fish became used to the less than stellar water quality, so they appeared OK. However their immune system was very weak. So the least little infection or virus that came along could really ravage the tank. Healthy fish are able to fight off nearly all infections, bacteria and virus that might occur in our tanks, where sick fish, or fish with a compromised immune system can't and easily die off before they might show any outward sign of problems. IMHO water quality is the number 1 cause of fish deaths in our hobby. A little maintaince goes a LONG way