Water Changes - Stressful for Fish?

Me again!

Yet more questions...

I did a 33% water change on my currently fishless tank last night. I'm hoping that this will be my usual weekly change, as it only takes me about 30 minutes to do, but it's a decent amount to change.

Firstly, here's how I did it.

1. On Tuesday night I filled four buckets (48L) with tap water and added Easy Life Filter Medium and left them in the room the Aquarium is in.
2. On Wednesday night I turned off the heater and filter, and then I used a gravel cleaner to remove 48L of water while cleaning the gravel and getting rid of dirt and algae.
3. I then put a small bowl into the tank so that when I pour the water it won't disturb the gravel.
4. I then emptied each of the four buckets into the tank, aiming for the bowl. I pour fairly fast; not so fast to lose control of where the water's going so I can still aim for the bowl, but not so slow that it's only trickling (if that makes sense).
5. Once all four buckets are in, I take out the bowl and turn back on the heater and filter.

So, that's how I did it. My worry though is how easy will this be when there are fish in the tank? For example, here are some of the questions going around in my head:

1. How do I make sure I don't accidentally suck up fish in the gravel cleaner (it's big enough, and I plan to have small fish).
2. Will the fish be disturbed/stressed by 1/3 of the tank water going missing?
3. Will the fish be disturbed/stressed by my pouring in buckets of water?
4. The new water isn't up to the right temp when I add it, my tank temp is 24 degrees and it dropped down to about 22 after I added the water. By the next morning it was back up near 24. Will this temp drop cause problems?

These are all fairly normal questions I'm sure, but I'd like to know the answers before I try my first water change with fish in the tank!

Thanks...

J.

Alright j
Sounds like you have it sorted
If I could make a few suggestions that might help
Firstly you could get a pair of fish nets to go over the intake
Of the grave cleaner to stop sucking up fish if they come close enough
In the first place,
Chances are they will scarper as soon as they see it!
Secondly if your leaving the water out over night you could hold off
Putting in your ffm
The reason for this is it will settle at the bottom of your water change
Barrel
And the chances are the chlorine would have evaporated to certain extent.
Thirdly if you have a steps to place you water change barrel above
The level of you tank
You could siphon your water in to the tank with airhose line
Which takes a while but!
This will help with the temperature drop as in it won't be as sudden.
Hope this helps

I've always though that not more of a 2 degree drop in the temp is ok.

I used to chuck buckets of water into my tanks and the fish weren't stressed. Might depend on the fish though.

I use a water butt these days so I can put a heater in the water the night before a change to make the temps the same and then I use a water pump to transfer the water from the butt to the tank.

Less messier and easier on the back

I find that for the most part my fish aren't too stressed by water change activity; in fact, they are often a nuisance with their curiosity when I'm doing it. As for temp drops, I agree with Ski. 2 degrees isn't going to be too big a deal. Drops of 3-4 degrees even trigger spawning in the case of cories

33% is a rather large weekly change. If you were to halve the water to 24 litres, that would still be roughly 15% and would be quite an adequate amount to change weekly and wouldn't have as much effect on the temperature.

Jasonb wrote:

1. How do I make sure I don't accidentally suck up fish in the gravel cleaner (it's big enough, and I plan to have small fish).

This happened me the other night, I'm doing a fish in cycle with 5 zebra danios & I'm just over 3 weeks in & doing 25 litre daily water changes in a 120litre tank.
I siphon the water out with a hose while adding pans of water from a homebrew bucket, takes about 3 mins.
The flow was obviously too much & I didn't notice a zebra danio getting sucked up. After the water change I cleaned up & looked at them but could only find 4 The other lad was smimming in the bucket out the back when I checked 5 mins later Luckily he survived his waterride & is swimming happily around now.
I use a bit more care with the syphon now as you can imagine.

Also, is the bowl really neccesary with that much water already in the tank, never bother with one myself.

I'm doing weekly 50% water change on my tanks and try to get the temp to about 1-2 degrees to the one in the tanks, but not worry too much about it.
As for siphoning, I sometimes get a fish that wants a free water slide ride but it gets back unharmed. On the tank with shrimps, I get loads of them with the siphon and they all get back safe and sound (apart from the few small ones which the cardinals will hunt down). I thought of covering the siphon with some fishnet, but then I won't get out all the c@~p that's inside the tank.

Hi

Why not get a 50L bin? Fill this the night before your change and if you can drop an air stone into it. It would take up less space than the buckets and if you wanted to get the temp closer all your water is in one container. The addition of a pump to do the refill would be worth considering also.

The air stone will look after the chlorine and you can just add the FFM when you are refilling the tank.

Thanks for all your replies! My attention has been focused on my Algae thread here but I'm finally getting a chance to reply.

Firstly, it's good to know that the fish will be ok with the Siphon and the small temp drop won't do them any harm. As for the amount of water to change, I've read so many different opinions about this. I'm going to give 33% a go, but only over time, and testing for Nitrates etc. will I get a good sense of what value works for my tank.

I decided not to get one large container (like 50L) firstly because I couldn't find one to buy nearby, and secondly because they seemed a bit expensive and big! I went with buckets 'cos they're cheap (€1.20 for a 14L graduated bucket in B&Q) and while 4 buckets might take up more space when all full, the rest of the time they only take the space of 1 bucket 'cos they stack. It'll also be easy to accurately reduce or increase the amount of water I change (3 buckets is a 25% water change for example).

Also, I still use a bowl because as I'm not exactly gentle about pouring the water in, I find the substrate does get churned up a bit.

Thanks again...

J.

I wouldn't worry about a temp drop because what do ye think happens when it rains or when fish are transported... personally I think the problem is people listen to this shite too much whereas if your fish were subjected to temp drops now and again they would get used to it and build up some sort of an immunity against it if ye get me... it won't do your fish any favours to molly-coddle them and thats just my opinion

Edit... just thought there, its a bit like people saying something like 'oh no, I couldn't miss a feed for my fish or I never got to feed them this morning, hope they'll be ok'... THEY'LL BE FINE!!

Here is one reason to avoid sudden or big changes in temperature.

www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/mobile/content.php?sid=4863

H.

I heard with cichlids the change in water temp helps with breeding and it does something to there hormones
mine drops from 26 deg c to 22 deg c and i add cold water it does not take to long to heat back up with the bigger tank. Well thats my opinion i stand to be corrected.

i think it depends on how frequent you change you water......

+1 davey c i think you hit the nail on the head a few degrees drop has not done my fish any harm.
jim

newbejkjimk wrote:

+1 davey c i think you hit the nail on the head a few degrees drop has not done my fish any harm.
jim

Few degree drop makes my discus to start shimmying and laying eggs etc....every water change, the same behaviour....no harm whatsoever...

Fish are 80 or 90% of the environment they live in(water)
There for effected buy it more so, regular cold water changes don't seem to
Do any harm(apparently) short term
We are not in water 100% of the time or effected buy the environment we live in the way fish are,
So long term we have no idea what it's like or how it effects our fish