HOW TO: Zero Water Change Ecosystem Aquarium 💦🚫 

So I know there will definitely be people who believe water changes is a MUST. I would like to hear your point of view down below :) Ps. pH is something that may gradually decrease over time so it's a good idea to monitor it. Pps. Follow me on Instagram! @SGBearded_Aquarist (instagram.com/sgbearded_aquarist/)

Also a deep substrate (at least 4 inches) creates an anaerobic bacteria layer to break down nitrates which is beneficial for a no water change tank.

A Singaporean!!! Thank god. Right when I try to find youtuber that share the same region and climate as me, I find a Singaporean which is right next door and share exactly the same climate as me, a Malaysian. I mean, no offense to other famous western youtuber in this hobby, but your climate is too different that some things just dont work for us as well as you and vice versa. I mean, Even some part of indonesia and Thailand have a colder climate than what we have in M'sia so the best thing is to find a video of people that lives in places that have the exactly the same climate as us and there is no more place that is similar in climate to us than Singapore. Thumbs up! Good content!

duckweed and hornwort are extremely hardy fast-growing floaters. those guys and a deep sandbed really free up a lot of your time

this made me realise that i was doing water changes for no reason! i have a very heavily planted tank with two helmets, around 10 neocaridinas and a betta used to live there, it's a 10gal, my floating plants, mosses and limnophila are going absolutely crazy and there is close to no algae, there's some on the filter output and a bit on the driftwood but my glass is crystal clear

Great video. While I don't plan on doing a 'zero water change' aquarium, I do a 50% water change about once every 2 months. I have a 75 gallon freshwater tank with a lot of fast-growing plants, have deep seachem black substrate that's mixed with gravel and I feed my fish a little bit about once every two days. My nitrate levels have always been less than 40 with 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites.

I also don't do water changes. I just top of the water as it's needed. I've been doing this for THOUSANDS of gallons of tanks of over the last 20+ years. The key is to get them into a healthy balance with lots of live plants. If you want fake plants and gravel: you will never get a healthy balance. To achieve a healthy tank with practically zero Maintenace: it must be as natural as possible.

Thank you so much for this. I'm trying to keep an aquarium this way for the first time ever, and it's people like you who are going to teach me how to one day have a thriving business selling aquatic animals out of my own home with minimal effort, all while being surrounded by gorgeous underwater jungles.

Ty for explaining the zero water change system method! Great video! 🤝

my 10g tank never changed water and it has been 3 yrs old, maintenance free, never changed water and never used a brush! I just add water to keep the amount of water. But I do use a green killer and I very lightly clean my canister filter once a year. I agree with you that the balance is essential and I have been very cautious about the amount of food goes into the tank and it is ALL about BALANCE! btw my tank is gravel free and plants(anubias) on driftwood.

I've been thinking about getting back into this hobby. A few years back I had a mass casualty incident. No survivors 😖.

"It's not the size but the growth." got it.

Good vid. I setup a 75 gallon tank 6 weeks ago using a plenum system and biocenosis clarification setup. Plenum, 1" Bentonite clay/kitty litter over plenum, 0.5" Flourite red as iron source, poly landscape fabric covering that to keep sand from migrating into plenum, 2.5" of African Cichlid Sand substrate mixed with about 0.5" of crushed coral as my tap water is about 6.8 PH, (with about 20 lbs of real Texas Holey rock decor to help raise the PH also). Plenum out tube is hooked up to a customized skimmer attached to a Hygger dual sponge/media compartment air lift, where it minimizes how much the plenum is turning over to create low oxygen environment for anaerobic bacteria to thrive. Ran for one month with Ammonia Chloride, and using two full baskets in my Fluval 407 of pre-cycled Eheim Substrat Pro media which is about 3lbs of media taking care of nitrites. No live plants. It seems to have started some level of anaerobic colonization. I put in 15 Hap/Peacock male mix (~2.5" fish so not huge bioload yet) 2 weeks ago (50% water change before adding fish), and my nitrates have not gone above like 5-8 ppm in two weeks which I was not expecting to be that low this early in the process. . I plan to do a 30% water change in the next few days, and then see how long until the nitrates get to about 10ppm. 3-4 weeks would be good progress in my view. I setup the system based on research, videos and testing from Kevin Novak and Shaun's Fish Tanks which have had success implementing this type of system to greatly reduce nitrates. If it doesn't end up working out very well, it's no danger to the fish.

Bioload plays a major factor in zero water change. Once you've exceed the amount of bioload the tank can handle, you'll need to do a water change.

Beautiful tank! I love the green jungle you have going on there! Yeah, I don't change water either. I'd like to add - even when you don't remove plant material, nitrate and phosphate levels stabilise - partially because they end up inert in the detritus, partially due to denitrifying bacteria. (Not cleaning is key here!) That being said, in my tank the water wisteria does most of the heavy lifting XD

My small five gallon tank has so many plants and, i don't even have algae(visible) and the water is crystal clear. It's my first tank i hope this goes right

Could you do a step by step instruction building one though and where to get the stuff for it

I've had a 2 ft x 1 ft x 1 ft freshwater tank and have not changed my water for the past 2 years with zero deaths of the 10 fish I have. This video pretty much explains it all in terms of the technicalities so I'll just share the plant I used, hemanthus spp. I don't know the exact species (I took it from Macritchie reservoir shhh) but its definitely hemanthus and they spread like wildfire after a few months. I keep black skirt tetras, neon tetras and harlequin rasboras so their pretty low maintenance and a good choice if you wish to do a zero water change aquarium. I would say that my only gripe with my setup is that I would have to shave off a large chunk of my plants lest they take up 90% of my tank. My tank is at the balcony and has facilitated the exchange of gases, hence it may not be a comparable tank if you wanna do this kind of thing indoors. Completely unrelated but i have also started a 40 gallon marine tank and I have a few fish inside and I wanna get a few more. Anyone has a good suggestion on where to find a fish store with diverse fish? I've been to Fresh N Marine and Aquatic Solutions already and bought coral from the former and fish from the latter.

This is an extremely informative video thank you!!

Thank you very much!!!! This was very helpful insight!!! I’m a beginner medaka keeper wanting a minimalist tank very much trial and error

Technically if you have small fish with smaller amounts of bioload water change does not need to be done so regularly. People can get by years without water change. But thats just my point of view but if you keep big fish water change is strongly reccommended.

Hey SG Bearded Aquarist , wondering how many gallons is this tank. Love the scape, I’m taking a little inspiration from this for the tank i am currently working on

People are so set in their ways its incredible. Folks, there are ecosystems in the wild where plants remove ammonium and nitrates and old water is not removed. Many Apistogramma species live in vegetated stagnant puddles for goodness sakes. The ‘follow tradition mindset’ is rampant in this hobby.

Very informative video, love it! Subbed 😄

Fantastic informative video! Loved it!

Thanks! I've subscribed to your channel:) I was wondering, what kind of substrate do you use?

Bro, can you make a list of plant that you are preferred in this video, i cannot catch it all. i heard you said Amazon sword Hornwort and the third is? kabomba?

informative video! May I know what light you are using?

Any internal filter?

Can you have a RO filter connected to an aquarium that drains the bad water and fills the tank with good water constantly?

Absolutely beautiful! Just one quick question, how about the oxygen supply in the tank? Without airstone/filter how does that work? Will the oxygen from the plants be enough?

How do you output with the pathos?

What temp is your tank? Can the plants survive in 31degrees Celsius? Thanks

was really curious about this but not sure this is all that practical if you have a barramundi in the tank lol

Another nice vid from you man i love these informational vids. Keep up the nice work (Btw have you announced the winner for the giveaway?)

thank you :)))

So shortly, cacoomba is the best option... is this the best option for a turtle tank too?

What is that big plant on the side of tank called?

A favor to ask: In general, I can understand you, but I'm having difficulty when it comes to some of the species names, and trying to spell them for searches, based on what I think you are saying. Any chance you would either do CC (auto is terrible), or at least throw the names of the species on the screen, so we can look them up if we are considering following your advice and seeing if it works for different setups? I couldn't find what you were saying to use, and I have a feeling it is just because I am misunderstanding you; seeing the words would definitely help. When you were talking about plants and the water column, I tried searching "couboumba" which is what it sounds like you are saying, but I got nothing remotely related to plants, aquaria, etc.- it just thought I misspelled "Columbia". Anyway, I know it would help me, and probably make things easier for others as well. P.S. Autogenerated CC showed "kabob" and later "boomba" for that word I was trying to figure out, and I'm pretty sure you weren't saying to use kabobs to transfer nutrients from the water column. LOL.

I achieved zero water changes on a saltwater reef tank, it’s all about a refugeium and adding minerals back as they’re used

I've gone from 40-50% water changes every week....to every other week+. My plants look better then ever. The only plant people who make massive changes per week at those those running Co2 and have automatic dosing machines. Yet,if they didn't change so much water,they wouldn't need to dose so heavily. Fish only tanks,no plants? Sure big water changes are the way to go. But plants are not fish. In fact,heavy plant growth with a very light fish load? Sure,you could go weeks easily with only water to make up for evaporation. In my 240 gallon,I find myself downsizing not just on numbers of fish..but smaller fish also. Water in California is not cheap and a planted tank with small fish is the way to go.

Will a deeper substrate help ?

Your beard is beautiful. Great vid!

how do u remove their poop

nice beard

Give us the steps to build aquarium without any water change

im an indian fan of u and im sure that i have smashhhhed the subscribe button

very nice and informative video but not very enjoyable to have already 4 ads in first 1.5 mins...

All 3 of my tanks are zero water change, or minimal. I test 2x a week, testing ph gh kh TDS ammonia nitrate. I do use tap water. And it has high TDS and nitrates. So I end up water changing once every 3 months ish to reset the TDS If I use RO I could probably extended it. And yes complete zero water change is possible. If you top up with RO and remineralise the tank to what it is deficient in, it will be good to go People say can’t be done. Try it. The question is why have some people succeeded People say you my water change, but what does that provide.??. And output isn’t trimming the plant, it’s growth of the plant, the plant can stay.

I go ouch when I saw your title. I have a lot of things to say about this and I hope I can express it as well as I can. Its gonna be a long comment and pls pardon my longwindedness. First the topic of zero water change. Is it possible? Yes on paper in theory in the short term. However it is not that practical. First you hit the key that you need to _sustain_ a self-balancing eco-system. The key is balance. More specific to zero water change, it has to be _self_ balance. (Water change is a form of assisted balance, while zero water change has to be self balancing on its own). To ensure self-balancing, you need to _constantly_ monitor and maintain the parameters of your eco-system very precisely. How precise depends on the ratio of your bio-load vs your water capacity. If you leave that ratio too tight, a slight parameter change will cause a vicious cycle of imbalance spiralling out of control fast (which necessitate the need for constant close monitoring). In a nutshell, the amount of considerations, effort and constant monitoring needed to establish a _sustained_ self-balancing eco-system far far far outweigh the effort of a simple water change. The end does not justify the effort involved and it is precisely the effort involved (in constant water change) that we aim to remove through a zero water change system but instead, we transformed the effort of water change to more effort of maintaining a zero water change system. And we have not factored in the huge risk (failure means complete tank wipe) involve in running a delicate zero water change system. The risk-reward ratio is not favorable. I said in previous para that it is possible in theory in the short term. But in the long term, it probably will fail. Even in our nature, have you witnessed a single lake where rainfall do not feed any fresh water into the lake (either from the sky or from underground water source) and which can support fishes? Answer is a clear no. Without any water input from rainfall or river etc, the lake will dry up in due course. (Your aquarium tank will dry up in due course too) And all sustainable lake all have fresh water fed in constantly. This is nature's way of water change. It is also not a case of zero water change in the case of nature. The reason why I go ouch when reading the title is because no serious aquarium-ist will ever advocate zero water change. It is not just on the technical aspect but it also involved the attitude aspect. If someone has no time or reluctant to do water change, then he/she should not keep an aquarium. Its a responsibility just like keeping any other pets. If you cannot commit, don't keep pet. The consequences will be the death of another lives, for fishes it may seem lesser impact compared to a bigger pets like dog/cat, but still it is a live. So to educate and advocate zero water change is just the wrong route to take. However, what we can advocate to mitigate water change effort is to device innovative AUTOMATED water change system. This is easily done with DIY piping work and powerhead. And if people cannot even afford the little effort of turning on the powerhead to drain water out and turning on the tap to input water, then we can go one step more to implement digital water level detector with timer to established a regularly scheduled automated water change system that runs on its own. I said a lot and much of it are critiques. Hope you don't mind. I speak my mind and if I am wrong, I am willing to learn from other people who have success sustaining a zero water change system with zero fish casualties. (BTW, I like your video and please continue the good effort. Don't feel sad about my comments which may be a bit depressing. You did a great job and I will continue to watch your videos. Keep up the good work and god bless.)

water changes are a must you have to be able to remove TDS

Iam a old school hobbyist,water change is a must for me,I could really see the difference in my fishes after a water change...

Hey there thank you for making such a useful video because I am going to make a shrimp tank and I might use your advice! P. S If you ever have any left over plant cuttings or other excess please feel free to donate because I have been using my lunch money to buy food and other supplies for my tank so I would like to get as much help as possible! Thanks

i have achieved this in my 15g long aquarium(no live plants, black sand, artificial plants, 30L/H water pump with diy filter) at first, i've placed 10 pink danios and 5 rose barb. for the first 2mos, i lost 4 danios because the aquarium is not yet fully cycled(expected). my routine back then was 50% WC 2x/week. then succeeding months was 1x/week. after 6mos, 1x/month(started to become lazy). until I started to just topup the aquarium when the water level drops to 60-70%. here is the funny thing, the water color is yellowish but crystal clear. as in no specs of fine dust floating or anything. as of today, it is almost 2yrs when I started my tank. current load is still the original fish (5 rose barb, 4 danios) im still waiting for the fishes to die before getting new one. planning to get guppies.

I think he should leave this is a project of replicating an ecosystem. By no way is he advocating everyone should stop doing water changes.

R u god trying to defy physics

I like ya. You do know what you’re talking about, but I have a hard time understanding you. All the best.

Water change is a must, especially u keep active n big eater fish, otherwise the water ll be smelly no doubt the water still looks clean

Just like in school. They teach you a lot of crap and confuse you so you go wow teacher is very smart. Ill figure it out and put a video in RU-vid explain it in less than 2 min. This dude talk a lot