5 a day or 35 a week?

[mcoomer]

I've generally done frequent, small water changes and now that I've moved up in size I'm wondering if my schedule is still going to work. Doing 5 gallons a day give me 35 for the week and 140 for the month, on average. Is that sufficient for a 180G mixed SPS reef? I dose calcium and alkalinity daily, and supplement magnesium as necessary which isn't very often. On my 125 this worked well. I'm just wondering if the extra volume will mean that bigger water changes are necessary. Obviously I'll test and watch for negative changes in water quality.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Fishamatank]

If you have the same amount of fish in the larger tank you could do less water changes. It all depends on the amount of waste produced per unit of water.
Honestly, that seems like a lot of water changes to me. I do 15 gallons every other week on my 120 and have been for quite some time and I have more fish than I should.

Your water change schedule should be more than sufficient, if I had to do water changes like that I would invest in one of the auto changing systems, b/c that sounds like a major PITA.

 

[aleonn]

If you do a small water change every single day (on top of all the other aquarium husbandry), pretty soon you're not going to want to look at your tank anymore. I'd rather do a larger change every 2-3 weeks.

 

[mike_cmu04]

I agree larger water changes weekly or you will get sick of it.

 

[m-rass]

I have a 150 and I do 20gal a week. daily isnt really necessary unless you have an overstocked nano.

 

[RotaryGeek]

+1, i wouldn't do daily water changes to save my tank.

 

[mcoomer]

I suppose I can pull it back a bit but it's such a simple thing to do that I don't mind. I had my 125 up for 12 years before this tank and didn't get tired of it. Did I manage to maintain that schedule all the time? No, but I was pretty good at sticking to it. Besides, it's such a simple task. I've got several buckets that are marked so that I put in 5 level scoops of salt, fill to the mark, drop a Maxi Jet in, and next day I've got saltwater.

Anyway, if I cut back to 5 every other day or so I don't suppose anything will suffer. As long as I test and stay on top of any trends in the water parameters I can adjust my schedule as necessary.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[KafudaFish]

I went with the daily WC on my system for 3 months and liked it better than one large WC.

I thought it was easier and more importantly I did it vs. getting everything together and something happening and not getting to work on the tank for a few additional days. I would come home from work do a 1 gallon WC pour the new water in along with VSV and MB7 and feed my fish and was done in just a minute or two.

If you have been doing it for years why change it?

 

[mfinn]

I would also say move your wc'ing back to once a week or every other week gradually.
When I first started out I thought I needed to do daily wc's too, but after a while it got to be a pain.
Now I do my wc's on my 2 tanks every other week and it has been that way for about
20+ years.
Think long term and what will make it easy for you to live with long term.

 

[johnnyblaze313]

I used to do 5 a day mon-fri on my 180 tsv 300 gal, tank never looked better then when i did this... Ill b going back to this method soon, its actually pretty easy if u have a water change station with bulk saltwater mixed

 

[frankpayne32]

If you don't mind doing the daily changes that would be best. Small frequent changes are much better than large infrequent changes in a reef tank. There was an article on water changes in the old Reefkeeping magazine that showed the dilution effect caused by various water changing regimes. It showed that while doing small frequent water changes diluted the tank water slightly less than larger changes the difference was negligible and was outweighed by the benefit of having a very stable tank.

 

[reefgeezer]

IMO, daily water changes are a little less efficient than larger, less frequent water changes. However, smaller ones reduce the degree of change in water chemistry. Additionally, any change that does happen does so over a longer period. Ithink the sligtly lower efficiency is balanced by increased stability. I plan to start continuous automated water changes with a Reefiller dosing pump that will change approximate 60% of the water per month.

 

[sunil6784]

If you've been doing it for 12 years, and you still enjoy the hobby, then go for it! Smaller water changes are less stressful on your tank. It's just difficult for most of us to maintain that level of commitment.