Possibility of stopping Waterchanges

carsona246

carsona246

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Carson
I know this form of idea is tossed around a lot in fish forum, but with my plant filter working extremely well I've been wondering why it's even necessary for me to do waterchanges in my tank. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts or concerns about stopping waterchanges that applied specifically to axolotls that I may not have considered.
From asking around on other forums, and looking through past threads the main concerns with stopping waterchanges seem to be:
  • TDS buildup (organic material, minerals ect.) causing ph to rise
    Hormone buildup
    Essential mineral depletion
    Mineral depletion causing the ph to drop
After doing some research I believe TDS buildup is not a problem, and that in fact the ph will be dropping heavily due to the plants. I plan on correcting this with adding crushed coral to my filters, and adding epsom salts to my tank to boost the gh(I'm assuming that epsom salts are axolotl safe, would love confirmation on that). I need to do more research on the possibility of hormone buildup, but I'm hoping I will also get some answers on here, as any research I've found is based on fish, not axolotls. Most of the research I've found concerning hormone buildup in hobbyist fish tanks also have flaws in them and are non-conclusive. I will also be topping off my tank whenever it is necessary, so I'm not concerned about my tank running out of essential minerals for axolotl survival, because my tank gets about 5-10 gallons topped off every week or so.

If anyone has any ideas or problems that I may not be considering I would love to hear them. I'm solely researching this idea right now, and have no plans of implementing a no waterchange tank maintenance schedule, but the more I research the less concerned I am with the idea of it.

Because the question is bound to come up, I'm going to answer why I'm even considering this idea. Changing the water in my tank involves me taking out perfectly good tank water that has no nitrates, and replacing it with water that has a higher ph(I have a ph of 7 out of the tap, but my ph drops because it is very soft. Crushed coral helps keep the ph up, but it's never exactly the same as the tap) and a slightly different temperature. I can't really come up with a good reason to continue doing weekly waterchanges other than the traditional idea of that's how you take care of a fish tank, so I'm wondering if waterchanges are even beneficial for my tank anymore.
 
I will not disclose my water change schedule as I would get crucified upside down, coated with honey, and set out for the ants. Personally, I tend to post the basics here with the mindset that many folks new to the hobby will read it. I guess that is a fancy way of saying I definitely do not always practice what I preach.


In your case you will need to experiment to see what works. As for stopping water changes, this is not an option. You will have to do them, perhaps just not as frequently. It appears to me that you are another one of us that isn't afraid to do some research before you start, and I get the impression you are well on your way to experiment on getting your needs met. So, on that note, don't think I am "talking down" or anything like that.

Your main issue with axolotls is ammonia build up. A. mexicanum is a dirty filthy little critter, right up there with goldfish in my opinion. Their waste output infamously can cause crazy water chemistry spikes in ammonia. Believe it or not, zero nitrates and/or nitrites is extremely unusual. It can be an indicator of a broken nitrogen cycle, which is bad ju-ju as I am certain you are aware of. I would suggest checking the compatibility of the water treatment you are using with the test kit you are using. Many of the popular water treatments are not compatible with certain types of tests resulting in unstable inaccurate results.

Total dissolved solids are pretty much a moot point with axolotls as is turbidity. These animals are evolved to live in murky waters high in both TDS and both hardnesses as their environment is mountain spring fed into a volcanic geology type basin area. Since you are using a filter there is really no need to worry about it.

For "hormone build up", my personal opinion is this is a bunch of well-aged garlic bologna. I actually asked the question a while back on here as I had started working with a few species well known for their pheromone communications when breeding. The answer I got, in addition to the experiences I have now is that is you are using an activated carbon based filter system, this is not an issue. As you stated, there is (to my knowledge at time of writing) no hard, non-anecdotal data to even verify this condition is an issue. In other words, don't sweat it! Axolotls are not known to be big on chemical communications to my knowledge.( I could be wrong though. I am certain someone will jump in and correct me if I am.:lol:)

As for the use of crushed coral and epsom salts, I highly advise against this. Especially adding them directly to the filter or tank. Both products have an extreme amount of variability from unit to unit and manufacturer to manufacturer. I suspect you may be thinking of Holtfretter's or Steinberg's Solution. John broke it down pretty well on the Axolotl site. As he is a chemist by trade, I am certain his explantion is superior to anything I could tell you.
Axolotls - Requirements & Water Conditions in Captivity

There are a number of methods to get stable total hardness and carbonate hardness in your water. I no longer use tap water due to the extremely high levels of atrazine here. I use a mix of rainwater and recycled tank water that is carefully treated, filtered and aged through a series of US 55 Gal drums modified for the purpose. Any time you are playing with water chemistry it is never a wise idea to do so in tank. I speak from experience here, especially when it comes to hardness and pH. It is better to invest in a few five gallon buckets and experiment there so as not to put your critters at risk.

As I am a firm believer in high carbonate hardness for certain species, I utilize crushed limestone and dolomite throughout the water treatment process. I find aging with crushed limestone and dolomite is superior to other methods. (Especially with A. mexicanum and N. kaiseri, I am nearly certain Magnesium is key, but the gas chromatograph at school is on the fritz right now...)

I am curious about the salinity of your water.

My question for you is about your tap water supply: Does your home have an inline water softener? If so, you may want to install a pre-softener bypass valve to allow you access to unsoftened water. If this is something you are interested with, let me know, It is a really cheap and easy project.
 
No feelings of being talked down to whatsoever, in fact I extremely appreciate your input. I setup a "plant filter" which is really just pothos and peace lilly in my fish tank to help with the cycling process a few months ago(it was taking over 2 months to cycle and I was getting fed up with it). The plants have been keeping ammonia, and my nitrates at 0 since april I believe. I also have plenty of aquatic plants in the tank as well. I'm definitely going to take your advise and get a second test kit to validate the test scores. It would totally destroy my plan if nitrates/ammonia were not actually at 0, or at least very very low.
I'm not going to lie, your advise about the water hardness has me a little worried. I did a little research into water hardness and how to mess with it 3 years ago when I realized my water here was extremely soft, but I've slept since then and am a little fuzzy. I haven't had a chance to refresh my memory, but at the time crushed coral seemed like the easy solution, so I've been using crushed coral for 2 or so years in all my tanks. However, I do know where I can get my hand on some limestone so if that is the safer alternative, I can definitely use that. I suspect your 100% correct about the epsom salt, I just had some leftover from a budget planted tank project a year ago or so, and I used to use it for a gh booster replacement along with some other stuff if I remember correctly. I think I'll just order the proper stuff.
About the water softener, I live in an apartment complex so I'm not entirely sure. However I did live in another apartment complex before this one, and I had the exact same water softness problem.
 
How feasible it is to reduce the amount/frequency of water changes depends critically on how large the tank is and how many axies are in it. If the tank is "understocked" with axolotls, then I think it's worth exploring. Just don't fly blind; do water testing to determine whether the pH and nitrate stay within reason. I aim to keep nitrate <40ppm in all my tanks. If you can do that with fewer water changes, go for it.
 
I have been lucky enough to live in areas where the tap water is liquid rock. When I was working with certain anabantoid fish, I thought I had to soften the water for them. I tried a few different methods all with disastrous results. I have found that hardening water is much easier, it just takes patience and time to get it stable regularly.

The odds of an apartment complex having an in line softener are pretty good , especially if there is on site laundry. It also depends on you location in the US.

An easy test you can do is see if there is an outdoor faucet for garden hoses or the like. Back when I was managing and maintaining complexes, I often found that these were hooked in before the potable supply, thus bypassing the softener. Take a sample and test it for CaCO3 hardness.
 
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Ok i really have no idea what I’m talking about, but just wondering, how do commercial water softeners work? Water in Aust is all hard to my knowledge, and i remember on a recent trip to the US, you could actually feel the difference of the water on your skin, it sort of stuck to you more. Hard to explain.

Sludgemonkey said it’s much more difficult to make water soft than hard... Is the soft tap water there treated with softening chemicals or whatever it is at the water plant then distributed to houses, or does every house have a softening device? It definably sounds possible if it is done on such a large scale. Excuse my ignorance, could you go buy a softener like they have in an apartment complex if you were ever in need, or does that make the water too soft?

how is it made soft anyway?
 
Water softeners are ion exchangers - they swap calcium and magnesium ions and replace them with sodium. The resulting water is not salty enough to taste salty, but it is bad for people on low-sodium diets. Water softening is normally done for a house or a building, I don't think this is done by waterworks on a mass scale - it takes too much energy. It is easy to buy household water softener units here in the US.

Based on Carson's IP address location, I would guess that the water there is naturally soft.
 
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the way I see it, water changes are just like opening a window in a stuffy room.

some enjoy fresh air and like to open windows often (like myself) and some feel a draft. I personally remove and replace 1 bucket full (about 10L) every second day when I do my spot cleans, and about 20% of the total volume once a week.

I don't see any harm doing small water changes often. I'm worried that the lilies in my plant filter will suck everything out of the water and I'll be left with something akin to distilled water, sort of like when you leave a half drunk bottle of water in your car for a week or so, its almost like it goes stale.
 
Try having a look over on plantedtank.net on the lowtech section .alot of those low tech guys
Only carry out a few water changes ever 3 months or so.
Id say having zero ammonia is pretty normal ive never heard of it being normal to have detectable ammonia. Infact alot of planted tanks dose nitrates as a fertaliser.

What effect would a drip system have on your guys ? In fish keeping I always read it was better to have stable water instead of playing with ph and such.
Does this apply here aswell ?
Fraser

Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk
 
I should clarify.

Soft water as it pertains to aquaria is difficult in my opinion. You are adjusting pH, total hardness, carbonate hardness ans as a side effect dissolved O2. This can be very, very tricky.

As Jen said, softening tap water is simply ion exchange between carbonates and salts.


Zero Ammonia is excellently normal. Zero nitrites and nitrates however is not. Since nitrates and nitrates are part of the nitrogen/ammonia cycle, strange levels (spikes or drops) are not necessarily doomsday, but indicate there is a problem somewhere causing them. Big spikes in any of the three almost always result in doomsday.

(prepare for really big words I definitely mispronounce and probably will misspell...)


An example of water treatments and testing is the Amquel+ (sodium thiosulfate) I use, you cannot use a Nessler reagent for ammonia or a Winkler reagent for O2. Good news is this sort of information is right on the bottle.
 
so it turns out the garden hose water is very similar to my tap water. I can go ask my landlord next time I run into her, and see if she knows anything about water softeners, but I don't think that's the case. I'm not super concerned about the 0 ammonia/nitrate in my tank. In a non-planted tank I would be, however in my experience with plants it has not been abnormal for the plants to use all or the majority of the nitrate in my tank. I think what I'll do just to make sure there are no problems is monitor the water everyday to make sure there aren't any spikes, but I'm pretty confident it's just the plants doing their job.
I also see no harm in doing small waterchanges, or a drip system. However if plants can successfully filter out everything a waterchange/drip system it just may not be necessary. I've found quite a few threads on the plantedtank.net, and a few on some other forums. I've pm'd a few people and am hoping they'll be able to answer some of my questions on how they managed the water hardness, and a few other things. One of my main concerns is being able to do a large waterchange in an emergency situation. I've read a few websites that suggest the difference in TDS will cause fish to die when a tank quickly has it's waterchange after it hasn't been changed in a while. Everything I've read about TDS buildup in planted tanks seems to disprove the idea that organics/minerals will buildup significantly in my tank to cause problems, but I'd like to avoid that problem. Hoping some people who have tried the idea will have some insight
 
Caudates are not fish. Very different ballgame. TDS is not an issue.;)
 
So it's been about 2 weeks since I did a waterchange, and I think I may have to toss the idea of stopping waterchanges altogether, at least until my plants grow a little more
test.jpg

The picture actually makes the nitrate look a bit darker then it actually is. Without the camera it looks like it's between 0, and 5 ppm's. To keep things on the safe side I'm going to assume its 5 ppm's, which means in 2 months I'll have about 20 ppm's of nitrate. I think I'm gonna wait till the end of the month to see how much nitrate I have till then, but chances are i'm gonna have to do a waterchange at least once every 2 or so months.
Although, a few aquatic plants got stuck in my peace lilly root system, which caused the water to cloud up pretty bad. I removed the decaying plants, and the water cleared up within a few days, but that may have caused excessive nitrates in my tank. Will have to wait a few more weeks to be sure though.
edit: just realized you can tell the picture is in my bathroom. Just thought I'd clarify that my bathroom is one of the most brightly lit parts of the apartment, which is why the picture is in there.
 
Wow! Sounds really cool actually. I hope it all works out for you with the minimal water changes and all that Jazz. I'm definately counting this thread as one to watch. :D

I love to see people who consider taking different routes to the "Newbie Rules" actually do a little research before going through with it.

Hannah
 
I too don't practise as much as i preach :)

I don't do weekly water changes.

I keep very much on top of any waste in the tank, keep it topped up as evaporation occurs, test the water every two weeks or so (sometime less often)

I have lots of live greenery, pretty large tank for two axies and a few white cloud, and i have found my tank is much more stable the less i fiddle with it.

In the beginning i was always tweaking to try to get that perfect set of readings and rarely getting them. Now i leave it do it's thing, i'm vigilant on waste in the tank, and the readings are perfect.

Sometimes, less is more.

Bren
 
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