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If you’ve ever visited My Aquarium Club dot com, you’ve probably read our advice to do partial water changes. For anybody who wants to ask why, here are a few reasons.
Most aquarium fish sold in stores were raised on fish farms, but their ancestors inhabited lakes, ponds, streams and rivers. Even the lakes and ponds have a near constant through-flow of fresh water that removes waste products left by fish and decayed plants. It’s like a constant, partial water change.
An aquarium is a closed environment that lacks a constant flow of new water and has the additional disadvantage of food being added from outside the environment. In a natural environment, fish can avoid nasty neighbors, seek out places to their liking, and find their own food. Fish in an aquarium have fewer choices; in addition, their care giver is the one making all those choices.
Often, we ask our aquariums to handle unreasonable biological loads by over feeding and over crowding. The result is lots of food waste, fish waste, and possibly some decaying plants, including algae. When animal and vegetable matter rots in an aquarium it turns into ammonia and other toxins, thus resembling an aquatic garbage can. Just like the fish, any of us would get sick if we had to swim in the stuff.
In an aquarium, the primary way to simulate the natural flow of clean water through the aquatic environment is to accomplish regular, partial water changes. Depending on the biological load, a 20 or 25 percent water change every week is a good average. But that’s just a starting point. Different conditions need different water change routines. The important thing is to keep all the major water parameters within a reasonable range, and that means clean.
A dirty aquarium provides a great environment for parasites and bacteria to thrive. Then it compromises fish immune systems. Medications may help cure an ailment, but they will not clean the aquarium for you. A fish usually will not recover from an illness in a dirty environment and is unlikely to thrive.
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*A*W*E*S*O*M*E* piece! Thank you! One more reason to have a partial water change is to give plants some new nutrition (assuming that some of the new water are tap water and not only RO). I was fertilizing my aquarium, but until I started adding tap water too, my plants were missing some nutrients.