A lot of times, first-time fish keepers probably have no idea about:
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What are the equipment needed to change water? How to change water in the aquarium? How often to change them?
In today’s article, we are going to discuss all the 3 questions mentioned above.
To change water, you are going to need a siphon or vacuum cleaner to either drain the water by hand or by electricity.
What is the equipment needed to change the water
Here are the things that you are going to need to change the water:
- Tube
- Siphoning tube
- Vacuum cleaner
- Bucket
- Clamp to fix the tube
- Towel
People usually clean the fish tank and change the water at the same time. So the tools needed to clean the fish tank shall also include:
- Aquarium water test kit
- Algae magnetic cleaner (for glass or acrylic)
- Toothbrush for cleaning algae off decor or plants
- Scissors for pruning plants
- Water conditioner
- Paper Towel for an oily film
The simplest way to siphon the water is by using a tube. Find yourself a clean tube. It shall be long enough to put one end in the tank water and another in the bucket on the floor. All you need to do is to soak the tube in the tank water and let the water fill up the tube. Then, you press both sides of the outlets to put one outlet in the bucket and let the water drain. It used gravity to drain out water, but can only change the water, that’s it.
You could also use our best-selling vacuum cleaner to do the siphoning and water change. All you need to do is press against the “trigger” a couple of times before the tube is filled with water and start to drain water from the outlet hose.
By using a vacuum cleaner, the small debris and waste hidden between the substrate will be sucked up and drained out from the outlet hose, while the water and gravel will go back to the fish tank. It will partially change the water.
Other siphoning tools
However, if you want to save time and energy, you could always buy an electric vacuum cleaner. The electric vacuum cleaner can be used in fish tanks with different heights and can make sand washing and changing water as easy as a breeze.
Many fishkeepers would try to find the answer to how often we change the water. Well, there is no standard answer for that. It depends on a lot of other factors, like how much food you feed your fish, do you keep a lot of fish, and how is your bio-load. If you are not so sure, you could perform a 10 to 15% water change weekly or a 25% water change on a biweekly basis. It’s always safe to test the water with a water testing kit to make sure it has 0 ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrites, and less than 40 ppm nitrates.
Of course, you could perform the water change when you smell something that is not so pleasant when you see the water becoming cloudy when there is an oily film on the water’s surface, or when you see there is a sign of algae overgrowth.
Just keep in mind that the whole purpose of changing water is to make your fish healthy. If you changed more than 30% of the water at one time, you could stress out the fish and make them ill easily.
So changing water is tricky, but I believe you will gain more experience along the way.
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