Dear Jesse,I find that setup and routine are essential parts of maintence. While it is possible to injure fish without regular water changes, a sudden massive wc may have also be deadly. The type of fish also makes a difference as a salt reef has absolutily no tolerance for waste while some fish thrive in filth and conditions where few other fish can survive. I am not advocating for keeping betas in hot swamps with little disolved O2 but adaptions like airbreathing do have advantages.
I would suggest simply establishing a routine and simplifing the wc process. When maintence is easy to do on tanks I am much more likely todo if. A regular water change is the cheapest and most efective magic bullet the freshwater community has.
Sent from my iPhone On Jan 1, 2010, at 17:39, Shango Los <shango@shangolos.com> wrote:
I'm looking forward to reading this topic line.... On Jan 1, 2010, at 1:41 PM, Doerr, Jesse wrote:As I'm getting into bigger tanks I'm looking for more information onwater quality. I would like to avoid dumping large quantities of waterdown the drain, and so far my experience is that it is has been unnecessary.For a while now I've been keeping a 3 tank system that is pretty heavily planted and probably overstocked with fish. The total system is about45 gallons and has about 30 barbs, 20 tetras, and recently 20ishplatties. Despite the bioload everyone is healthy, active, and showing great colors. The rummy-nose are showing nice read heads going almostall the way back to the first fin and the barb males have a deep dark color.So as far as I can tell everything is going fine and the system has beenstable for about 2 years now. Water changes tend to be infrequent, typical maintenance is just replacing evaporation and feeding. The last water change was over 3months ago and when I inspected a sample of the water today it looks and smells like it's in great shape. There is no foaming, no odor, and it is almost exactly as clear as tap water in the same glass, just with avery faint yellow tinge.Can anyone provide me references on what else I might need to look out for? Is there a risk of a buildup of minerals or chemicals other than nitrogen and other derivatives? I have noticed that juivinals do growmore quickly when I am doing actual water changes. Jesse _______________________________________________ GSAS-Member mailing list GSAS-Member@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/gsas-member_______________________________________________ GSAS-Member mailing list GSAS-Member@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/gsas-member
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