Western_reefer
Reef keeper
Like the title says, is 100% water changes a month enough on a Non-Photosynthetic tank? 100% is counting the sump as well.
100% water changes a month enough?
- Thread starter Western_reefer
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Aquabacs
New member
There are a few factors that are involved. Your feeding of your aquarium, bioload, skimming, and other nutrient control. Each of our aquariums are different.Knowing your tank and it's demands is a good starting point. Once you know the demands of the aquarium, evaluate your water quality,then you can figure out if you will need to change more or less water. Constantly observe your aquarium and if adjustments need to be made, then do so.
Western_reefer
Reef keeper
Oh, ok, got it. How much water do you change a month BTW?
stunreefer
Reef Hugger
100% a month will not force another cycle. "Cycling" is the process of building up enough bacteria (biological filter) in order to process nutrients in the aquarium. It is an ongoing process as you add livestock, but the largest part happens while establishing a new aquarium as it's balancing itself out (hence the reason NH3/NH4+ and NO2 are high or "spike"). The water in our (not new) aquariums is established with some bacteria in the column along with many other things, but "cycled" and water shouldn't be used in conjunction.
I don't dose anything to my tank. I just do water changes. With that said none of my corals use a lot of Ca/Alk as they're not extremely fast growers, so there's no need. They also don't seek the stability other corals do, so seeing the levels change bit here and there do not adversly effect them. I don't really have a set water change regime, I change out "X" amount when the levels climb high enough. I didn't do a water change for probably two months until last night I changed out about 45 gallons (out of a ~ 180 gal system).
I don't dose anything to my tank. I just do water changes. With that said none of my corals use a lot of Ca/Alk as they're not extremely fast growers, so there's no need. They also don't seek the stability other corals do, so seeing the levels change bit here and there do not adversly effect them. I don't really have a set water change regime, I change out "X" amount when the levels climb high enough. I didn't do a water change for probably two months until last night I changed out about 45 gallons (out of a ~ 180 gal system).
Western_reefer
Reef keeper
Thats a lot. lol
Western_reefer
Reef keeper
slapshot
Active member
If your using natural sea water I would change as much as you can. To me the most important thing is consistency. Rather then change 100 percent a week it might be better to change 25 percent every other day. You don't want stuff to build up for a week and go to zero. I like to change 20 percent a week but I do over two to three times a week.
If I had a free source of salt water I would go for a constant change system. Where water in is clean water out is dirty. Heck if I lived near the ocean and was not afraid of pollution I would do a constant change that changed 100 percent a day. A little extreme I know but cool.
If I had a free source of salt water I would go for a constant change system. Where water in is clean water out is dirty. Heck if I lived near the ocean and was not afraid of pollution I would do a constant change that changed 100 percent a day. A little extreme I know but cool.
Western_reefer
Reef keeper
I don't live TOO close to the ocean. lol I live 2 hours away. I am able to get 75 gallons of water at most at a time and I go once a month, every month. I also have a 28 gallon JBJ Nano-Cube.
oldreefer76
New member
I am doing 10% daily using IO on 10g until I get my 25g cube up and running
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