Continuous auto water change or weekly auto water change

Tdoan · Sep 22, 2020

I am setting up a auto water change on a 40 reeder tank. I am planning to use the Dose.

What is everyone’s setup?

Daily Or weekly and what is the percentage of water everyone is changing.

is there an advance from doing it one way over the other?

reefwiser · Sep 22, 2020

At size aquarium I would just do a weekly. I had a tank that size and did a percentage each day. Drove the phosphate so low that it caused a dinoflagellates outbreak. Weekly just makes your life easier.

HappyReefing98 · Jan 13, 2021

reefwiser said:
At size aquarium I would just do a weekly. I had a tank that size and did a percentage each day. Drove the phosphate so low that it caused a dinoflagellates outbreak. Weekly just makes your life easier.

I have a 90 and I just set up a AWC. I change out a gallon a day spread out over the day, I have noticed a small spike in dinos, what caused that? Why would doing seven gallons all at once, once a week fix that? Thanks you, was about to add Microbacter to try to fix.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jan 13, 2021

IMO, if it is automated, there's no reason to not do nearly continuous. In that case, the new water need not match anything in the tank. Not alkalinity, salinity, temperature, or anything else, as long as you know what it is and why.

HappyReefing98 · Jan 13, 2021

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
IMO, if it is automated, there's no reason to not do nearly continuous. In that case, the new water need not match anything in the tank. Not alkalinity, salinity, temperature, or anything else, as long as you know what it is and why.

That was my thought also, have had it running for about a month now and am thinking about adding my ALK to it instead of manually. Thoughts?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jan 13, 2021

HappyReefing98 said:
That was my thought also, have had it running for about a month now and am thinking about adding my ALK to it instead of manually. Thoughts?

That won't work. If you changed 1% daily, and needed 1 dKH per day added to the tank, the new salt water would need to be over 100 dKH, which would be impossible without massive precipitation.