water changes

[funkmaster]

i have a 150 gal tank with a 30 gal sump and every body i talk to tells me somthing different about how often and how much water to change ...i also relized that most of the people im getting this info from at the lfs dont even have large tanks or a tank at all ..they just work at these lfs ...i would like to get input from from members who acually have a fish tank ...lol...
thanks
E

 

[jerl77]

water change what is that? i do 50 gallons a month on a 125

 

[funkmaster]

i was doing 30 gal a mon on mine .......is 1 bigger water change better then smaller water changes

 

[CrashGibson]

Most would say change 20% of the tank size a month, and weekly water changes are less stressful on the tank than one large change a month. Alot of people dont have time for that though.

 

[gholtmeyer]

a buddy of mine did a 10% water change every sunday morning, come hell or high water so to speak. His tank had fantastic growth, but poor color. Another buddy never did water changes, (he did have calc. reactor hooked up)had slow growth, but great color. I am not sure if there is a connection or not.

 

[reef28]

I have a 300 gallon reef tank. Water change once a month 100 Gallons

 

[gatojebv]

I have a 120G and I change 20G every 2 months when I remove detritus from the sump or sand. All my fish and corals are ok.

 

[funkmaster]

i dont know what to do ..........

 

[JARRETT SHARK]

Do 20% every 2 weeks if you have the time. That puts you right in the middle

 

[Alfredo De La Fe]

It really depends on what you plan on keeping.

I have a 180 and I change about 30 Gallons a month, but I have gone several months without doing a water change without any problems.

I plan on trying out Natural Sea Water to see how that works out. Supposedly you can get away with less water changes, I'll share my experiences after a few months.

Alfred

 

[tosiek]

It depends what you are keeping. Ive seen beautiful tanks that did 6 month water changes and beautiful tanks that did weekly. It depends on nutrient export, your nitrate levels, and additives that your replenishing the missing minerals and trace elements with.

Rule of thumb is to do weekly 10-15% water changes, or if thats too much a nice larger one once a month, like 20-30%. There is no right and wrong answer. And the reason your doing them is because you need to remove nitrates and Po4 from the water, as well as replenish calk/alk if your not dosing and any trace elements and minerals that your coral are soaking up in their growth process. Doing regular water changes keeps things like iodine, stront, mag, ect all in their normal ranges. And it really depends what your keeping in your tank. A LPS and anemone tank will do better in 3 month water change tanks than SPS and vice versa most times. With more frequent water changes your going to see better growth and color most of the time, that is if everything else in your system is set up right.

Its usually a bad idea to take fish store advice from most places.

 

[tosiek]

a buddy of mine did a 10% water change every sunday morning, come hell or high water so to speak. His tank had fantastic growth, but poor color. Another buddy never did water changes, (he did have calc. reactor hooked up)had slow growth, but great color. I am not sure if there is a connection or not.

There's way too many other factors that affect growth and color to say it was because of the way they did water changes. If it was the same tank i would say yeah sure. Could be lights, bad salt, flow, ect. There is usually a positive link between water changes and color if everything else is right.

 

[bizarrecorals]

if you have time, do 5-10% weekly, if you don't have time, do 25% in 1 shot/monthly + get a really good skimmer., Like Alfredo said, it really depends. what kind of fish are you keeping anyways?

 

[Long-Island-Mike]

Hi Guys,

I have a 92 corner, I use no top glass. I have to add about 5 to 7 gallons of RO water a week, due to evaporation. Would it still be best to do a 10 to 15% water change weekly, All my levels are good.

Thank you
Li Mike

 

[tosiek]

Hi Guys,

I have a 92 corner, I use no top glass. I have to add about 5 to 7 gallons of RO water a week, due to evaporation. Would it still be best to do a 10 to 15% water change weekly, All my levels are good.

Thank you
Li Mike

Yes, you should definately keep doing water changes because with just RO/DI your not replenishing any trace elements and/or minerals that are beneficial to your reef that your coral are using up as well as removing the trates and Po4. And when the water evaporates it leaves behind the Po4 and nitrates and everything else, so just topping off the tank is doing nothing more than topping off your water level and keeping your salinity levels constant. If your adding 5-7 gallons of water once a week for top off i would try to do 1-2 gallons every day or two. Thats alot of water in a 92g tank when it comes to balancing salinity levels which you want to keep at a constant throughout the week. Im assuming and don't know what your top off system is or how frequent.

 

[Long-Island-Mike]

Hi Thank you for your fast response. Yeah, Thats what I thought. I will keep doing the water changers once a month, I will try and start doing them once a week. I was told to only do them every three months or so, I didn't think that sounds right.

I add 1 1/2 gallons or RO water every other day.
Thank you again for all your help
Li MIke

 

[Paul B]

I change about 20% of my water five or six times a year.
I keep mostly LPS corals and if I kept mostly SPS I would change more often.
The tank is 39 years old

 

[funkmaster]

it seems like every 1 has there own way and as long as u r doing water changes u will b ok

 

[ReefBum]

I advocate 10% to 15% weekly water changes. I do a 35 gallon weekly water change on a total of 270 gallons. High import/export has been a big key to my success.

 

[SevTT]

i was doing 30 gal a mon on mine .......is 1 bigger water change better then smaller water changes

No, actually -- a lot of little water changes are better for your organisms than one big water change, because newly-mixed SW in large amount can be a stressor.

How much you need to change depends on your tank -- your load, your husbandry practices, etc, etc. You can get away with practically never changing your water, but then you need to know how to dose your tank with what trace chemicals, and, frankly, doing a water change is easier.

Most people biweekly water changes of about 10-20% of system volume.