WATER CHANGES

Mmathis

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I have a couple of my spring goldfish "fry" in a 20 gal. tank for the remainder of the winter -- no reason, other than they were the smallest and prettiest, so now I have an indoor "pond" while everyone else chills outside.

How important is it to do frequent [weekly? more/less often?] water changes for these guys? Is that just something you DO routinely, no matter what? Or do you base it on your water parameters? There are a good many thriving plants in the tank with them. Ammonia & nitrite has been running 0ppm, with just slightly detectable nitrates [sorry, traveling in the car right now & don't have access to my numbers].
 
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It's important. Aquariums, even heavily planted, have a pathetic ecosystem and -- unless you brought a pond filter in -- little bitty filters. Even in a pond, 10 gallons per goldfish is rather heavy stocking. A general rule of thumb is to start with changing 50% of the water weekly. Keep checking nitrates. If they stay under 10 ppm, your changing schedule is good. If they keeping going up, increase the amount or frequency of changes. It's always better to find a schedule that works than to keep responding to problems.
 
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Weekly water changes are important. I think the size of the water change is more important depending on your setup and the fish you're keeping.
Making it a weekly habit is a good idea.
Try to make the fresh water you're adding for the water change water as close as possible in temperature to the existing aquarium water and if you're using city water, use a dechlorinator.

Do you have a picture of your aquarium?
 

Mmathis

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MitchM said:
Do you have a picture of your aquarium?
No, but I can take one or two once we're back home. I do have a few [not very good quality] pics of the 2 fish.

image.jpg
image.jpg

Shakaho, 50%!?!? I was thinking 10 or 20%.

And, BTW thanks for the responses from all! I've been doing changes, but infrequently.
 
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Those are small fish so you might be able to get away with smaller changes. Let your ammonia and nitrate levels be your guide. I have big fish in a 75 and to keep Nitrate under 40 I have to change 50% weekly. I have been exceptionally busy lately so I often go longer and end up doing 80% changes every other week at times. Its really not great for the fish though.
 

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If you can, do weekly water changes. It's good for the fish and the water looks much better.
 

Mmathis

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Thanks, guys! Will make sure I take care of that! Just didn't know if having plants made a significant difference in the nitrate levels.
 
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Unless you have an underwater jungle, aquatic plants do little to keep your nitrates down. Aquatic plants prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source. Put terrestrial plants in pots of gravel at the top of a pond-type filter, and you'll get the best removal of nitrate.
 

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I used to have Pothos vine plants stuck in the top of my aquarium when I had one and they grew like crazy and kept the water really nice. Grew a ton of roots in the water and vines grew outside the aquarium down to the floor!
 
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shakaho said:
Unless you have an underwater jungle, aquatic plants do little to keep your nitrates down. Aquatic plants prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source. Put terrestrial plants in pots of gravel at the top of a pond-type filter, and you'll get the best removal of nitrate.
Wouldnt plants removing the ammonia directly result in less nitrates since there is less ammonia to become nitrite then nitrate?
 
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Even on fully filtrated tanks its importtant to do water changes as we all should be doing to our ponds during the winter .
treat it as a mini pond with water changes a little and often , remembering to match the tank water temperature exactly when doing these changes and they should over winter fine.
looking to our ponds we dont have the ability to match temperatures like in a tank so this is why weemploy the trickle method of topping them up again using the ambiant temperature of the pond water to take the cold out of the tap water going back in.
sae thing , if done on a refgular basis you cannot go wrong with either .

Dave
 
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dieselplower said:
Wouldnt plants removing the ammonia directly result in less nitrates since there is less ammonia to become nitrite then nitrate?
To some extent, but they don't seem do much if you have a biofilter, since the biobugs are going to be grabbing ammonia. Unless you are a real planted tank specialist using aquatic fertilizers and CO2, it's really hard to grow enough aquatic plants in an aquarium to make a dent in nitrates. This is particularly true if you have goldfish in the tank devouring the plants.

Many algae can use ammonia, nitrate, and organic nitrogen compounds as a nitrogen source, which is probably the reason why established green water is so hard to get rid of. The algae out-complete both plants and nitrifying bacteria for available nitrogen.
 
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In the 22 years of koi keping in our large 200 imperial 6 x 2 x 2.5 tank we never once bothered with plants koi tend to trash them anyway prefaring instead to realy on our huge filtrtion and their beds to do the job for us , never once apart from setting the tank up initially did we have any major issues with water perameters apart from high Nitrates in the spring caused by fertilization of the fields a few bags of nitrex resin took care of that no problem

Dave
 

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What I've read is that higher plants remove nitrates.
It's the lower plants that remove ammonia.
shakaho said:
Unless you have an underwater jungle, aquatic plants do little to keep your nitrates down. Aquatic plants prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source. Put terrestrial plants in pots of gravel at the top of a pond-type filter, and you'll get the best removal of nitrate.
 
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JohnHuff said:
What I've read is that higher plants remove nitrates.
It's the lower plants that remove ammonia.
I'm not sure what you mean by higher and lower plants. Vascular and non-vascular perhaps?

Here's an article on nitrogen use by aquatic plants that isn't too technical.
 

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