Why and How to Change Aquarium Water

It is very important to make partial water changes in your aquarium on a regular basis to keep your aquarium beautiful and clean, as well as to keep your fish healthy. If your tank is large, bigger than 20 gallons, it can go longer between changes. If an aquarium is small, 20 gallons or less, you should change water more often. You may also need to change your water more often if you keep a lot of fish in your aquarium as it will get dirty quicker.

If the tank has just been set up, change 1/3 of the water once a week for the first 6 weeks if it is a smaller tank, and change 1/3 of the water once every two weeks for the first 6 weeks for a larger tank. As the aquarium gets established, after about 6 weeks, you can go about a month between water changes. However, if the water gets very cloudy or if the fish look stressed, change 1/3 of the water right away. Do make sure never to change all of your water at once, and of course do not take down and empty your aquarium for cleaning. You should not remove your fish or your gravel when changing the water. If your gravel is taken out and washed, all of the beneficial bacteria will die, causing great stress and risk of sickness in your fish.

So what tools do you need to change that water? The answer is: one clean 5 gallon bucket (two if you have a large aquarium and thus have more than about 5 gallons of old dirty water to remove, or just use one very large bucket), some good water conditioner or dechlorinator (this is for removing chlorine and other impurities from the fresh faucet tap water that you will be getting to replace that 1/3 of the old aquarium water you will be removing), and a siphon gravel cleaner. The siphon gravel cleaner is one of the best devices for cleaning aquariums or changing aquarium water because it removes the old water from your aquarium and the dirt out of the gravel in one step. This device will help make your water changes quick and easy, and it is available at your local pet store.

Now that you have gathered your three tools, here is exactly what to do with them to change your water (for your convenience, steps 1 through 6 have been illustrated for you in the figures at the bottom of this article):

1. Get your siphon gravel cleaner and buckets ready next to the aquarium (the water conditioner or dechlorinator will be used later). See Figure 1 below.
2. Place your siphon gravel cleaner into the aquarium with the tip up and put your thumb over the bottom end of the cleaner's tube. See Figure 2 below.
3. Raise the tube out of the water and the water will fill up the tube. See Figure 3 below.
4. Push the tube back into the tank with tip up. See Figure 4 below.
5. With the tube full of old dirty water, now simply let your thumb off, and the old dirty water will start to flow from the tank into the bucket automatically by gravity. See Figure 5 below.
6. In the meantime, move the siphon gravel cleaner back and forth on the bottom of the tank just like a vacuum cleaner, and this will pull the dirt out of the gravel and siphon it with the old water out into your bucket. Pinch the tube to restrict flow. See Figure 6 below.
7. After about 1/3 of the old water has been removed from the tank, remove the siphon gravel cleaner from the tank, and go throw this bucket of old dirty water out.
8. Rinse the bucket out, put your water conditioner or dechlorinator in the bucket, and then put your bucket in the bathtub or a deep sink. Add fresh tap water to the water. Adjust the hot and cold water, using a thermometer, to get the temperature to about 78 degrees (between 76 and 80 degrees is usually good enough) for most tropical fish.
9. Wait about 15 minutes for the water conditioner or dechlorinator to do its work on that tap water, then pour the water in to your aquarium. Of course make sure you add enough new water to replace all of that 1/3 of the old dirty water you removed.

Figure 1:	Figure 2:	Figure 3:
Figure 4:	Figure 5:	Figure 6: