birddancer

For ppl with 6ft tanks, how do you manage your water changes? On my established 4ft we do monthly 50% and vacuum, providing parameters stay safe - which they usually do. The 6ft takes 700 litres and it would seem extremely wastefull to do fornightly or even monthly 50% changes on it, it also took 5 hours to fill (low water pressure) lol. Parameters at the moment are ammonia - 0 & nitrate is - 5.0 which I have to keep a close eye on but is there a way to get by, without using hundreds of litres of water each time? How do you guys do it?

Nutter

It really depends on the stocking level of the tank & what type of fish are in it. Some fish tolerate nitrates etc better than others. Personally I do a 30% water change every week on one of my 6xx2x2ft & 10% every week on the other 6x2x2ft. The 30% change is for a fairly heavily stocked rift lake tank that has 2 x ehiem pro 3 canisters on it with an extra inline DIY bio-filter, so it has incredibly efficient filtration. The other is a planted american cichlid tank with a mix of sajica, severum, firemouths & pictus catfish. It has the same filters as the other but no diy bio-filter.

The way to go is to monitor your numbers & work out how much how often from the results. After awhile a pattern will emerge & you can work out your maintainance shedule.
Every system is different & there are no hard & fast rules I'm afraid.

Get a seperate bare tank, (about 200lt), with a pond pump in it & use that to prepare your water for changes in. Dechlorinate, set pH & temp, then use the pond pump to pump that water into the 6ft. That will save you the effort of bucketing large amounts of water & make the process much faster to. With some timers & an extra pump in the 6ft you can even partially automate the system so you don't have to do anything other than the occasional vaccuum & refill the water preperation tank. Water change gets done while you are at work!!

Red1313

Nutter has some pretty good advice. Live plants will help maintain water quality over a longer period of time. One idea (not sure if this will help or not) would be to do many small changes instead of rare large ones. The amount you take out would depend on your parameters, but one example (depending on stocking) would be to change 5 gallons a day. On a 150 gallon tank that means you're doing the equivalent of a 100% water change every 30 days. By keeping track of your tank parameters you could see if that was sufficiant. If not then uping the amount your change daily would help and instead of 5 gallons try removing 10 gallons. At that rate you're doing a 100% change every 15 days. It would be up to you but I'd probably do something like that.

Best of luck

aquarist48

Hello Bird. As mentioned above it depends on your stocking list and your readings as to how much should be changed and when.
For my 265g I can change 25g's every 7 days (religiously) So every month I've changed a little more than 1/3 of the tank. This includes vacuuming. My water change schedule keeps all of my readings where they need to be for a good healthy tank. I am stocked but not over stocked. I have great filtration as well. In addition to the 2000gph filtration that's on 24/7 I use a diatom filter with diatomaceous earth every 2 weeks. Here is the diatom filter in the link below:
http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/205477/product.web

This filters to the micron, including some parasites and trace amounts of ammonia should there be any in the tank.
Too, I have filter floss in all of my filters that I "do not" depend on for bio media. I have a ton of other media for that purpose. So I change the floss every two weeks. The floss I remove goes into the sump for two more weeks and I rotate it out of the sump to the trash. I think by getting rid of the really bad thick waste helps to keep the readings under control.
Hope this may help you some. Share some photos when you have the chance.
Ken

birddancer

Hi guys, thanks for all the advice. The 5 gallons a day sounds good, but I might do 10 gallons every second day instead.

None of the fish in this tank are older than a month old, all are pretty much juvis @ 2cms long (tip to tail).

10 Lemon Tetras
6 Black Skirt Tetras
6 Pristella Tetras
6 Emperor Tetras
5 Neon Tetras
4 Cardinal Tetras

2 Bronze Corydoras

1 Peppermint Pleco
1 Common Pleco

6 Clown Loaches (2 @ 8cm. 4 @ 3cm)

Will takes some pics tomoz, when the light is on

Butterfly

Doing the water changes will help your juvies grow faster and healthier. The Clown Loaches especially need pristine water.
On my 75g (I know it's not as big as yours) I do a 50% water change every week. If I get over zealous with the feeding (the clowns beg so prettily) then I do an extra small water change mid week. In the warm weather I use the water I pull from the tanks to water my outside plants and lawn so it really isn't wasted. In teh winter I bite the bullet and it goes down the drain.
The rest of the tanks I do 25-50% water changes weekly depending on what's in them. Hope that helps.
Carol

Melissawater

Wow Carol I never thought to use the water that is changed to water plants, you are so green I guess until it freezes that is where our water will be going.

aquarist48

I'm glad you brought that up Carol. I use all of my siphoned tank water on my plants. No more miracle grow when you have good fish tank water
Ken

birddancer

I should have mentioned I have an internal Fluval and Eheim and Aqua One Canisters working on the tank. Also there are 2 airstones and a 120cm air curtain.