Thinking of starting daily water changes

Bubblebass · Mar 1, 2016

I've been doing 15% water changes every 2 weeks and I'd like to move it to 1% daily or 2% every 2 days. The benefits to me would be:

Easier to make saltwater in that quantity in 1g jugs

More stability for the tank.

It seems like a lot of time goes into making the water perfect to avoid any drastic changes when I'm changing 20g at a time.

Is the reason most people do weekly or biweekly water changes just so it's not a daily thing they have to do? Am I missing something?

(And yes, I know, I know; I'm about to hear about all the people who NEVER do water changes

Humblefish · Mar 1, 2016

This may or may not apply to what you're asking but ... When I do a WC, I'm not happy unless I'm dumping brown water down the toilet. To me, you never want to do a WC simply to replace old water with new. You want to clean the tank by siphoning out detritus, nuisance algae, I'll even vacuum my sand sometimes.

One of my favorite things to do is to blow out all the crud in/on my rocks and suck it out.

I'm just not sure it's worthwhile to do all that a little at a time.

Bubblebass · Mar 1, 2016

Ok, very cool. That's what I was hoping for; education. I was under the impression that water changes were to replace minerals and the pumps and wavemakers are to keep the nasties in suspension so they can be overflowed out and skimmed.

Why do water changes every two weeks then if the nitrates/phosphates are low and the water is clear?

Humblefish · Mar 2, 2016

Bubblebass said:
Ok, very cool. That's what I was hoping for; education. I was under the impression that water changes were to replace minerals and the pumps and wavemakers are to keep the nasties in suspension so they can be overflowed out and skimmed.

Why do water changes every two weeks then if the nitrates/phosphates are low and the water is clear?

Water changes are done for many reasons: Replenish ions & trace elements, reduce nitrates/phosphates, remove organics & toxins from the water ... but don't pass up the opportunity to use a little "elbow grease" and suck some crap out of your tank as well.

Get the maximum benefit from each & every WC.

Your skimmer mainly removes organics from the water, but there are many things (detritus, nuisance algae) which require manual removal. Good flow and fine mesh filter socks will help immensely, but vacuum just the top layer of your sand bed sometime and you'll see all the filth those things don't pull out.