How Do You Do Your Water Changes?

[WAZ]

Hi ant265

May I suggest you do some research on the actual water chemistry of the African lakes before you make such outlandish comments as you have made.

"salt n buffer do similar things mainly to mimic lake water chemistry. I dont see the point in spending rediculous amounts of money for something that seems so unnecessary". - quote -

This is WAY off the mark - Our water conditions that we are now getting, through our taps is so lacking in trace elements that the fish require, is the reason that it is so necessary to add the correct additives to our water, to replicate the conditions that our fish need to thrive in..........sure, your fish will stay alive as you suggest BUT they will not be in their optimum condition to spawn and display their best attributes.

"The salt is mainly to kill germs and there is salt present in the lakes of africa so to as to get the water similar and i use instead of buffer (does similar but lot cheaper). Not sure the brand but from pool shop ask for 'unchlorinated' salt. Mine was about $7 for 20kg bag". - quote -

What does a swimming pool manufacturer of salt know about the water conditions in African lakes. In my opinion the manufacturers of salt (replicating the African lake conditions) are FAR more qualified through their years of research into the water qualities that our fish need. There is far more in these conditioners than just salt - our fish require these added supplements and mineralisation for their nutrients, bone structure, scales etc etc.

Another FACT that many may not be aware of is..............in Lake Malawi there is absolutly no sodium content whatsoever in the water chemistry.............so why do we add salt????????? it is NOT needed.

Please don't feel as though I am having a dig at you personally - it is just wrongful information that can be picked up and used by many of the inexperienced hobbyists on this forum, that I feel I must correct your statements.

No offence intended.

[oakes]

hmm WAZ, i may stand corrected, but my understanding was that there are lots of different forms of sodium in the lake, as well as sodium chloride, such as sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium thiosulphate etc. But you are right in that there are lots of other minerals such as forms of calcium, magnesium, potassium etc and standard salt (sodium chloride) on its own in no way replicates the lake chemistry or provides any buffering capacity.

[chorrylan]

in Lake Malawi there is absolutly no sodium content whatsoever in the water chemistry.............so why do we add salt????????? it is NOT needed.

hmmm ... these guys http://malawicichlids.com/mw01011.htm quoting from the research by Talling and Talling claim lake Malawi has about 21 mg/L of dissolved Sodium.

That would seem reasonable to me; low levels of Sodium but not to the extrems of asserting none-whatsoever.

This web page http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/aquainfo/salts.html gives a pretty good rundown of at least one persons opinions and info on the various salt/buffer combinations available and their impact.

One point that you should be careful of when playing around with salts and buffers

is that you should be pretty careful making drastic changes to these levels, and especially when decreasing the salt levels.

I've seen experiment-writeups

(though I don't have ready access to them ... they're just stashed away in my murky memorybanks)

demonstrating gill-damage to fish when faced with drastically different levels of dissolved-salt levels.

This was particularly severe going from high levels of dissolved salts to lower levels and the actual salts/compounds/? involved was of minor relevance.

The theory espoused was that osmoregulation (the process fish use to remove carbon dioxide, ammonia and other wastes via their gills) involves transfer of sodium and chlorine ions into the bloodstream as the carbon dioxide and other wastes go out.

If the dissolved salt levels (particularly of sodium and chlorine) go down the process becomes harder and harder for the fish to operate (it apparently requires considerable energy anyway) and in short.. .damages the fish and particularly its gills.

So...

[*] be careful with haphazard water-change regimes if that means your salt/buffer levels fluctuate wildly;

[*] be particularly careful moving fish from a tank with dissolved-salt levels to one with lower levels (and the other way around but the papers I read asserted that was not as dangerous)

[*] be particularly careful when selling fish to let the buyer know what sort of water conditions the fish are coming out of so they can factor that into their acclimatization process

[*] and people who assert "general hardness is a measure of dissolved magnesium and calcium therefore the the other salts/ions are of no relevance" are only half correct. The gH level is important for someone who is trying to match natural conditions for a particularly cichlid species but measures of other ions and of the total dissolved solids, conductivity etc are also of importance, particularly if they fluctuate significantly.

[Nornicle]

What benefits are to be had by adding e salt and buffer to the

water? I'm assuming you don't use coral sand or the like in your tanks.

bilbok.

Salt assists with fish osmoregulation of H2o.

[ant265]

Waz,

Thanks for the insight as noone has told me otherwise

My lfs told me how much salt to put and has never said anything about buffers. Can you tell me what you do to your water and with buffers to they set the water to correct levels or more or less of it will change levels?

Any knowledge is appreciated

[WAZ]

Hi Ant

Check your pm.

[ozarowana]

What do you store it in?

2x 220L plastic barrels

How do you get the water in to the tank?

Pump and hose

Do you use Prime or other?

Prime... double dose atm

Do you add salt or buffer?

Nope

If so what benefits are to be gained?

Benefits of ageing water is that I don't stress fish too much when refilling with a pump which is 6000L/hr.

How do you keep your pH and hardness up?

I don't... sth american cichlids. I use a little HCl to lower the pH a bit though.

Do you use conditioned tap water like me?

Have you ever had ill effects using conditioned tap water?

Not sure what you mean by conditioned tap water.

Other points

Water filtered with sediment and carbon filters when filling barrels.

Bleach added to oxidise nitrites found in tap water.

Heaters and airstone in barrels to effectively heat the barrels.

Some carbon filters are rated for 10L/min which isn't too bad a flow. IME and from reading... normal carbon filters can't remove chloramines only split the molecule. So you still need to deal with the ammonia. There are carbon filters though that can deal with chloramines.

[Matthew]

G'day

If you would like to see exactly how I do my water changers, please send me an EMAIL and I will send you the link. Sorry but I am not able to post it up here.

PS. My Waterchanger, that I was working on, is also explained. This gadget gets water out of your tank automatically. Just move a lever and it drains.

To answer your questions

Do you store your water?

Yes

What do you store it in?

I do in a 3000liter tank. The tank is refilled after a waterchange and then has an airstone for around 9 days and ready for the next waterchange.

How do you get the water in to the tank?

Plumbed in system, gravity and / or pump powered. Open a tap and the tank(s) fill up.

Do you use Prime or other?

Always use SAFE, like a dry version of Prime

Do you add salt or buffer?

Salts and buffers for the Tropheus

If so what benefits are to be gained?

They keep breeding for us.

How do you keep your pH and hardness up?

Yes this happens with the above

Do you use conditioned tap water like me?

The water is treated with safe before going into the tanks, buffers and salts happen later on.

PS. Please do not pm me, just via Email otherwise my PM box fills up.

cya Matthew

[kilroy]

Do you store your water?

Only for a day or so before the water change.

What do you store it in?

I have a 220L drum, need one more so I can change on the same day.

How do you get the water in to the tank?

I have a 3000lph pump in the drum plumbed to some 1in hose and an elbow joint.

Do you use Prime or other?

I use stress coat or aquastar, whatever I've got on hand, it only goes in the day of the waterchange, as I have read that it is only active for 24 hours.

Do you add salt or buffer?

Home made mix of non-iodised sea salt, epsom salts, and bicarb soda.

If so what benefits are to be gained?

Replicate breeding conditions in the lake. gh 10-12 kh 18-20

How do you keep your pH and hardness up?

Buffers and salts, and coral sand in a bag inside the sump or canister.

Do you use conditioned tap water like me?

The water is treated in the drum only.

[tinytonez]

hose in tank

suck water out

put the same hose to a tap

fill her up

add chemicals!!!

Its not rocket science......

[moldyform]

Is the time that the chlorinated tap is in the tank before chemicals are added an issue?

Also what do you do with the water temperature differrence especially in Summer?

[kilroy]

hose in tank

suck water out

put the same hose to a tap

fill her up

add chemicals!!!

Its not rocket science......

Gee you really spoil your fish. Do you keep any sensitive variants?

[Bruce]

hose in tank

suck water out

put the same hose to a tap

fill her up

add chemicals!!!

Its not rocket science......

Gee you really spoil your fish. Do you keep any sensitive variants?

Same method I use and I keep tangs. Use the same method with my sifter fry tank and never had any die.

Bruce

[kilroy]

No moops died Bruce?

[oakes]

Is the time that the chlorinated tap is in the tank before chemicals are added an issue?

Also what do you do with the water temperature differrence especially in Summer?

Good question but i would have thought the temperature difference would be more of an issue in winter when the tap water is colder.

[kilroy]

Is the time that the chlorinated tap is in the tank before chemicals are added an issue?

Also what do you do with the water temperature differrence especially in Summer?

Good question but i would have thought the temperature difference would be more of an issue in winter when the tap water is colder.

exactly my point, might be alright if you live in Sydney and the water is still high teens in winter, but out here in the cold country, half the year, the water temperature out of the tap is around 10C or less. Our days during the winter usually average 8-10C. There is no way on earch I would add cold water like that to a 26C tank. My tropheus have been fine with a 5-6 degree variation in temperature when doing a water change, but with a 14 degree difference in the water, that would have to drop your water at least 10C, which I don't think would be very good for the fish. So a blanket statement about it not being rocket science isn't really good for my situation. I have tried the above method when I lived in Sydney, and I found the buffers and salts clouded up the tank and didn't mix as well as they do in the water change drum.

anyway, that's my $0.02

[Reillin]

I turn a tap and the non-drill siphon draws water out to a set level, I would be something else as the siphoning stops at around 1/3 down the tank. Some tanks are set for only 1/4 of the water. I come back 30 mins or so later and close the taps.

Melbourne water is fairly much soft water and quite cold.

I add tap water to a barrel and add dechlorinator.

Aerated for 1-3 days.

For africans, I add Sodian bicarbonate, Potassium chloride, Epsom salt and also a little bit of marine salt mainly for trace elements. I have recently started using trace elements from aquasonic.

I started off intending to drill my tanks, but the $15 device I use is fantastic. I dont have to drill, it's cheap and saves me heaps of time which I had to stand there in case I drained too much water.

It's a hose and pump to refill the tanks and I intend to work a system for this as well.

Cheers,

Vien.

[MVP]

Waz,

Thanks for the insight as noone has told me otherwise

My lfs told me how much salt to put and has never said anything about buffers. Can you tell me what you do to your water and with buffers to they set the water to correct levels or more or less of it will change levels?

Any knowledge is appreciated

I did a test on a brand out of bunnings that i was told to use just like you were. Basically it did nothing to the water... at all even after several days the basic tests of gh, kh and ph all came up the same as tap water. So I stopped using it. The one thing i think it MAY do is actually clean the water other then that i don't really think it does much. I did look into rough ingredents of Pool salt and it does have a couple of things that could possibly be useful but didnt affect any of the major tests so i ceased using it.

[Reillin]

Salt should change the conductivity and also increase water pressure. A slight addition in salt will assist most freshwater fish in its osmotic regulatory functions.

The following quote is taken from The Krib.

Hardness is defined as the concentration of multivalent metallic cations

in solution. This DOES NOT include Na+, since it's NOT multivalent

Just doing a bit of reading, it seems that the two important cations (positively charged ions) are magnesium and calcium. Those two multivalent ions mainly determines the hardness in Lake Malawi.

For those interested, the following link will have to whole article.

http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/rift.html

Cheers,

Vien.

[oakes]

I did a test on a brand out of bunnings that i was told to use just like you were. Basically it did nothing to the water... at all even after several days the basic tests of gh, kh and ph all came up the same as tap water. So I stopped using it. The one thing i think it MAY do is actually clean the water other then that i don't really think it does much. I did look into rough ingredents of Pool salt and it does have a couple of things that could possibly be useful but didnt affect any of the major tests so i ceased using it.

I am not surprised the above parameters were not affected, as i have said ordinary salt (as in mostly sodium chloride such as pool salt/sea salt etc) will do nothing in this regard. I believe there are a number of benefits of adding salt but i repeat myself again because it appears some people are adding salt in the belief that it will provide buffering and thus insurance against a pH crash. This is a concern as it will not. To raise kh, buffers such as sodium bicarb are used. And if you want to raise gh an easy way is to buy one of lots of conditioners available, select one suitable for the species you keep. For further info check Laurie's post (31 Oct) and the 2nd url link for a handy chart describing the impact of some of the main salts on water chemistry.

[MVP]

I did a test on a brand out of bunnings that i was told to use just like you were. Basically it did nothing to the water... at all even after several days the basic tests of gh, kh and ph all came up the same as tap water. So I stopped using it. The one thing i think it MAY do is actually clean the water other then that i don't really think it does much. I did look into rough ingredents of Pool salt and it does have a couple of things that could possibly be useful but didnt affect any of the major tests so i ceased using it.

I am not surprised the above parameters were not affected, as i have said ordinary salt (as in mostly sodium chloride such as pool salt/sea salt etc) will do nothing in this regard. I believe there are a number of benefits of adding salt but i repeat myself again because it appears some people are adding salt in the belief that it will provide buffering and thus insurance against a pH crash. This is a concern as it will not. To raise kh, buffers such as sodium bicarb are used. And if you want to raise gh an easy way is to buy one of lots of conditioners available, select one suitable for the species you keep. For further info check Laurie's post (31 Oct) and the 2nd url link for a handy chart describing the impact of some of the main salts on water chemistry.

I did expect as much but the person i was told from made it sound so appealing only having to stick a hose in the tank and add cheap pool salt left me going woohoo thankfully though i did look a little bit at it and saw enough to say he was just lucky not to have any effects from the tap water.

[fishdance]

In order to overcome temperature differences and known bad water in my town supply I use constant drip water change 24/7 with an overflow drain. Even if the incoming water is high in nitrite/ ammonia or very cold, I am changing slowly enough for the tanks filtration to remove so the fish never experience it. All confrirmed in the early days with anxious fish observation and chemical tests performed religiously. My water supply was so erratic and ammonia or nitrite levels were so bad that I often couldnt change for weeks. (south side of Brisbane)

I use a carbon filter with a fine ceramic prefilter in front to maximize carbon life but the percentage of water changed over 4 days is low enough that chloramine levels on any one day are very safe so I dont really need a carbon filter. There are enough things to do in my fish room without having to do water changes.

[oakes]

In order to overcome temperature differences and known bad water in my town supply I use constant drip water change 24/7 with an overflow drain. Even if the incoming water is high in nitrite/ ammonia or very cold, I am changing slowly enough for the tanks filtration to remove so the fish never experience it. All confrirmed in the early days with anxious fish observation and chemical tests performed religiously. My water supply was so erratic and ammonia or nitrite levels were so bad that I often couldnt change for weeks. (south side of Brisbane)

I use a carbon filter with a fine ceramic prefilter in front to maximize carbon life but the percentage of water changed over 4 days is low enough that chloramine levels on any one day are very safe so I dont really need a carbon filter. There are enough things to do in my fish room without having to do water changes.

That's really interesting. I'd like to know more. How does your overflow and inflow work? Tank size and flow rates? And how did you determine an approproate flow rate...by maintaining a specific nitrate level?

[david11]

I use Seachem Rift Lake Salt & Prime for Malawi's. +Seachem Tang Buffer for Tangs. Pre-mix Salt & prime while filling the wheelie bin (in the house) and then pump it in. Then I wheel onto the next tank. I use a garden hose connected to my washing machine tap with a dual outlet & timer just in case I forget to turn the tap off after use. The tang buffer I mix in a watering can as to not let it react with the salt. Hose out the window / doors for emptying the tanks. I find that the cold water around 18 degrees brings on breeding.

I did a lot of reaserch in the Salt / buffer area on this and other forums. After that I stuck with these products and havent been let down.

David

[fishdance]

In order to overcome temperature differences and known bad water in my town supply I use constant drip water change 24/7 with an overflow drain. Even if the incoming water is high in nitrite/ ammonia or very cold, I am changing slowly enough for the tanks filtration to remove so the fish never experience it. All confrirmed in the early days with anxious fish observation and chemical tests performed religiously. My water supply was so erratic and ammonia or nitrite levels were so bad that I often couldnt change for weeks. (south side of Brisbane)

I use a carbon filter with a fine ceramic prefilter in front to maximize carbon life but the percentage of water changed over 4 days is low enough that chloramine levels on any one day are very safe so I dont really need a carbon filter. There are enough things to do in my fish room without having to do water changes.

That's really interesting. I'd like to know more. How does your overflow and inflow work? Tank size and flow rates? And how did you determine an approproate flow rate...by maintaining a specific nitrate level?

I looked at and tried a few different auto water change ideas. Commercial products, DIY, float valves, water level alarms, chemical auto-dispensers etc. If you want to add salt buffers or dechlorinators it is all possible. Google some salt water systems if you wish. However, in the end I decided the simplest way was the most effective which also has the lowest chance of failure. Disgustingly cheap too after all the things I tried and made.

If your tank has an overflow or drain hole then the easiest way to water change is to drip water in. The new water will displace old water over the drain by itself. Sorry if it is too simple.

The concept is the same for single tanks and central filtered systems on sumps. The biggest advantage of a 24/7 drip is you can use low pressure pipe such as 4mm irrigation fittings. ie its cheap, has wide range of easy availaibile fittings and simple to install yourself. Since the drain rate is also small I can use a tiny drain line too if I need to hide piping. If I want to change 10% weekly, I just calculate the volume then the drips/time (drip rate) needed and adjust the dripper rate. It isnt wasteful and is easily adjustable to suit growout, breeding or quarrantine as required.

I have one smaller fish room with 150 tanks, one much larger fish shed and a few big stand alone tanks and display tanks so there are lots of variations to the concept. Please ask if you need more help.