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Massive aquarium water change.. I am worn out !

9 years ago

Well it was time,
I pumped half of the water out of my 240 and filtration system up to a garbage can and carried water all over the yard in buckets...

Everything got a good taste of fish today !

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Comments (13)

hostatakeover swMO
9 years ago
Geeezz, you must have a strong back. Now that's love! Hopefully your plants will thank you by sprouting a new flush.
jimr66
9 years ago
Leafwatcher :
I have 4 tanks (150, 90, 2X25)

You NEED a Python water changing system.

I clean all 4 tanks once a week (30% water change) in about an hour and a bit....No buckets ever.....

It is well worth the 50 dollar investment
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I didn't realize such large changes were beneficial - as a first time aquarist (?) I was worried that too much change would inhibit the growth of the good bacteria. That thinking is old school and a myth. No sucessful breeder follows it. Some pet stores however continue to tell their customers that and if they had even bothered to read the fish mags they sell they would see, 10 - 20% water changes is no longer recommended. We change 80%, cleaned the gravel and the filters at the same time and there has never been a rise in ammonia or nitrite levels. We used to worry about it in the beginning but after testing the water parameters after each change, we learned it didnt harm anything. Koi and goldfish, contary to popular belief, need alot of room. They are big messy fish. Your 40 will not be big enough very soon. You will find yourself either upgrading again to a 60, then a 100 and in time a 200 just to keep the koi in the tank or you will need to trade him back to the place you got him. They get big, to about 2 1/2 feet long and grow up to 4" a year. Another myth is the fish will not outgrow the tank. What happens there is the water pollution gets so bad that the fish gets stunted, sick and then dies. (think goldfish in a bowl). With proper nutrition and a clean healthy enviroment they will grow and grow fast and live 50 - 100 even 200 years. The record holder koi is 230. You will need to clean the gravel with every water change, get a siphon with a gravel filter. If you have sand in that tank, get rid of it and switch to a thin layer of gravel or gravel and an under gravel filter plate. Personally we got rid of the under gravel filters and went with a thin layer of gravel as that easier to clean. You need super filtration even on your 40. Do you have a hang on filter and a cansister filter? You need them. And as for your original question, is the water good for the compost heap? Your going to generate too much and it will make it too wet. Water the lawn or your plants with it, they will love you for it!
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Comments (11)
reefcentral.com is a great suggestion. Since you want to start with fish only I would go with a FOWLR (Fish Only With Live Rock). For a FOWLR you don't need a ton of live rock like a reef or live corals, so it is less expensive. Live rock has a good amount of benificial bacterias on it already and will host alot more as it "matures". The thing with any aquarium is to have as much surface area as possible for these detoxiying bacterias to grow. A 1" sandbed is fine to start, use a quality aragonite sand. The sand and the live rock have a good amount of surface area. Most aquarium lights that are sold with the tank aren't good for a reef but will be fine for a FOWLR. However you may have to add an extra fixture, it depends on the wattage of you current setup. A good idea for a larger tank is a sump type filter, they are not that expensive to make but if you buy a commercial one it can be very expensive. It all depends on budget, but 2 hang on power filters would be ok. Just get enough to turn the water over 7-10 times per hour, meaning you have a 60G tank so the combined GPH of the filters should be 420-600 GPH (gallon per hour). If a "quality" protien skimmer is in your budget it is a great addition. Not a necessity now but would be a good future investment. A 250-300W heater, or 2 smaller ones is needed. So if you are going to eventually go with a Reef I would get a few quality pieces of live rock along with some base rock (or dead rock) to keep that cost down. At least 3 watts per gallon of fluorescent light(preferably 67000-10000K). The filters and heater. Go to reefcentral.com and there is a pretty good book published by TFK at petstores, can't remember the title but it has a cardinal fish on the cover, good basic info and more. Also drsfostersmith.com has good deals on sand,filters and heaters. AHSupply.com has good lighting kits for cheap to start.
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Squirrel-- I think the test sets you are refering to are the old pH dip-strips with the pH up and down additives. You are correct they where crap. Battleing pH with those powders was temporary, especially trying to bring high pH down. Just monitoring ammonia and nitrite is important because it can be found in tap water. Some water treatment facilities even add them in their efforts to make drinking water "safe". As far as fishkeeping not science, I find it more a science hobby now than ever. I had the same opinion as you when I lived in a different part of the state, never a problem and never tested. When I moved I couldnt keep from killing a fish within 2 weeks. The well water I have now was a little different to say the least. I purchased a test set and found my cycle would stall. For whatever reason my ammonia would spike and stay, never lowering. I tried every useless product the petstores would reccomend, nothing. I read books and magazines, the books where a little out-dated and the magazines offered newer info, but not as quickly as I needed it. Most research from then started with a search on the net. I just lurked on boards,and still do,and found consistancies with advise from different ones. Anyway within 2 weeks of good advise my aquarium cycled and have started several others. I am still learning, and find I learn alot by trying to answer questions. So in my case and more often than not, fishkeeping is a science- ecology, biology, and mostly chemistry, not to mention botany. For years I thought was just an art, but chemistry taught me otherwise
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Dogma is holding firm to the belief that something could neither be a conceptually or practically superior practice because you believe something else seems to be satisfactory - 'works for me'. Old beliefs are like a pair of old shoes - we often value their comfort so much we tend to ignore the fact they're full of holes. Almost everyone prefers the relative comfort of belief to the exercise of reason because believing is easier than reasoning; which brings us full circle to why there are so many more believers than thinkers. My $.02 I'm pretty sure you're not suggesting that a haphazard approach (a little of this and a little of that, even though I know neither what the plant needs nor what I'm giving it) is a superior approach to a well-reasoned supplementation plan. Discounting all reason because we're satisfied with the status quo is self-limiting by default. BTW - if Punky's trees are in pots (don't think that was made clear), moving closer to how nature does things is an exercise fraught with obstacles. Growing in the ground and growing in pots are widely divergent cultures. On a scale of 1-10 with growing in the ground being a 1 and hydroponic growing a 10, conventional container culture is probably a 7 or 8. Al
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in ny zone5
9 years ago
I understand your efforts were monumental. I had our 7 goldfish in my only 55 gal aquarium in the basement over winter. In summer fish were outside. I gave up on that lugging of buckets upstairs, left fish outside over winter. Bernd
almosthooked zone5
9 years ago
I have 6 goldfish I have had for 4 yrs now and use the shop vac to suck out the water from the pond they are in ouside. I use it to water some of my hosta because of the fishy doo is good for them. Have to be careful not to suck them up but they are considerably bigger now then the feeder fish they were at first. I leave them out in the winter too with a stock heater to keep the water from freezing over. Only froze over once when the other heater died but fish were okay. Sometimes think I should turn them loose in our neighbor's koi pond the size of an Olympic pool . They would probably be much happier there although they never complained yet
trudy_gw
9 years ago
Hostas and your other plants are going to enjoy the added benefit of the fish water. Nice mid summer snack!
leafwatcher
Original Author
9 years ago
I think my system is a LITTLE better than some of you think ;)
I pump the water from the basement up to a big garbage can outside.. then the work begins. I dip a big bucket in to that and carry it all around the yard and water. I do think the plants like it ;)
esther_b
9 years ago
I was going to suggest the Python vacuum system, but I see someone here beat me to it. Sure beats the heck out of schlepping buckets of water!
in ny zone5
9 years ago
Schlepping is the right word. As we get older, all schlepping is verboten!
Bernd
leafwatcher
Original Author
9 years ago
schlepping is to carrying , what slogging is to slow forward movement ;)
pagrdnr
9 years ago
It would be great to see a pic of your tank!
hostatakeover swMO
9 years ago
I 2nd that. :)
leafwatcher
Original Author
9 years ago
The fish always hide when you try to get a picture and adjust the lights.. I have a bunch of Clown loaches in there, and some nice plecostumus. There are a few big silver dollars around as well. It used to be a Malawi Cichlid colony with about 200 fish in there breeding and chasing each other all the time.
santamiller
9 years ago
I do a 100 gallon water change on my planted tank every other week. I have less than 20 hostas, all potted, so I just siphon into a 5 gallon bucket and make a few trips to water them and a few other plants. Most of my water I get rid of using a Maxi-Jet 1200 hooked to a garden hose that runs straight from the tank out to under a big live oak. Since you use all of your water and if the distance is within reason for a hose you might give that a thought as an easier way to water your plants.

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