Large water change

abrooks12376

New member
Hey all, I've been a fw guy for years, planted tanks and delicate soft water cichlids. These tanks get a weekly 50% wc change. I've been doing a weekly 7% wc on my 45 gal mixed reef system as instructed. Is there any harm in doing a larger wc? Obviously getting sg dialed in. I have 20 gal mixed up and ready. Would a 25% wc be crazy?shock coral??

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I routinely do a 35-40g water change on my 120. If something is seriously wrong, I've done up to about 80%. The suggested norm is 10% weekly or 20% every two weeks.

As long as the salinity, temp, and other parameters match up it will be fine. If you have stony corals, check your Calcium, Alkalinity, and Magnesium in both the tank and the make up water and adjust the new water to match.

hth
 
Sump is 15 gal and dt is 29, in going to simply drain the sump and refill..

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That's not the best thing to do. You want to remove as much of the nasty water in the tank as well as vacuuming up after using a turkey baster on the rocks and sand.
 
It really depends on the tank. I've had systems that benefited from actual vacuuming, since there would be obvious areas where detritus settled, or the rock would get gunky, or whatever. In my current tank, there's literally nothing to suck up, so I do usually just drain water from the sump since it's more convenient. Even blowing off the rockwork with a turkey baster pretty much does nothing. This is the benefit to a ton of flow, starting with clean rock, and good nutrient export for the amount of food I put in - the tank stays fairly clean on it's own.

If you've got older, dirty rockwork, or you have cyano blooming on your sand, or low enough flow that detritus settles out in the display, or some other visually obvious problem - then yes, absolutely, take advantage of the water change to suck that stuff out.
 
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