Instuctions for the Water Change Wizard

  1. Enter the actual volume = Most tanks hold about 85% of the tank size. So a 55 gallon tank probably holds about 47 gallons of water. Use the Aquarium calculator above to get an accurate volume. Be sure to use the inside dimentions of the aquarium. After that, you may need to subtract more water volume due to substrate and decorations. So the actual volume of a 55 gallon tank is probably only 40 gallons.
  2. Enter Evaporation rate = It varies. Probably about 0.15% of the tank. This is not hard to measure. Just mark off the water height on the tank. Then wait a few days. Then see how much water it takes to get back to the original water height. Then divide the volume by how many days you waited. You may want to measure this a during each season of the year. You'd be surprised how evaporation effects the overall water quality.
  3. Enter Estimate of Pollution Accumilated Per Day = 1 to 1.5 ppm of Nitrates is about normal. Heavy feeding tanks will be 3+ ppm's. More tips, see below.
  4. Enter Pollution Level of Source Water = Here enter the Nitrate or the TDS reading of your tap water.
  5. Enter Pollution Level of Aquarium = Use Nitrates or TDS reading or just enter original numbers, such as 0 to see the past and future of the aquarium.
  6. Select Water Change Frequency = Be realistic. If you do changes every single week on the same day, put weekly. If your like me, you end up doing them about every 10 days, if that's so select "every 10 days".
  7. Enter Water Change % = If you do 25%, then enter 25.
  8. Enter Pollution Level Goal = Enter Nitrates or TDS. For Nitrates, accumilation below 20 is good. For TDS, a good goal is to be within 20-40 ppm of the source water.
  9. Enter the drip rate. This is used only for continuous drip water change systems. This is what I now have. This program helped me see the benefits of a drip system.

How to Estimate Pollution

Option 1

Measure Nitrates after a water change,

then measure the nitrates again before the next water change,

then divide the difference by the number of days between water changes

Option 2

Measure the TDS instead.

This program was originally created to estimate future TDS levels

Option 3

New!

Use the Fish Food Wizard to estimate Nitrates

Fish Food Wizard

1