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I quit obsessing over my tank and the water and the testing blah blah.
I just let it run on its own, I do a small water change here and there but I no longer test nor do I vacumme.
Yikes you say!!
Well, since I quit tinkering and obsessing over every little thing my tank is thriving. No fish loss, no diseases, the fish are all healthy. You should see my upside down Cats! They are HUGE!
I run two large filters and each has 2 Bio-Wheels and they wheels are fully active. I am letting nature work for me and its working.
I know.. I will get people saying my tank isnt really healthy etc but I have to disagree.
I do monitor my feeding and only feed every other day and I am actually understocked for a 55 gallon but its what I like and works.
So.. DO you think that sometimes we do more harm when we tinker to much?
Todd

Hi,
Absolutely!
Sometimes we worry so much about the details that we
fail to see the big picture. In your instance, with
55 gallons of water to "play with" all the things that
folks with much smaller tanks and less water find important
you can let "slide" for a while.

I would caution to not follow the main thrust of what
your thread title implies. Do remember that while
circumstances (light stocking, large volumes of water,
light feeding) do indicate that you may not need to do
weekly water changes, the need to do water changes
still exists.

It is not a perpetual motion, enclosed system. Fish
age, and grow, and their waste output can increase,
which will increase the stress on the system.

Water changes still remain your only way to
duplicate nature's rain storms or occasional floods
where the water is replaced. You still need to vacuum
the gravel at some interval.

Without testing at some REGULAR interval preferably before
a water change, the cumulative effect can sneak up on
you and can cause havoc.
Keep an eye on the pH and the Nitrate. Watch for lowering
pH, rising Nitrate. These are indications of Old Tank
Syndrome (OTS). Ideally, if the nitrate climbs to 40+
you should be doing water changes and gravel vacuuming
to relieve the stress on the system. If you don't catch
it till the nitrate reads 100+ you could easily loose
fish sensitive to high nitrate and most assuredly loose
new additions.

http://www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Fishkeeping is a hobby, and more than anything it should be exciting or relaxing when you see your aquarium, not burdensome. However, a middle ground has to be found between being overinvolved and being neglectful.

There is an element of the hobby where we develop and use things so that the aquarium can run itself. With filtration and timers we can do almost everything without touching our tank. These things can run smoothly without disease and the fish being healthy. But even with these things going some points are being neglected, and this may become a problem.

It's important to move the gravel, which doubly removes waste particles from being trapped as well as aerates the substrate as bacteria decompose the particles that are trapped there and use up the oxygen. Both points are very important. If your gravel is deep enough, which actually doesn't have to be very deep at all, and your gravel remains unmixed anaerobic pockets may form. I don't know if this is different in planted tanks, but with my unplanted tanks I believe that siphoning the gravel is probably one of the most important things I have to do. I do it every time I do a water change; I mean, I can't even imagine doing a water change without even siphoning just a little. Every time I siphon I pick up a lot of gunk that I wouldn't be getting if I merely took water off the top.

My two cents on the gravel vac, which is one of my most-used pieces of aquarium equipment.

--------------------------------------------
The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

Yeah, I'll go with Shinigami on that. Keep in mind also that -- if you don't vacuum the tank bottom -- you're going to have one hell of a big accumulation of partially decayed food, and I've found out the hard way that fish have a strong tendency to eat that and give themselves gruesome and fatal bacterial infections even when the tank water itself persistently checks out clean (a fact that threw me for fully 18 years before I finally figured out what was happening!). Indeed, for that reason (and Shinigami's) I urge not only a weekly tank vacuuming, but also a healthy collection of bottom-feeders to eat new food as soon as it hits the bottom.

I'm well aware that -- with a 55-gallon tank -- doing this even once a week can be a pain in the &nbsp;; but nothing good comes without some effort, and if you're going to insist on a tank that big you have some (dare I say it?) moral obligation to try to make sure its inhabitants stay healthy. (I can, however, also vouch for the fact that shrinking your tank size down to 30 gallons will by itself remove an amazing amount of the nuisance -- in my experience, about 10 minutes of work once a week is enough to keep a tank that size very clean and healthy.)

Something else to consider if you have hard water - the less you change water, the more "topping off" you will do to keep the desired water level. This can lead to build up of minerals in the tank.

While some fish will need more maintenance than others, I agree that tinkering too much is not a good thing. I have been able to get by with very little effort for months with understocked tanks but eventually something will need to be done to correct the water chemistry. At a minimum, I'd check the pH and Nitrate every two weeks.

I'm a fan of the biowheel myself. My new 75 has 4 wheels like your 55. I plan to use the 40ppm nitrate rule to figure out how often I "should" clean. I do 30% changes and clean all of the gravel I can reach with the canopy on (roughly 2/3). When my wife complains about algae on the back glass, I pull the top and clean the other 1/3 In my opinion, the biowheels should allow less frequent but more aggressive gravel cleaning. With the number of plants I have, I hope to get maintenance down to a two week schedule.

I haven't used a test kit (aside from cycling new tanks) for several years, and haven't had ich or any other disease problems for a long time - just through regular water changes/gravel vacs (and pruning and other plant-related maintenance in planted tanks).

><>

Yes, sometimes we can go to far, I used to be way critical with PH, I dont even check it anymore. I found out thats how my fish were getting sick. I would lower it, it would rebound, the ups and downs made my fish ill. I have found out to just get on a regular cleaning schedual and keep it. This keeps your water peremeters more stable. The clue word it stability.

17 years experience with freshwater.