When do you test your water?

When do you test your water?
Before a water change, after a water change, middle of week???
I usually test mine the day before a water change to determine how much water I need to take out and replace.
Then I test my water again the day after the water change to see if what I did was correct.
Am I doing things correctly?

 

That sounds good. After you get the hang of things, as far as feeding and stocking goes, you may find you test less often. I honestly can't remember the last time I tested the water in any of my tanks. I change half the water once a week, and everything thing is fine. Testing twice a week, or more, certainly won't hurt anything as long as you want to do it.

But what you are doing sounds just fine to me.

 

I don't test either to see how much water to change. I change close to 50% weekly on both tanks. My planted tank I dose 3x week Nitrates and it keeps it at 10ppm. Haha. So I do test my planted tank maybe weekly just to monitor my dosing sometimes. I pretty much nailed down how much to dose. Large tank I may test once a month just to check, maybe.

Your plan sounds good until you feel comfortable as not to test weekly. Water changes too are to keep good hygiene & replenish minerals.

 

I usually have the following numbers:
ammonia = 0
nitrite = 0
nitrate = 30-40
in both my 10G and my 29G. So I do about 75% water change each week. My fish are happy and healthy...no one has died or showed any signs of illness in a very long time. I just can't seem to get my nitrates below the above numbers.

 

I do not test my water.
I have been using the same well for almost 35 years of fishkeeping.
I can tell you what month it is by the pH.

I keep a VERY regular water change schedule.
With 20 tanks set up ( and more soon) I have no other choice.

 

I too do not test the water ever; I also change an arbitrary amount of water (80%).

Certainly what you are doing is building experience you can learn from. I think eventually, once you've learned about your tank, you will settle on a predetermined amount of water to change at a specific interval.

 

Rarely. The only time I test is when the fish are acting funky or I just have a feeling something isn't right with a tank. Fishkeeper's intuition ;D

After a while you'll just know how much water to change- because the tests come out the same week after week.

 

James95: that's what I'm finding. Seems no matter what I do my nitrates are always 30-40. I know they're supposed to be 20 or below. So far I'm not seeing my high nitrates negatively affecting my fish at all. I think I just have high nitrates and I need to accept that instead of driving myself crazy attempting to get them lower.
But then I'm torn because I want the best for my fish and I know nitrates of 20 or below is ideal.

 

Yeah, I hear you Heather. Have you tested your tap water for nitrates? It's not that uncommon for people to have nitrates in their source water.

 

James95: that's what I'm finding. Seems no matter what I do my nitrates are always 30-40. I know they're supposed to be 20 or below. So far I'm not seeing my high nitrates negatively affecting my fish at all. I think I just have high nitrates and I need to accept that instead of driving myself crazy attempting to get them lower.
But then I'm torn because I want the best for my fish and I know nitrates of 20 or below is ideal.

I don't see a negative effect either. I'm actually about to start an experiment using a nitrate filter to see if I notice a difference with lower nitrates.

Have you ever heard of diminishing returns? Under 20 may be "ideal", but how much more ideal? Is the extra effort it takes to keep them under 20 worth the gain? If the gain was 30% better, sure. But what if it was 20% better? What about only 10% better? 5%?

 

I agree Jaysee. The more time I spend doing this fish keeping thing the more I learn (which I love!) that I have to trust my fish intuition...even if I am a fish keeping newbie. As you are well aware of I had a crash course in fish keeping with my mega crashed tank of the year. I have since learned so much....it's like I can't get enough info about fish keeping etc. So it's getting to the point where I think my tanks are just going to be between 30-40 nitrates.
As long as my fish are happy and healthy and I do my weekly maintenance I think I should be fine.

 

On newer tanks or when I suspect an issue I test my tank(s). As previously stated over time you figure out what is the norm for the tank and can reduce or stop the testing.

As for the nitrates, have you tested your tap for them? If you have high nitrates in your tap, you are going to be hard pressed to reduce them.

 

On newer tanks or when I suspect an issue I test my tank(s). As previously stated over time you figure out what is the norm for the tank and can reduce or stop the testing.

As for the nitrates, have you tested your tap for them? If you have high nitrates in your tap, you are going to be hard pressed to reduce them.

I agree with Dena. There are a few methods to reduce nitrates from your tap water. One option would be running a slow flow filter using de*nitrate. De*nitrate is a product made by seachem that's designed to remove nitrate.

 

I didn't test my tank water for at least a year until recently, when I did a tank overhaul last weekend. I went from artificial plants and gravel to sand and all real plants. I've been testing pretty much every day or every other day and will keep doing so till I get consistent readings. Then I'll probably only test when things start to feel off: fish acting weird, water looks funky, etc.

 

I don't teset that often any more as I usually get the same results for the established tanks. When I setup a new tank I'm usually there nightly testing it for a week or two just to "watch" what the tank is doing.

Now QT Tanks are an entirely different story, those I would test daily to multiple times a day esspecially if treating a fish with medication.

I do also tend to check the nitrates on my planted tank a bit just to ensure that fert dosing isn't getting out of hand.