Water changes!

[cooper]

Originally Posted by Der_Iron_Chef

The amount I change depends on the amount of water required to siphon all the crap off the bottom. Never more than 2-3 gallons on a 55 gallon tank, though

Do you do this weekly or bi weekly? How many fish are there in the tank? How often do you feed them?

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Originally Posted by cooper

Do you do this weekly or bi weekly? How many fish are there in the tank? How often do you feed them?

I do this once every week (I do skip the odd week, but rarely). I have 5 fish and I feed them every night at 10pm (varies between NLS pellets, mysis and cyclopeeze) as well as generally try to keep some nori in a clip for them to nibble on throughout the day.

[Aqua-Digital]

The biggest advise i can give anyone with regards to water changes is "consistancy". A tank needs two things, stablility and consistancy. In other words if your tank is new then do a water change of the same amount once a week, then once things settle drop that down to once every two weeks. After that it all depends on what your paremeters are telling you.

In my experience a mature tank needs a water change only once a month. As the tank has become mature it has developed in part its own eco system and every time you do a water change you are messing with its own bio rythm. For example, my tank in the UK was a very successful full LPS/sps system, no sump (shock horror!!) and no filtration other than a deep sand bed, a huge skimmer and 80KG of live rock in 125 gallons of water. the tank got a water change every 3 months if it was lucky, and the stag corals grew beyond control!!

What i am trying to say is, as said before "if it aint broke dont fix it" But you must keep track of those parameters especially phoshate and silicate, as these are the two that can build up on you. Everyone is looking for something that has dropped and many forget about the ones that can build up, other than the obvious 3 nasties of course!.

My moto has always been, less played with more success. Just my oppinion.

Best wishes
Michael
www.aqua-digital.com

[cooper]

Originally Posted by Aqua-Digital

The biggest advise i can give anyone with regards to water changes is "consistancy". A tank needs two things, stablility and consistancy. In other words if your tank is new then do a water change of the same amount once a week, then once things settle drop that down to once every two weeks. After that it all depends on what your paremeters are telling you.

In my experience a mature tank needs a water change only once a month. As the tank has become mature it has developed in part its own eco system and every time you do a water change you are messing with its own bio rythm. For example, my tank in the UK was a very successful full LPS/sps system, no sump (shock horror!!) and no filtration other than a deep sand bed, a huge skimmer and 80KG of live rock in 125 gallons of water. the tank got a water change every 3 months if it was lucky, and the stag corals grew beyond control!!

What i am trying to say is, as said before "if it aint broke dont fix it" But you must keep track of those parameters especially phoshate and silicate, as these are the two that can build up on you. Everyone is looking for something that has dropped and many forget about the ones that can build up, other than the obvious 3 nasties of course!.

My moto has always been, less played with more success. Just my oppinion.

Best wishes
Michael
www.aqua-digital.com

That makes a lot of sense, My tank has been set up for a year now. It has been doing great with weekly water changes but today before I did the water change I tested for almost everything. Everything was fine, almost non existent Nitries, Phosphates...etc. Calcium, PH, Alkalinity and the rest was fine. So I thought that maybe I could do a bi-weekly water change instead of weekly.

Thanks for your advice Micheal!

[Aqua-Digital]

Hiya

glad i could help.

To expand on this slightly, and pointing to your tank, if your tank has been running for a year and the parameters are spot on then really you should be looking at a maximum of once a month, but i appreciate this takes a lot of trust in your system to take such a step. So in this case, do as you say, swap to bi weekly I suggest maybe for two months and then for sure swap to monthly, this will give you the opportunity to see how your tank reacts and also your tank bio rythm a chance to adjust.

Always remember you are playing with nature, no mater how smaller portion of nature that may be, but what ever size, nature hates change.

Hope that makes some sort of sense this time of night

best wishes
Michael
www.aqua-digital.com

[Redrover]

What size tank, not that makes a difference, I would disagree on monthly water changes...Don't forget the trace elements in doing water changes.
Your lucky not having any spikes, as most reefers I've talked to have gone through theses spikes...Not just one time, a number. I've had many tanks over the years , starting as a young lad [ freshwater ] now a senior, decided five years ago to try saltwater, after a number of tank I'm still learning.
Like I said if it's not broke don't fix it. I'll stay with what works for me [ once a week ]

Good Luck :RJ

[christyf5]

I have a barebottom tank and my fish produce crap like nobodys business so I do a waterchange weekly mostly to siphon all the fish poop out and various other detritus. I do 15 gallons mostly because I know where the 15 gallon level is in my garbage bucket and was too lazy to do any less. It only takes about 10 gallons to get all the detritus out and suck out any other crud off the rock etc. I suppose I could do it every second week but I hate to see it build up in there and I have a very watery green thumb when it comes to growing algae