Ive made up 125 gallons of water change water. My tanks net gallons are about 150. Is it better to do all 125 gallons at once or three 42 gallon water changes over a few weeks. Benefits/disadvantages?
Water changes
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MONTANTK
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Unless you’re trying to get some out of your system, such as a chemical, I would probably just do 20 gallons every 2-3 weeks. If your system is lightly stocked you could probably do once a month but I would just check your parameters twice a week to gauge it
In general, smaller frequent changes are recommended so tank inhabitants are not stressed. Typically 10% weekly is recommended. I used (many years ago) to do 30% every 2 months though. That was before I had many acros.
arking_mark
2500 Club Member
What's your goal of doing the water change?
OP
OP
Frags of sps, some frogspawn, live rock, 5 fish (yellow tang, scopas tang, panther grouper, emperor angelfish and an orange spot rabbitfish). Its a bare bottom tank so theres a lot of accumulated detritus every 10 days id like to remove. But am thinking if its better to remove it in 3 wated changes or not.
Parameters are po4 .54ppm no3 2.5ppm. 440 cal, 1285 magnesium.
arking_mark
2500 Club Member
Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank. So if your parameters aren't closely matched, including nutrients, you could be asking for trouble. I recommend doing the water changes over multiple weeks...maybe 25% a week.
FWIW I change about 10% every three weeks. Sometimes I stir up the SSB, sometime I don't. No problem... In the long run though I do recommend getting some of that muck out of the substrate on a regular basis. Manual labor can work wonders sometimes. GL.
Build Thread - Cook's 105 Planet Aquariums Crystaline Reef - 48x20
Thanks for the information it a good summary for reference without having to read through the big post. I couldn't read you replies though, I was too busy taking the tank apart. :) I didn't just go for it first thing, I had tested the GHA removal method several months with good results. The...
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Your key issues are detritus upwelling when pouring back in
And light ramping afterwards if it's all at once cleaning. Partial changes don't require light ramping
That's an example above of our most recent change, I think he did most new water all at once
Doing forty gallons is still a lot if you choose that mode
the complete water change now works in any reef tank we want to run one in. that doesn't mean you should or should not do it...it means if you want to the method exists. our home transfer threads are getting close to a thousand examples of complete water changes. nobody loses corals on our home move works
doing a full water change in a bare bottom reef requires little prep other than matching temp and salinity and light dropping a bit. doing the water change over a dirty sandbed required forty pages of practice not to kill your whole system.
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Randy Holmes-Farley
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IMO, it makes only a small difference in terms of import/export.
125/150 = 83%
All at once, it exports 83% of a bad pollutant that is not in the new salt water.
Done in 3x 27.7%, it removes 62% of a bad pollutant that is not in the new salt water.
125/150 = 83%
All at once, it exports 83% of a bad pollutant that is not in the new salt water.
Done in 3x 27.7%, it removes 62% of a bad pollutant that is not in the new salt water.
Keep in mind that water changes don't work very well for phosphate.
Nitrate dilution is basically as simple as the math. But phosphate gets bound up by rock and sand and later released into the water. GFO or phosguard works better in the short term, and in the long term some type of algae scrubber works well.
Nitrate dilution is basically as simple as the math. But phosphate gets bound up by rock and sand and later released into the water. GFO or phosguard works better in the short term, and in the long term some type of algae scrubber works well.
