Tropical Tank Woes

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Don
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20 Oct 2002
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50% water changes are generally best for extreme circumstances, when you need to get some water parameters back under control. (or have an overstocked or underfiltered tank)
I have my main tank (Trigon 190) pretty understocked, and it is planted with CO2 addition, so I tend to only do 10% monthly.
 
Associate
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I keep discus so 30% of the water is changed every other day!

OP it sounds like your tank is still in the later stages of the cycling process, do you have a liquid test kit? The 6 in 1 test strips are about as useful as a chocolate tea pot.

For a general lightly stocked community tank that is not heavily planted I would change 25% of the water fornightly to keep everything under control.
 

Deleted member 66701

D

Deleted member 66701

10-15% water change weekly, or 25-30% fortnightly?

15% change every Sat, 40 gallon tank two filters (105gph and 260gph) - stocked with 20 fish (following the 1" per 2gallon rule). Let it cycle for 8 weeks then introduced 2 or 4 fish per week until fully stocked. Never tested the water or lost a fish yet.
 
Man of Honour
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Essex
Its never good to have ill fish, the great thing about tropical tanks however is that you can treat it fairly sucessfully with copper based medications, in a marine tank this is far more difficult.

I have tested with all kinds of "supposed" cures when one of my tangs (in marine) came down with the marine varient. I can tell you that no increase in temprature or anything else will help. The way I finally treated this was with UV filters and quarantine (as I could not treat the whole tank), I know that your tank is not marine but ich shows similar symptoms in both marine and tropical tanks.

I used to keep trops for about 8 years and found that some myxazin general tonic was great at fighting the bacteria and helped to reduce the fishes iritation, if you dont like copper based treatments and would prefer a natural method, a uv filter on an external filter outlet will nuke pretty much all bacteria (good and bad) and does a great job at killing the ICH parasite in its free swimming stage of its lifecycle, this is great to prevent further infection as well as keep nasty algea at bay.

Hope the little fella is ok.
 
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Associate
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4 Nov 2002
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706
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Blairgowrie
how will it change if there are more plants? longer between changes or larger/smaller change each time?

Heavilly planted tanks tend to be more stable when established and act as a natural biological filter processing much of the nitrate and some other compounds generated as waste from the fish so you can go longer without changes, however minerals and other disolved compounds present in the tank need to be replaced as they are used by the plants for growth and repair.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
25 May 2004
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Burton-On-Trent
Touch wood the others are spot free at the moment, ive done the correct dosage again for the tank, just keeping a very close eye incase of a re-occurance, but now is the key time to kill the infection!

Water change of 30% on friday combined with cleaning the gravel should also get things back on track!

Just want to get it settled and happy again for 6 weeks now until i go looking for a new plec and a replacement pair or something to replace the loach!

*touches wood
 
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