Cleaning tips?

[boobaloos]

So I've been up and running for a week now - so far so good. I have a 75 gallon tank with a Fluval 305 and an Aquaclear 70. I've got 5 2-inch fish and 2-inch catfish. My questions:
- How often do I need to change water?
- How much should I change each time I do it? eg, 10%, 25%?
- Related to this, I hear I should keep fish density anywhere between 1 inch of fish per gallon to 1 inch of fish per 4 gallons. I'm thinking if I just keep 6 fish for 75 gallons I won't have to clean it as often and they'll have a better chance of survival.

 

[jonclark96]

Personally, I change 50% +/- of all of my tanks on a weekly basis with a vacuum of the sand every 2-3 weeks. The amount of water you change is theoretically driven by the amount of nitrates in the water, but I would rather err on the conservative side and change on a regular schedule.

As far as density goes, there is no good rule of thumb. It all depends on the type of fish, how big they are, and the amount of filtration you have on the tank. You do have a good point that less density in a tank will keep the pollutants down for a longer period of time.

 

[WendyFish]

I keep a pretty crowded 75g and change 50% of the water weekly with vaccuum of the bottom. Something else we do is to dump out our canisters weekly. We don't do a full media cleaning necessarily, but there's lots of trapped poop in there that we can just pour out of the system with minimal additional work/hassle.

 

[FishInMaryland]

I keep a pretty crowded 75g and change 50% of the water weekly with vaccuum of the bottom. Something else we do is to dump out our canisters weekly. We don't do a full media cleaning necessarily, but there's lots of trapped poop in there that we can just pour out of the system with minimal additional work/hassle.

Ditto. I keep a crowded 55g and a few 10g/20g and my maintenance is the same. I also squeeze out all of the glop in most of the sponges each week...but not in fresh water. I do it in the water coming out of the tank, either by first filling up the sink with some of the drained out water, or by rinsing the sponges directly in the stream of water from the tubing that's draining the tank. Each tank has multiple filters, so I don't do all sponges on each tank each week.

 

[UNCLERUCKUS]

I DO WATER CHANGES @ A MINIMUM OF 50% AND VACUUM AS I GO. DEPENDS ON WHATS STOCKED.

 

[Avatar]

Y'all are crazy.

Conscientious to be sure, but a little fanatic. I do 20-25% every couple weeks and almost never vacuum. No problems to report but I do have huge amounts of thriving vegetation (mountains of java moss mostly). Unless you're guilty of grossly overfeeding for that amount of fish in a 75 you should be able go a month between water changes. I just got back from 3 weeks overseas with no water changes and had zero symptoms/evidence in 25 tanks of anything awry. Of course if it helps you sleep at night, go for it, but I have a couple tanks with very high evaporation rates (sort of like the dry season) and as long as the filters keep running even those seem immune to complications aside from occasional algal accumulation.

Regarding canister filters: I find that a nice foam pre-filter pretty much eliminates having to breakdown a canister more often than 2-4 times a year. Even then, I'm always amazed at how little build-up seems to occur. Bear in mind that particulates in a well-filtred system are basically reduced to 'dirt' and rendered inert by virtue of all the organic matter being 'spent'. They may not be aesthetically pleasing but for all intents and purposes they are benign and of no consequence. Anything potentially toxic to the fish is in the water as dissolved substances, so vacuuming is optional unless you happen to have huge amounts of organic matter laying around stemming from overfeeding, plant die-offs or fish death.

Increasingly I find I'm sort of beginning to like my tanks to look a wee bit less manicured, i.e., tinted water, detritus and not strictly sterile-looking - essentially just as in nature, fast moving stream beds excepted.

 

[WendyFish]

Fanatic: Guilty as Charged

Yes I'm fanatic.

It all started when no matter what I did, I could not get my nitrates down.

Turns out my test kit had gone bad, so it was never[ going to test low, and it was a lot of work in the meantime. This is a "moderate" routine compared to my efforts to defeat my malfunctioning test kit.

In defense of my fanaticism, I was previously seeing health issues that may have been related to water quality. I was initially changing more like 25% a week and in the first couple months had one sick/constipated looking fish. Fortunately, it was easy to deal with without invasive meds (Epsom only, and briefly at that) and maybe water quality is just a scapegoat for any of a number of other things that can go wrong (aggression, etc.) -- but changing more water seemed like a good additional safety measure.

Lastly, digging burrowning chasing mbuna + lots of unvacuumed poop to get stirred up doesn't appeal to me.

Seems to me like the thing is to customize to your personal preference about how the tank looks and your desire to spend a couple hours of a Saturday afternoon puttering around up to your elbows in fish water, while keeping an eye on your fishes' health and water test parameters. That's pretty much how it went with me, anyway.

 

[londonloco]

I like doing wc's for the most part. I only have 8 tanks ranging from a 2.5g jar to a 125g Tangy tank, a 20% wc only takes me 1.5 hours. Some weeks it takes 2 to 2.5 hours when I do more than just change water, replant here, move this fish to there, this tank needs 50%, that tank needs more rock or additional substrate, I do vacuum the substrate on all the tanks weekly. But I like doing it, so it's not work, more play for me. Been doing 20% weekly wc's for over 10 years now, I rarely lose a fish, I enjoy it, it works for me.

 

[Enkay]

I have a (not so heavily) planted 125 g and I NEVER do any water changes in it. Been 4 months now and all I do is top off the evaporated water to get it back to a full tank.

I have no issues with Nitrates or anything else. The FX5 sweeps the bottom clean and nothing remains on the bottom. Have it pretty heavily populated as well.

Now the smaller tanks are a different situation. 50% or even more every week. I think the larger the volume of water, the better the sustainance and lesser the maintenance.

Wish I had a whole bunch of 125s instead of all the littler tanks *sighhh*.

 

[Avatar]

Wasn't criticizing

Not my place to judge anyone's maintenance routine that is more ambitious than my own, find such devotion very commendable. Have no idea about 'poopy' Mbunas, but whatever works, works, and that's that.

I do have one perennially problem tank with some orange Krobei, A. Oblongums, Nicaraguans, a couple Bolivian rams and Guianacara sphenozonas that I cannot seem to clear of fungus. Can always knock it out but it keeps coming back no matter how massive the water changes, filtration level, etc. Starting to p*ss me off as eventually there's one or two fish with little white tufts on their head or eyes and I have to restart treatment for the whole tank. Like I have a carrier in the tank whose system I can't clear, am ready for some sort of 'nuclear' option if anyone has suggestions.

 

[ezrk]

I keep a pretty crowded 75g and change 50% of the water weekly with vaccuum of the bottom. Something else we do is to dump out our canisters weekly.

Our view is also that the time and effort delta of chaning 20-25% a week and 50% a week is pretty small. Most of the effort comes from doing any water change - espeically if you pump/python it out of the tank.

I would be interested to get more thoughts on the cannister cleaning. We have always worked under the assumption that the gook building up contained enough unconverted poop/food/plant bits that dumping it out would lower nitrates in the system. If the general concensus is that it is all being converted too fast for us to remove anything meaningful that would be an interesting result.

Maybe we'll do some experminentation and report back.

 

[londonloco]

It's not the effort that limit's me to 20%, as you said, it's just a few mins more of my time. I'm on a well, most hear "well" and think free water. But when you consider maintenance on the 6K well system I have so I can drink my water, plus monthly chemicals I have to buy to keep that system going, it's far from cheap. The more water I use, the more chemicals I buy, the more often I have to have them out to service, which used to be yearly, and now with my "hobby" is every 6-9 months.

 

[Avatar]

Our view is also that the time and effort delta of chaning 20-25% a week and 50% a week is pretty small.

Am guessing you have something less than 25 tanks with which to contend and/or that your holdings are predominantly Old World species.

 

[Hawkman2000]

I agree with Avatar. 20-25% water change per week should be enough. Also, don't make the same mistake most beginners make when cleaning gravel. don't shove the gravel vac deep into the substrate. Just clean the surface of the substrate. Takes a little practice depending on sand, gravel, or whatever you are using. Treat the water you are adding to the tank in 5g buckets (Prime, Ph regulator, Salts, Cichlid trace). I picket up used heaters to heat the water up before I dump them in the tank to reduce shock to the fish. I would also add 2 cap fulls of Stability to the tank after doing water changes to help maintain your cycle. I made a chart for every tank I have had for the measurements of additives so that every bucket of water is perfect before I add it to the tank. This system has made it extremely easy to maintain my tanks.

 

[WendyFish]

Maybe we'll do some experminentation and report back.

Oh good, looks like I'm in for some water changing adventures! See what y'all have done?!?!

You're right on the tank numbers (5, and 3 are small) and 100% Old World.

 

[boobaloos]

VERY helpful - I posted some follow-on questions in a new thread.

Boobaloos