Are water changes supposed to be this disruptive and messy?

[WhalesLovePineapple]

I do a 5 gallon water change once every 2 weeks for my 20 gallon nuvo. I use a vacuum cleaner to clean up the poop and as I do it, I move the rockwork around (barebottom) to get a full clean.

Afterwards I dump back in 5 gallons of water and the whole tank is a cloudy mess. I also have chaeto in the tank too so all these tiny pieces are flying around.

I'm wondering how people do their water changes and if it is as disruptive and stressful to the their livestock as it is to my fish and corals

 

[Albertan_Reef]

My system is a lot bigger. But , I drain my sump into 1 45 gallon trash can, then fill up the sump to where it was originally. Takes about 15 minutes. To get all the debris in the tank I turn all the power heads on high and let them stir everything up 20 minutes before a water change and my socks catch most of it

 

[shrimped]

I have 3” sand bed and I don’t mess with it much.
I use RODI + Red Sea blue bucket salt.
Use a siphon thing to get 20% of my tank water to a bucket.
Dump bucket out of dirty water out
Put RODI water in bucket and add some salt.
I mix with my hand lol.
Get as close to 1.026 specific gravity or whatever safe level of sg you had in your tank using Refractometer.
And add back water using a small container with pumps on so u don’t stress coral.
It’s not so disruptive for me because I don’t stir up my sand manually. I use cerith snails and Nessarius snails to do that. I also have a nice flow going around so no dead spots where things tend to collect
Edit: my bad idk how I missed the bare bottom part lol. For bare bottom I would have higher flow to keep debris suspended in water that leads to a overflow into a filter sock

 

[laverda]

Having more details on your tank would make it easier to give accurate answers. Moving the rock around sounds like a lot of work to me. What are you using for filtration? It also sounds like you don’t have a lot of flow for a bare bottom tank. You should not have that much to vacuumed up if you have enough flow and a good filtration set up. A small power head held by hand will blow debris out from under rocks as well as in the rocks. If your literally dumping your nsw in your probably getting detritus out of the rocks. Use a small pump or gravity to slowly add water would prevent this. It will also help prevent sudden temp changes if the nsw temp is not the same as the tank water. Another possibility is you nsw is not mixed completely if it is a whitish cloudy mess.

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/page-12


Every tank there can flip the sandbed upside down, in tank, with no cycle or cloud. You have a detritus issue, we fix those all day there

 

[brandon429]

The reason you do an occasional rip clean is so that interim cleans never cause clouding, nor hesitation to clean. The sole purpose of that thread is making access to your tank a totally clean venture, move rocks anyway you want.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Your doing too much at once. Try using a large Turkey baster inbetween water changes so less distruption at once. I dont do much water changes but when I do I make sure to not vacuum the sump or clean media . Waterchanges imo should be done to remove detritus and remove metal and done within 30mins. Depending on your trace element update and nutrients your tank may do fine with 5 gallons w/c per month.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I focus the time I save on not doing too many water changes on testing trace elements alk and keeping my propeller pumps clean. The waterchanges just kept increasing my alk and reducing my nutrients and these 2 things had me either feeding more and,turning off my doser and caused more instability. Once you learn how to keep water you realize you been dumping money down the drain for years.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I wouldn't chase water changes unless the specimens become indicators or testing warrants a change. Spend time to enjoy your tank creation rather than running a chemistry lab

 

[vetteguy53081]

 

[lapin]

Use that vac more. For some reason you are getting more detritus than you are exporting. If you dont have any corals that are fragile, you can take the rock out a piece at a time . Rinse it and put it back in. You can rinse your chaeto too. This will help. Once you get it clean dumping water in will not make a mess. You can always use a small pump and hose to pump water back in. This should help with the cloud until the detritus is gone.
My 60 gallon water changes take about 20 min. 10 min to empty... 10 min to refill. It does not make a cloudy mess of my tank.

 

[Ashish Patel]

If its messy and stressful do it less frequently but when you do it do it well. For instance, when I do waterchanges I test the alk in the new water, the tank water, and a day after, dont think about replacing tank water without 0 TDS. At this point I honestly don't recognize any positives after waterchanges as I did in the past but if you do see positives that just means you either have something bad in the water you removed 25% of it, or your tank has unstable chemistry and I don't believe a tank should do waterchanges for removing (nitrates/phosphates) or replenishing too many trace elements. I prefer few larger waterchanges every 2-3 months just incase I missed something and I can turnover 80% of the water. The constant daily waterchanges or even weekly is not going to remain consistent when corals grow larger and uptake more nutrients... Thats my Opinion and I am sticking to it..

 

[Burrito]

Put the water in much slower. I used a small return pump when I used to do 5g buckets and the “shot” the water against my hand and the glass. No matter how slowly I poured i would also stir stuff up pouring out of a bucket.

 

[Erick Camargo]

I used to do water changes every week (10%) and all para eaters was a mess. I followed these steps for 13 years! Now, I’m not a reef tank crazyholic for maintenance. I do water changes around 6 or 10 months and just add “Ca,Mg and KH” by dosing pump and removal stuff as Rowa and Chaeto... my tank looks like more healthy and crystal clear water!

 

[HB AL]

When I used to do water changes on a regular basis I would let the sump fill up and pump the water out and replace with the new water and turn the pumps back on. About a year ago I stopped doing water changes and my tank and inhabitants have never looked better.

 

[furcifer208]

I change ~250mL of water per day. Tank is 4 months old.