water changes

[blaster]

What is everyones simplified method?

[RonPeter]

I just suck 5 gallons out into a pail, to replace the water I have a Maxi-Jet 1200 with a hose on it and pump the water back in that way. It is fast and it doesn't disturb the sand bed. While pumping it in I direct the hose over the rock to wash off any debris that is collecting there.

[rudy]

I have a 33 gallon full of mixed salt water under my 135. I have a line drawn on the tank to show the 15 gallon mark. This lasts me two weeks.

I drain 15 gallons out once a week via a long hose directed towards the toilet and a jabo pump that will pump the 15 gallons back into the tank when it is drained. I now have a method of adding salt to the 33 gallon which makes mixing easy.

My water changes take 20 minutes max....on my salt tank anyway. My fresh I use a 2000gph sump pump to drain them.

[Beverly]

The simple water change method is to take some water out of the tank and replace it with new saltwater :wink:

Personally, though, I never just do a water change on water change day. I consider "water change day" to be "tank maintenance day", which is done weekly on three tanks.

I'm of the school of thought that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Doing miniumum maintenance, i.e. only changing some water, is really just setting myself up to have to deal with nuisance algae/cyanobacteria and other problems down the road, which is never any fun and seems forever to correct.

Properly caring for the fish, corals and other inverts in my tanks are of greater importance to me than how little I can get away with in terms of how much work I put into my hobby. In other words, the more you put into your tank, the greater your overall satisfaction and long term success will be.

Here is my webpage on how we maintain our BB tanks. Hope you find the text and photos useful.....

http://www.lostmymarblz.com/reeftips-maintainbarebottomtanks.htm

[BMW Rider]

My 50 gallon tank is easy, I use a small pump with a hose to drain the sump into two buckets. I dump the buckets and refill them from my mixing tank, then using the same small pump, pump it back into the sump. When the sump is emptied, I usually try to clean out any detritus that has accumulated and do any other maintenance that is required. I also service and clean my skimmer then.

On my reef tank I do sort of the same proceedure, but instead of using buckets, I pump the water into a floor drain in my furnace room through a long hose. I have a fitting that goes onto the coupler of my return pump and has the hose connection to drain the sump. Once again, clean up the sump and equipment while its empty. To refill, I connect the hose to the pump on my mixing tank, and refill the sump. I also need to drain a small amount of water, 4-5 gallons, from the main tank to make up the full water change volume of 25 gallons. To do that, I have a fitting and a valve off of my closed loop plumbing that I can attach the hose to.

My mixing tank is set up to keep mixed water on hand all the time (in case of emergencies). It holds 25 gallons, exactly what I need for the reef tank. My 50 gallon tank gets only 10 gallons changed at a time. I alternate water changes every week, so each tank gets done every other week (more or less).