Who says you need to do water changes every week?

Since I got my big tank, up until about three weeks ago, I've been doing ~15%water changes pretty much every week.

Since I got my small tank in May, I've changed the water once (in July).

I tested pH and Nitrates today. ~6.5 each for pH and ~10mg/L each for Nitrate.

ok so the small tank only has 7 neon tetras and two corys, but still, it's pretty cool that the levels are the same for both tanks. I've dropped back to once every two weeks on the big tank, and will probably do the small tank just as sporadically unless I get some more fish. At the moment the small tank is a jungle of plants, which I guess are using up all the nitrates.

Silly stuff.

Comments

paul

October 7, 2003 9:08 PM

yeah you don't need to do water changes so often once the tank has stabilised. I do a 20% change on my big tank every 2-3 weeks now and roughly the same on my small Mobey tank. Sounds like you have a good setup if the nitrate level doesn't change...what's your secret lol?
One thing to watch out for is an ammonia pocket, which happened to my big tank. It can build up in the gravel and when cleaning the gravel or if you have say a bristlenose catfish or other bottom dweller that can move the gravel around the ammonia can be released, and that's deadly as i found out..lost a lot of fish and could not work out why!.. anyway thats what I was told might have caused it!