How Often Do You Maintain Your Tank

[gummi_67]

How often do you test your tank water quality / do water changes?

What do you guys/gals do when you go on vacation?

How tempermental can tanks be? If your tank is relatively stable with not much new livestock, can things go 'belly up' in a day?

I've heard these horror stories that everything is fine one day and the next day or two everything is off and livestock starts dying. I would think that this would be a gradual process. Obviously death and illness is probably part of the hobby but I would think that drastic health changes don't happen overnight or this suddenly...

Comments?

[smidoid]

I suspect that the horror crashes are not down to water chemistry as such, but rather bacteria or viral infestation. The size of a bacterial colony can double in hours - so if you do the "checkerboard" math, you can see that a system can become overwhelmed in a day or two.

Water chemistry tends to be a slower process that creeps up on people - I think some of us become "devil-may-care" with the attitude, it was OK last week and nothing happened... etc. However, some chemical changes can take place very quickly if they are down to bacterial effluent: but that assumes the introduction of a bacteria that's not normally present.

In our closed systems, it's reasonable to assume that every once in a while a rogue virus/bacteria gets in and mutates in such a way that there's an unavoidable disaster. Think the flu pandemic of the early 20th century and you'll see my idea.

This caught me out recently when I failed to check Sg enough and it slipped dangerously low (due to salt creep and low-SG replacement water). Now I'm faced with slowly raising it back to where it should be a little bit at a time.

That's my experience: others may have different milage.

[leebca]

Some aspects of the stability are related to tank maturity: The Mature Aquarium

12% water change per week. If I'm on vacation, I do it when I return.

Test water quality 100% of the time for temperature, pH, ORP, and salinity. Test for nitrates and phosphates weekly. Test for ammonia and nitrites just prior to and daily after, new additions and changes to the system.

Vacation is rare, but I travel about 25% of the time for business. Neighbor feeds fishes twice a day; professional service checks equipment weekly and are on call from neighbor.

Belly up in a day. Not likely. More likely is a slow 'invisible' degredation of conditions and then, at its limit, livestock shows the gross signs of stress. Many minor signals of stress are visible but many aquarists are not tuned in to those subtle signs. As aquarists, we all suffer from times of close observation and just passing looks, but its routine close observation that usually provides some warning.