Fish Tank Water Change – The Steps needed

What is the most important thing to do involving our fish?. Within our established tanks surely it’s got to be water changes.

As we can also clean equipment and our filter media at the same time. Check everything is working. So how do we do a water change on our tanks!.

PARTIAL WATER CHANGE?

Turn everything off Siphon the water out into a bucket while cleaning the substrate. At this time clean the filter media over the bucket. Remove 30% water. Replace with clean tapsafe water slowly and turn the equipment back on.

HOW TO DO A WATER CHANGE?

IN-DEPTH LOOK AT WATER CHANGES

So what are the correct steps to take for doing a water change on your home aquarium?. Let’s look a little deeper into this important topic!.

EQUIPMENT AND GLOVES?

As you can see from the above we need some important equipment to do a water change. We will need a decent bucket some gloves an algae brush or you can use a magnet-style cleaner.

You will need a siphon to take some of the water out somewhere between 30-50% of the water will be removed.

     

This will depend on how many fish you have and how big of a tank you have. As well as what types of fish are being kept.

As some are cleaner than others strange but true. Just like us right!. Let us start from the beginning with how to start our water change.

Now we have our equipment not forgetting, of course, our water conditioner come to that in a bit!.  First gloves.

Why wear gloves?. Well, the tank has a build-up of bacteria right. Yep, but after the tanks have been cycled and everything is good we don’t want to mess with our good bacteria. We can interfere with the natural cycle of said tank and we can also take that bacteria out and spread it around our houses not so good!.

TURN EVERYTHING OFF!

Ideally, we want to keep things as exact as we can. We will be taking out 30% of the water and adding in a new 30% clean water.

It’s still best to clean our hands before and after and to wear gloves. Next, we are going to turn everything off that’s right tank lights the heater and the filter turn them all off!.

Now we can get our bucket. Or in our case, we use a large plastic bin!. (Works a treat) and we can do the whole water change in one go!.

HOW TO SIPHON WATER CORRECTLY 

The next step is to get our siphon ready we place both ends of the siphon into the tank’s water(submerged.) Then you wait for all the bubbles to be released into the tank’s water.

This indicates that the whole siphon and tube are now full of water and ready for use!. Before taking out the end that will be going over the bucket. Put your thumb over and then take it out of the tank and place it over the bucket.

(In our case the bin.)

Next with the siphon end in the tank water, you will turn it upside down facing the gravel (or whichever substrate you use.)

Ready to hoover the substrate and at the same time make ready for siphoning the water out!. Once that’s been achieved and you have made sure the bucket or bin is lower than the tank.

(Needs to be as will not work if above water won’t siphon uphill.)

Anyway back to the siphoning itself. Once you are ready to hoover the substrate. Keep a few inches of the substrate and release your thumb from the other end over the empty bucket or bin. Hay presto you are now siphoning water!.

 SIPHONING WATER!

Keep this going while taking the time to clean the glass with an algae brush or magnetic tank cleaner. While gently getting debris (poo and wasted food) out by hoovering/siphoning.

until you have your desired amount of water released. As said previously we do 30% so once 30% of the water has gone.

Simply put your thumb/finger over the end where you’ve been putting the water into said bucket/bin. That will stop the siphoning process you can now take that out of the tank and shake any loose water debris into the bucket/bin!.

CLEAN THE FILTERS MEDIA!

next, we can move on to the next step. For us is to give the filter a good clean and make sure the media is looking good what we tend to do here is take the media out of the filter.

while the siphoning process is still going. We can wash some water over it and give it a squeeze. The media tends to have orange grime to it.

Just wash it till this has gone and then inspect the media to make sure it still feels rough.

(If it feels smooth replace it.) Also if it looks like it’s falling apart it’s time to replace it!.

Once you have inspected the media and have rinsed it you can place it back into the filter. Put the filter back into your tank.

You have now finished cleaning the glass and have hoovered the gravel/substrate. While siphoning the water You cleaned the filter media everything should now be ready for new water to go into your tank!.

CLEAN WATER AND CONDITIONER!

Now we can look at putting new water back into the tank but first, we need to make the water safe for the fish!.

We use tap safe by aqua care which will basically remove chorine. Chloramine and neutralize any heavy metals as well as add protective herbal nutrients extracts back into the water.

Shake the bottle well before using. And add one cap full of tap safe for every 20 litres of water you’re replacing. Which is around a cap every 4 gallons. (One cap is approx to 5ml.)

We use a 10-litre bucket so we would use 2.5 ml of tap safe per bucket of water. ( You can use a medicine syringe to be super precise.)

Or you could put two buckets into the tank and then add the tap safe at one cup every two buckets but this gets hard to remember how many buckets have you added etc!.

So we keep things super simple and exact and only add water that we have already made safe if that makes sense!.

ADD THE WATER BACK INTO THE TANK!

The numbers below are for illustration at 30% you will have to calculate the amount maths-wise but you get the drift!.

We took 30% of the water out. So now on this step let’s put that tap-safe water back in we have a 120-litre tank.  The maths is pretty simple we took 40 litres out and will, therefore, be adding 40 litres back in.

That’s right 4 of our 10-litre buckets at half a cap of tap safe conditioner each bucket!. Easy keeping it nice and simple lol.

So over to you. All you would need to do is calculate against the size of your tank and go from there. Add the water one bucket at a time by trying to submerge the bucket under the already existing water.

Then gently pour the water in this helps to not disturb the substrate plants and or fish!. Easy does it is the key here take your time if you go too fast you will end up with gravel everywhere.

After you have finished refilling the tank and everything seems settled you should now be ready to turn everything back on ie heater lights and of course filter!.

Keep in mind, that the filter can take up to 30 minutes to adjust and the water may seem as though it has some debris in it.

This is normal as no matter how careful you would have disrupted some of the plants and or substrate. The filter will catch up and things will settle rapidly within 30 minutes or so!.

You will now have a nice clean tank with waters changed!.

SO IN CLOSING WATER CHANGES:

In closing, water changes are a necessity. To keep the tank waters safe and for your fish to be happy healthy, and thrive.

There are some things to look out for ie media in your filter. And adding the required conditioner to the new tap water.

We hope we have helped you to better understand the process and hope we have made it easy to follow. Gloves on lights off heater off filter off bucket/bin ready.

Siphon water clean tank. Clean media hoover substrate while still siphoning. Add tap safe to new water then refill the tank and turn everything back on let settle and enjoy your clean tank!.

As always we hope you enjoyed the read and learned something and please feel free to comment and or give some feedback.

We welcome the love lol. And remember to keep it here at Tank0fish for more posts check back regularly we hope to be adding more videos and other content soon!.