Dan White wrote:

Hi. I had a 55 gallon tank many years ago set up for marine fish. I
recently took it out of the garage and got it ready for tropical fish. I've
been reading up all the great info in newsgroups and the net in general, but
there is one thing about changing water that I don't see addressed.

I'm seeing that approximately 20% of the water should be changed every, say,
2 weeks. For me, this means about 10 gallons each time. This seems awfully
difficult to achieve without killing anything in the process. How do you
handle this volume of water? There is a bathroom about 15 feet from the
tank, and I could see siphoning the water out without much problem, but
getting the fresh water back in is more of a problem. The issues I am not
sure about are 1) 10 gallons is a lot of buckets to mess with, is there a
better way? 2) the room temperature is much lower than the tank water, which
is about 77F, 3) do most people dechlorinate chemically rather than letting
it stand for a day? If I let the water stand, then it will be too cold. If
I use chemical treatment, can I use hot and cold water to adjust the temp?

Also, it seems like these large water changes are a little excessive. When
I was a teenager I did minimal (very minimal) and the fish lived for years.
My angles grew very large in their 29 gallon tank, ate well, and even layed
eggs. It didn't seem like they were stressed. Maybe I just had ultra hardy
fish, but I did have live plants, so maybe that helped.

Thanks for any suggestions,
dwhite



I plan to do 20% every week in my new 55.

Given the rock work I'll have in the tank, two 5 gallon buckets should
handle the incoming water (will actually be more than 20%), the outgoing
water will siphon to the water drain in my basement where the tank is
located.

I plan to purchase two cheapie Wal-Mart or whatever smallest heaters I
can find. I will plug those up, set the right temp, drop the cheapest
powerhead I can find into each one, treat with Amquel, raise pH, and let
them sit a week till the next water change keeping warm and circulating.
The water will then be pre-treated, warm, and damned well oxygenated.

Then, those cheapie powerheads will pump the buckets into the tank with
the little bit left being poured in. Temp won't be a problem. I have
to do it this way since I live in MN and tap water gets danged cold all
the time. I also have a whole house water softener so I have to get my
water from either outside or the kitchen sink cold tap....those are the
unsoftened outlets. Outside in MN in the winter is out of the question
so I have to get cold from inside...and it's REALLLY cold in January ;-)
The two cheapie heaters will be required.

That's my plan, and my 2c.

-Keith