Is my tank an Easter Egg?

Question
QUESTION: Hey Nicole! I love this site and you guys have been very helpful to me in the past. Heres my question.

I have a 55gal Freshwater tank. Its a few years old and fully established. I recently moved (2 months ago) and since then I've not done any water changes. My water parameters are very nice, 6.0 pH & 0 ammonia, nitrate and nitrite. My tank is inhabited by the following:
4 Neons
3 Racket Ball sized Angelfish
3 Quarter sized Angelfish
3 Platys
2 Powder Blue Dwarf Gourami (1 inch)
2 Bolivian Rams (1 inch)
2 Clown Loaches (1 inch)
1 Black Skirt Tetra

I never changed the filter media and I know the tank is cycled. Its got 5 various live plants and is filtered by 2 Whisper 60g Power Filters as well as an undergravel filter. The only type of water change I do is about a gallon each month, and this is only because of the water that gets taken out when I vacuum. The fish look great, no fin rot or color loss. Everyone eats fine, nobody picks on anyone else and (knock on wood) I've not lost a fish since I moved. How is my tank doing so well without any maintenance? I'm not lazy or anything when it comes to tank care, I just don't see why I should do weekly water changes when my parameters stay so nice and my water stays so clear. Do I have one of the rare "Easter Egg" tanks? Thanks Nicole.

ANSWER: Hi David,

I can't really explain why you don't have any nitrates. I guess it's either your plants absorbing the nitrate, or you have some chemical filter media that you change frequently. Even basic activated carbon will absorb nitrate, it just gets expended more rapidly than more sophisticated media such as Purigen or Chemi-Pure.

Most than likely, your plants are helping lots with water quality. Another thing that might help is if you have alkaline water. When I lived in an apartment with city water, I had my water get yellow more often and also more fish deaths. Simply moving to a house with very hard and alkaline well water has seemed to make my tanks almost bulletproof... even though I still change water like always.

Why? Well, because I figure that other things are being expended - alkalinity, for one thing, and I know my pH drops as my tank becomes more acidic. This is what is commonly referred to as "old tank syndrome" and I try to avoid it.

However, I rinse my media just twice a month, sometimes only once a month, and change only ~20% of the water weekly... even though I routinely recommend that folks change 50% of their water when they are having trouble with their fish. Only because it is such an inexpensive fix, and almost always a step towards recovery. I have seen cases where fish have gotten so adapted to poor water quality (especially in cases where the water has evaporated a lot, say, to below half of the tank's original level) that the fish died from adding new water. More than likely, this was because the pH increase due to adding fresh water, made the ammonia that was already present in the water much more toxic.

Right there is one clue to your fish tank's success. A pH of 6.0 is 100x below neutral (7.0) since pH is based on an algorithm of 10. So ammonia is much less toxic at a pH of 6.0 than it is at 8.0, for example, so even if you had an ammonia spike from say, an overfeeding accident... it would not be as critical as it would be in a tank with a high pH. And you are unlikely ever to have ammonia present in your tank to begin with, since your undergravel is providing a constant biological filtration source. In fact, these "old school" filters are, in many ways, the most reliable, since they operate with very little maintenance and guesswork.

I would say that having ample filtration, a light stocking scheme (for now), having live plants, and perhaps having water with a high enough alkalinity to keep the pH stable, is the key to your aquarium's success in spite of your infrequent water changes. But...and there's always buts!

As your fish grow, they will require more water changes. Six angelfish for a 55 gallon tank is pushing it. The irony here is that if you don't change much water, metabolites in the water will keep your angelfish from growing too rapidly. This is why discus keepers change so much water...they want their discus to grow fast! And they also feed lots of high protein foods for this reason.

All but your platy trio, should like the water with the lower than neutral pH. However, your clown loaches would probably prefer more company, and the same for your tetras. I would not keep a tetra singly, as the tetras I've kept (which include black skirts) seem to do better in schools, behavior wise. This is especially true of neons, who are much more confident when kept at a dozen or more. Did you have more to start with? Because angelfish are notorious neon-eaters! It's not really their fault. Neons are a natural food source for them in the wild, since they come from the same Amazonian region, so it's natural for them.

In any case, do know that few to no water changes was once the modus operandi of the fishkeeping hobby at large. Just a couple decades ago, everyone was using carbon to get the yellow out of their water, and dumping in tons of "aquarium" salt to harden up their fish, which were not getting much new water, ever. This seemed to work fine for a long time, until people started changing more water and found better results. However, I am sure there are plenty of old school aquarists, still using salt and carbon and making very few water changes, to fine effect. Each to his own!

I do have a feeling, though, that if they switched to doing weekly water changes, their fish would be even healthier, even more active, with even brighter colors and even better appetites. There will always be cases to the contrary...such as the bottle of Chemi-Pure which states on the back more or less that "this product guarantees you will never have to do a water change!" ...well, OK. But I am still going to do them! No matter what, their wastes are going somewhere, and I would just feel guilty keeping my fish in a closed system, comparatively very small and very dirty to what they would be receiving in the wild, without offsetting it with water changes. In any case, that's my two cents!

Take care! I'm glad to have someone write me today with healthy fish, that aren't sick or dying...it's a relief!

Nicole

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Wow Nicole! What an awesome response! Thanks for everything. A few more things to add to everything else.

The single Tetra I have for some reason thinks hes a platy. And they do to! He schools with them, eats with them, and does exactly what they do all the time.

So you think my tank is lightly stocked? Would I be able to get another 1/2 dozen neons and a few more platys? Those neons were all i purchased over a year ago, the angels seem to like them. And I would be alright getting a few more small clown loaches? I only got 2 because I saw the full grown ones at my lfs and I didn't want to over populate the tank.

Thanks again for all your help and advice. I've saved a copy of your response to my desktop! Take care Nicole.

Answer
Hi again, David!

Oh wow! Thank you for the raves about my response to you. I do try my best to be thorough, and I am the sort of person who prefers a longer, more in-depth reply myself, so I am glad to see that it is appreciated. Again, thank you!

That can and does happen with fish kept singly. I have a golden topminnow in my aquarium which is a native fish from central FL, where I live. I actually just put him in there to observe him and meant to return him to his pond which is on a friends property...but anyhow, he often hangs out with the silver tip tetras which are the fish that look most like him. I can't imagine this tetra looks anything like the platys, but maybe they are just the friendliest to him! So if he seems like he is doing fine, that ought to be OK then, but you might still like the loose shoaling affect that a group of 3-4 tetras can create. My personal favorite are the diamond tetras. As they mature, they become real beauties!

Your stocking scheme seems fine, except for the angelfish. Are you trying to form a pair or a couple of pairs? Because I would say that two pairs of full grown angelfish would be the most your tank could support. Angels become more territorial as they mature, and should they get the spawning urge, your tank could become a war zone. I know you won't have to worry about that for a while, but you'd be surprised how those cute angelfish grow from nickels to quarters to silver dollars to...well, you get the picture. I would say, keep them all in the tank and enjoy them for as long as you can, but plan on having somewhere else to put at least a couple of them in the future. Usually they can be traded in, as mature angelfish sell for double digits and fish stores that do trade-ins are happy to accept them.

You can definitely add more neons. The only caveat is the angelfish, as they're known to eat anything that fits inside of their mouths. Discus, which are related to angelfish, seem to never get the urge to eat them, but I personally have kept angelfish and had little fish go missing.

I would get at least one more clown loach. The thing about clown loaches which you are probably already aware, is that they do grow large. An exceptional size would be 12" but 6-8" is much more common, and they are one of the slowest growing fish in the hobby. They are also very long lived, so provided you care for them well, they can easily live a decade or more. On loaches.com there's a clown loach named "Marge" and she's well over 20 years old! In fact, here's the write-up from loaches.com, probably the premier site on loaches on the internet with lots of fantastic info:
http://www.loaches.com/species-index/clown-loach-chromobotia-macracanthus

If seeing Marge didn't scare you off...! :) Then I would consider at least getting one more clown loach, because three seems to be the minimum for these sociable fish. If you ever plan to upgrade, say to a 75 gallon tank, I would say to splurge and get maybe 3 more, since 5 is the number that seems to work out best. However, if you are happy with the 55 gallon tank, and are one of those rare successful fishkeepers who doesn't get "the itch" for either more or bigger tanks (or both!) then consider three or four clown loaches to be the maximum for your 55 gallon tank.

Now, about the platies. I don't know what your experiences have been, but I find livebearers to be rather tricky. They're always having fry, and they tend to swell or become constipated if not fed a green diet. If you can meet their special needs, which are basically a green diet and water with plenty of carbonate hardness, then I would say to go ahead and get a few more since they are social also...but opt for a 3:1 ratio of females to males, as males can become aggressive and pester the females (sometimes to death!) if there are, say, 4 males and 1 female. The poor girl has nowhere to go! If you don't already know, here's how to sex livebearers...just look for the anal fin, or gonopodium:
http://www.fishforever.co.uk/livebearers.html

And here's an excellent article on livebearers:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/poeciliids.htm

Well, it's time for bed, but thanks for writing, I'm happy to help! Have a great day.

Nicole