# Water Changes for New tank



## Brook16 (Mar 27, 2011)

When a 10 gallon tank is fully cycled without fish, you would normally add one or two fish to start. At that point, how much water would you change each week? As an example, with 2 rasboras aqadvisor says to change 4% of the water. Is this accurate, or should it be a bigger amount?

Thanks.


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## majerah1 (Oct 29, 2010)

I always take out 20 to 30%.I have two fish in a 29 gallon and do 50%.


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

I find it easier to base water changes on your nitrates in the tank. An example if your nitrates are 50 and you do a 50% water change it should bring your nitrates down to 25, so on and so forth. After you get used to doing the water change you should be able to tell without testing first.


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## Pigeonfish (Jun 23, 2011)

Aqadvisor calculates water changes by the type of filter you're using. Do a water change first depending on your nitrates just like susankat says. Then I would do maybe ten percent water change every week, and if you add more fish start making it 20 percent. Always test your water.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

I always started with a minimum of 20% with any water change and would adjust from there based on other things like susan mentioned.


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## Sweetgreenleaf1369 (Jun 24, 2011)

This is all great advice. seeing this is a new tank I would do 2 to 3 5% to 10% water changes a week for about 4 weeks.....


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

I would take a sample of your tank water and a sample of your tap water and either test them yourself or have them tested at your LFS to see if the parameters (especially pH and hardness) are relatively the same, just to be safe. Also, I personally don't add anything to my new water except tap water conditioner, a.k.a. dechlorinator, with that being absolutely vital in my opinion to prevent chlorine from messing with your fish.

I change 50% weekly, but that's only because I dose fertlilizers for my plants and need a way to lower the concentration of water-borne fertz.


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