Aquarium how much water change

Without these fish would be poisoned by the water they live in and die. Filters colonise with beneficial bacteria which convert toxic ammonia excreted by fish first into nitrite also toxic, then into nitrate. The easiest way to deal with nitrate is to remove it via a water change. Nitrate is constantly building up in your aquarium because its a byproduct of biological filtration, so if you remove a percentage of tank water with new water with a lower level of nitrate, the nitrate level will come down.

Test your tap water and tank water for nitrate. Aim to keep tank water at 40 parts per million or less. To do this your tap water will need to be below 40ppm, and ideally below 10ppm. If the tap water nitrate level is high, consider conducting water changes with Reverse Osmosis water instead, which is purified.

Water should also be changed to lower phosphate levels, remove tannins and staining, and to buffer pH and KH. This is because each tank will have a different bio-load. The amount of fish combined with how much food is fed is how you determine the bio-load. It doesn't take much thought to realize that more fish combined with more food will result in more fish waste. Conversely, less fish and food would result in less waste.

We need to figure out how much waste we're producing. This can be accomplished by testing your water for nitrates. With a moderately heavy stocked tank, you will see your nitrates are climbing each week.

Once we can track how our nitrates are rising, we can start to regulate it. As an example, I am going to use an aquarium that produces 10ppm of nitrates per week. As stated earlier, we want to keep nitrates below 40ppm.

In this example, we can see that after 4 weeks our aquarium hits 40ppm. We need to perform a water change. Our new nitrate count is 28ppm. Mechanical filter media such as floss, will work best when kept clean and changed at regular intervals. Depending on various factors, a monthly rinse of filter media coinciding with that week's water change might be the ideal basis for a regular maintenance regime. Cookie Policy We use cookies to help improve the experience you have on this site.

Get rid of some of the detritus that is building up. You should not clean the gravel and the filter on the same day. Both of these have beneficial bacteria that are good for your aquarium. Do not disrupt both locations at the same time. Do your filter cleaning so it takes place on a day that you are not changing water and vacuuming gravel. Recent articles. The Benefits of a Quarantine Tank What does a protein skimmer do? How Vitalis fish food is made and how it differs.