Sea Salt And Water Changes

[dacrystal]

Hey Guys:

I would like some advice on husbandry. In a heavily stocked 75 Gallon Tank How frequent should the water changes be and how many gallons should be changed.

Finally what is the best type of Salt to use. I currently use Coralife Salt.

I have succesfully ran a softie and brain tank for over a year and now am starting to bring SPS corals into the Mix. My tank has low nitrates but my PH and Calcium are never as high as I would like. I recently purchased a ASM G3 skimmer to lower the nutrients in the tank (big upgrade from Red Sea Prism skimmer)

I have been pretty lazy until recently with my water changes. Please help me set up some sort of schedule.

Daniel

 

[Deanos]

Read this article: Water Changes In Reef Aquaria

Then tell us what you decided on. Members advice will make much more sense at that time.

 

[clamcrazy]

i do a 1/3 water change every 3 weeks in both of my tank. i think its better to add back minerals and trace elements by doing more water changes rather then to add supps. as far as salt i have used instant ocean for years but over this past summer i switched to reef crystals because it has alot more calcium. my clams seem to like it.

 

[dacrystal]

I read the article and will continue to do large batch water changes. I recently started doing 8% water changes weekly, which is about 30% monthly.

I dose with Reef complete as well as have a Calcium reactor, so I'm not too worried about the magnesium and other element depletion. But I think the benefit of guaranteed removal of a percentage of nitrates and PO4 is worth doing large batch water changes.

My next question is what about gravel cleaning during water changes? I do not have a big reef cleaning crew other than bristle worms in the sand bed. Should I gravel clean or not? My Brain collection goes crazy (in a good way) for the bacteria. Put I'm not sure if this is also stirring up toxins.

Finally is there any Salt Mixes to AVOID like the plague?

 

[ShaunW]

I do once a month, 40 gallons of water changed. I have about 120 gallons of total water volume. The key for me is doing the change quickly, since I have alot of corals that are no longer submerged during the change.

 

[ezee]

Dacrystal,

My next question is what about gravel cleaning during water changes?

Finally is there any Salt Mixes to AVOID like the plague?

I don't know about salt mixes to avoid but I would avoid gravel! lol

E

 

[bad coffee]

David,
Do you have gravel or crushed coral? If it's gravel, get it out of there. If it's crushed coral, you're either going to need a better sand stiring crew or you're going to have to clean it by hand. (PITA if you ask me.) you might want to look into switching over to sand.

I didn't like Red sea salt. My corals never looked as good, and there was always dirty residue left in the bottom of the bucket. Other than that I stick to IO or Reef crystals.

As for water changes, I used to do a 20% every couple of weeks. it was on my 20 gallon (+sump) so it was a 5 gallon bucket change in and out. Done in 10 minutes. Now with my bigger tank I don't know what i'll do.

Good move on the bigger skimmer. it will help. If you need more calcium you might want to look into a kalk reactor/calcium reactor. I just dump some kalk powder into my top-off container and dose that way.

B

 

[dacrystal]

I don't know about salt mixes to avoid but I would avoid gravel! lol

E

Noob Mistake! Crushed Coral! :splitspin

I'm looking for a gravel sifting Star errh I mean crushed coral sifting Star.