Water Change amount/frequency?

**sheamurai** · 06-25-2012, 04:09 AM

Anyone else reading that TOTM for June on RC?

No water changes for years!

After reading anther thread on there, I find out that my changing 5gal per week on my 50gal seems rather rare. Looks like most folks change only once per month-ish.

Now I know as I'm not running a skimmer, I need to keep a sharper eye on my water quality than ya'all, but I'm curious what you other salty dogs think of wc's on reef tanks, and how much/how often you are doing them?

I'm thinking of spacing my wc's out to every other week now...I'll keep an eye on my 'trates and if they move up on the colour card it will be back to weekly for me...

**Cliff** · 06-25-2012, 04:29 AM

I do not think weekly waterchanges are rare on reef tanks. I would think not doing any waterchanges (assuming I could) would require a perfectly balanced tank with just the right dosing routine to keep it there. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I would certainly not be trying that as maintaining that level of balance over years would be far over my head. But I'm a little bias on my opinion about water changes

Everyone in town here does weekly or bi-weekly waterchanges of 5 to 20%, depending on their water parameters and personal preferances.

I do weekly 10 to 15% water changes.

**chrisfraser05** · 06-25-2012, 04:37 AM

doesn't matter if I do a water change or not (parameters wise), my algae scrubber keeps the phos and nitrate in check.

I dose Alk, calc and mag so that doesn't change.

The longest I went was 6 weeks without a change but generally I do one anywhere between 2 weeks and 4 weeks.

Doesn't seem to matter how often I do it lol

When I do one next week, when I get home from my month working away, it will have been 5 weeks.

**chrisfraser05** · 06-25-2012, 04:42 AM

I've got to add, when I do changes its with NSW and I do about 15%

**sheamurai** · 06-25-2012, 05:04 AM

I guess over on RC only the people who did them over longer periods responded to the thread...on that particular thread tho, weekly wc'ers were scarce!

**Cliff** · 06-25-2012, 05:08 AM

I'm too much of a chicken to go longer than two weeks without a waterchange

I'm too worried about the other trace elements that I don't test for being depleted

To each there own I guess. As their tanks look a heck of a lot better then mine, they must be doing something right

**MCHRKiller** · 06-25-2012, 05:12 AM

Well as I am going to fully downsize the 55G to a 20G once I am comfortable the 20G is established well enough....I am only doing monthly changes of 25% on both tanks. Before I would do a 10% WC on the 55G every 10-14 days. You know I have not noticed water parm differences between the old way and the new way. However with that said...there is more to water quality than just ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, alkalinity and etc. So I would never leave a tank more than 1 month without a waterchange of some form.

**glarior** · 06-25-2012, 09:11 PM

I don't do water changes. I add mg, kH and some Ca if needed.

Only time I have done water changes is if something went very wrong. One time my sea hare died and I never knew but thankfully the minature eco system took care of itself and nothing else died. Once I realized that I did do a good water change. That tank been going for almost 1.5yrs

Also, the new thing I have added is a algae scrubber. That is awesome especially if you don't have a lot of LR. Takes away the nitrates and algae does not grow on the glass.