Water change frequency

[Hallowhead]

Howdy,

I'm curious to see the responses to this.

If you have a tank that you're closely monitoring and you're po4 and no3 are in range as well as ammonia and you're dosing two part what's the thought on much less frequent water changes ?

I ask because my 30 AIO has zero ammonia in check po4 and I'm dosing two part however, my weekly water changes are stripping no3. I'm thinking every other week should be sufficient the only thing holding me back is the substrate gets some buildup of gunk.

 

[Waters]

You only need to do water changes as they are needed based on nutrients. Some people do not do water changes at all. At some point you might need to dose trace elements that the normal water changes replenish but you can keep an eye on that stuff with water analysis tests.

 

[Hallowhead]

You only need to do water changes as they are needed based on nutrients. Some people do not do water changes at all. At some point you might need to dose trace elements that the normal water changes replenish but you can keep an eye on that stuff with water analysis tests.

I think even maybe less quantity - like just enough to quickly siphon off the substrate would do well too. I just need to help these nitrates out

 

[Waters]

I think even maybe less quantity - like just enough to quickly siphon off the substrate would do well too. I just need to help these nitrates out

Yeah, less water changes would help. You could also try feeding more....or adding a few more fish depending on your current fish load.

 

[madweazl]

I do water changes to replenish all of the macro and micro elements I'm not adding to the tank with 2-part. The actual water change usually has a short term effect on nutrient levels which don't concern me in the slightest (if they're measurable, they're high enough).

 

[dank reefer]

You can siphon into a filter sock in the sump when cleaning your substrate if that's the route you want to go. I stopped doing water changes back in July of last year and dose trace elements back into the tank.

 

[Hallowhead]

You can siphon into a filter sock in the sump when cleaning your substrate if that's the route you want to go. I stopped doing water changes back in July of last year and dose trace elements back into the tank.

Never thought of this.. I don't have a sump it's an AIO but I can just siphoned out and than siphoned filtered back in

 

[mike550]

You can siphon into a filter sock in the sump when cleaning your substrate if that's the route you want to go. I stopped doing water changes back in July of last year and dose trace elements back into the tank.

Wow. How did you manage to do that?

 

[dank reefer]

Wow. How did you manage to do that?

When I first started my tank, I wanted to use the Triton method which calls for no water changes and using their products to add the necessary nutrients back into the water. Bought the sump that was Triton ready and all, but set everything up in the traditional method until the tank could get established. Couldn't get chaeto to grow no matter what I did, until one day I had enough and I removed my filter socks (I HATE FILTER SOCKS) from my system and decided to wait and see if my chaeto would at least grow a bit. After a month or so I noticed that my little ball of chaeto had become the size of a cantaloupe. I decided to let it ride for another month to see the growth, and before the month period I had to harvest the chaeto as it didn't have any more room to grow. And during that time I did not perform any water changes and test my nutrients to see how the chaeto and skimmer were doing, and noticed that I was near 0 on both po4, and no3. So I started feeding heavier so that I could at least keep po4 above 0.01. And for the couple of months that I stopped doing water changes, I started to dose trace elements into the tank.

The only water that my tank has seen was when I added a 50g lowboy and plumbed it into my main system, and RODI water for top off.

 

[Hallowhead]

My nitrates bottomed out to zero today.. I have some brown slimy diatoms on my substrate which never used to happen until this issue occured. I'll continue to hold off on water changes and up my feeding a little as well as feed extra reef roidz

 

[Webslinger]

5% weekly and your tank will be awesome!