Water Changes
 

Well this is my number one piece of advice for new and old aquarist in this hobby.

It may seem like such a simple task in mind or on paper, but when it comes right down to it- a lot of people overlook this very important task.

I have met many wonderful people through this hobby, all of which except for one or two have some kind of desire to provide an ideal enviroment for there animals. So then why do some of these people consider water changes to be not such an important role. I have heard many excuses too-from: I can't afford it, I don't have time, I will do a larger one next month,
my dog ate the saltmix, and so on.......and so on......

I also hear aquarist ask why they have ich, algae, and other problems. I always ask this question first - when and how much are water changes done.

So this is why my number one piece of advice is water changes, our tanks cannot flush themselfs like natural enviroments do every second of the day. So we should then at least make an effort to clean this system at least on a monthly basis.

I know this sounds so basic and so simple, that's because it really is.
Remember, there always has to be a foundation to any structure-water quality is ours!

Finally I would like to mention what a friend of mine in this hobby has told people over the years: "only bad things happen fast in a reeftank, the good things take time!"

Happy Reefing Everyone :mrgreen:
cheers, Rich

Changes
 

How long do you let the salt water your making set? And is there an easyer way of get your salinity right on with our repedly check the salt in the bucket? Do you have any ratios eg. 1 cup every 5 gallons?

I worked out that the TM salt I use is 1/2 cup per gallon.

I try to let the water sit for 2-3 days to let the pH settle down (but I have used it after 24 hours in emergencies) Not sure if this is ok or not but I was doing small water changes (5%) so I figure the impact was small.

I've mixed salt and used it right away. I think the "let it sit for a while" method is old school based on speculation. Craig Bingman states that using freshly mixed water is fine.

Re: Water Changes
 

HERE!! HERE!!!

Weekly 10-15% water changes are essential for all of our reefs - big and small. No my dog doesn't eat the salt mix, and no I won't do a larger one next month. Next freaking MONTH??!?

Weekly, weekly, weekly!

Remember to clean any foam or poly filters in the outgoing changewater each week. And break down and clean your filtration systems and skimmers weekly or bi-weekly too. You'd be surpised how much better your reef looks with frequent and regular maintenance.

Excellent topic!

Okay, I'm down off my soapbox now and I'd better go make us some supper :biggrin:

I like to give my reef a water change every 5-7 days..only because of the 5 fish in there. I find the biggest pain in the ass with having a reef is continuosly doing top off water, especially when it gets warmer outside. If I don't keep up with this my tank tells me, as well as the corals and fish.

Wicked topic though!!!

:confused:

Nope. Sorry. I rarely do water changes.

They are not essential.

Mitch

Perhaps we can say, "they are not essential in a system such as mine." In my own smaller, low-tech system without sump, scrubber, surge, refugium, or towering skimmer, weekly 10% water changes are what I would have to call "necessary."

Oh, and I stir the new saltwater bucket for an hour or two with an MJ1200, and sometimes for a whole afternoon.

JMO, IME, YMMV.

:smile:

I think 10% once a month is a good schedual for a stable tank. if you are having problems I would recomend larger and more frequent, but I think large frequent changes can be a waist of salt, unless you are running with out a skimmer or other "good" filtration ie. frequent carbon change, poly filters ect..

Steve

I agree, Alan. :smile:

Other than trying to keep stable overall conditions, there are few absolutes with reefkeeping.

Mitch

I haven't done one in over 2 months and I am doing one tonight... I wonder if anything will be different tomorrow... Probably not..


I agree water changes are essencial, but less so in larger systems..

In my opinion you should do water changes. Seems that people do water changes after something goes bad (hair algae, cyno, diatoms, livestock deaths, etc). I try to avoid these problems by regular two week 10% water changes. Overkill? I'm not sure but I haven't had any problems and I'd like to keep it that way.

Better to avoid problems than hassling yourself with fixing problems, right? :mrgreen:

All of this is coercing me into doing a water change. But I already did one this year!! I'll do another this week for fun :razz:

Seriously, I think for people less lazy than I, bi-weekly water changes would be a good plan.

Excellant reply's everyone, it's great to hear all your different views :mrgreen:

I would say IMO that water changes are essential for all reefers to perform. Different strokes for different folks however- for example if I had a larger stable tank such as Steve mentioned then maybe I would be inclined to still do a waterchange but just of a lesser volume. Also like Beverly mentioned I would do more frequent waterchanges if I had a smaller tank that was not as stable.

With that said I still believe that water changes are indeed a must for any tank. I premix my new water for about 3 days before changing 15% of my total volume, allowing PH and Alkilinty to reach tank levels, and also to provide good aeration.

cheers, Rich :biggrin:

When we had our 180 gal reef, I still did weekly water changes of 25 gals. Plus the skimmer was cleaned weekly and the foam in the Hagen 802 prefilters were cleaned.

Weekly, weekly, weekly - no matter how big or small a tank is. All tanks benefit from the new water's trace elements that the corals, macroalgae, etc. remove over the course of a week. The bigger the tank, the more corals, fish, inverts it has and all remove trace elements from the water.

Beverly wroteI think this would prove true if all larger tanks always contained more inhabitants. However I have a 27gl that's fully stocked, yet I know of friends who have 72gl and 120gl with alot less inhabitants within there reefs. So I would disagree with Beverly and instead look at the overall water volume as well as the overall inhabitant volume before performing extra waterchanges if they really are not required.

This is just my opinion based on my success however, and if weekly waterchanges are working for your reef then there's no reason to stop :mrgreen:

If you want to get serious about trace element replenishment, you have to do constant testing and be ready to add supplements, if required. It depends on your livestock, of course. Even relatively frequent 50% water changes will not keep up with calcium needs of a high volume SPS/clam/halimeda macroalgae tank. (and water changes of that size are hard on your inhabitants, too) You'll need some sort of reactor or constant B-ionic type additions. You'll never keep up with Iodine, either. It gets consumed too fast.
If you want to keep on top of an excess nutrient problem, slow down on feedings, don't rely on water changes.

I think that water changes are more of a feel-good thing for us than anything........and don't get me wrong - I feel better too when I do one.... :mrgreen:

I would classify water changes as a bit of a "cushion" at best for any over-dosing or over feeding that we may tend to do.
But observation of the health of your corals and fish, water testing and appropriately adjusting the feeding/trace element supplementation is the best way, IMO, to keep your water quality at it's highest.

Here's some fun reading and charts, if you're interested.

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/tb_wctext.html

http://www.reefs.org/library/article...ll_wcdata.html

Mitch

Um, so why are we using Ca reactors and such to put the trace elements back in? I don't think you should use a blanket statment like this because it will not hold true in all cases.. for nanos and such sure.. for skimmerless and such.. sure.. but if you spend a lot of money to get equipment that removes "nasties" and other equipment that replenishes "trace elements" then overdoing water changes is actualy counter productive.. take my tank for Eg.. I maintain my Ca at 465 as of now and my Alk at 13.2. fresh Salt soultion mixes up at a Ca of 360 and a alk of 6 or 7, so by doing water changes I actualy drop my levels. so my equipment has to work to bring them back up..

If you look at a container of ARM by Carbsea it is listed as "complete" material restoring trace elements as well as the main ones..

so I will stand by my original statement "it entirely depends on the tank and the equipment you have one it as to how frequent and how large of water changes you should do..

Steve

What would be helpful is if someone could post some studies or research that shows how water changes are necessary.


Mitch

Mitch, I can't see any doubt that they ARE necessary; I think the question is always about frequency.

Yeah, that's what the majority of people believe. That they are necessary. I'm trying to figure out why.

We spend many agonizing weeks waiting for our newly set-up tanks to "cycle", allowing the bacterial populations to build up and equalize, then we drain it out and replace it with sterile water, which throws the bacteria balance out of whack again, and if the water changes are too large or too frequent, the tank could possibly mini-cycle, causing an ammonia spike.

When you think about all the biological processes going on in our tanks....feeding, excretion, all the messy business involved with reproduction.... :mrgreen: ......even I feel better giving my tank some new clean water. But I don't think that I would call it necessary. There's bacteria and different critters to look after all that stuff. I would think that it's more important to obtain a balanced system that pretty much looks after itself.

I'm playing devils' advocate here because I don't like carte blanche statements like "water changes are necessary". If they're necessary, then why, specifically, are they necessary?...and what possible imbalances in our systems could we be covering up?

Mitch :smile:

Most of my holding tanks and personal tanks have large skimmers to handle high bioloads. Some reef tanks have ca reactors. When I do water changes, I dont have all day as I have many tanks, I mix the salt, let it clear, and dump it in. Ive never had any bad side effects from doing so. And I never do very large water changes.

I recently took apart a personal tank that I had setup and left the same for 3 years. It was a 77gallon Hagen, undrilled. It had 2 Hagen 802 powerheads, 1 Fluval 404 canister filter with bio material in it only, 1 tronic 200W heater, a 3"deep fine argonite subtrate, 120lbs of live rock from all different locales. Livestock was a Blue Regal Tang, a Heteractis Magnifica with 2 Goldstripe Maroon Clowns, a Flameangel, 2 Cleaner Shrimp, 1 Hawiian Cleaner Wrase. It had about 50 blue leg and scarlet hermits and 25 nasarius, 25 astrea, 10 turbo, 10 mexican, 3 trochus, 3 money cowrie, 1 carribean hairy reef hermit. There were many different macro algaes growing from the rock and subtrate, there was 1 green frogspawn, 1 green bubble, 1 devils hand, 1 fiji gold mushroom, 1 green open brain, 1 long tentacle plate, 1 sun coral, 1 purple goniapora, 1 alveapora, a dozen blue mushrooms, a dozen red mushrooms, a handfull of ricordia, and 1 pink birdsnest. The tank was lit with 1 IceCap 660 ballast overdriving 2 Philips 03Atinic and 2 Vita Lites. I changed the bulbs once a year for 3 years. I would say that I added no more than 4 cups of instant ocean saltmix to the tank in 3 years. I had a large bucket on top of the canopy that had aged tapwater in it, it was on a float valve to keep the tank topped up from evaporation, I would add fresh tap water to the bucket every week or so. The only food that I ever put in the tank was frozen and freze dried Mysis shrimp, sometimes supplemented with selcon. For the corals and macro algae I used Salifert all in one coral grower, and salifert iodine. I added the salifert every 2-3 weeks. I never cleaned the fluval once, the powerheads were always on, the lights were on for 12hours a day. There was no protien skimmer and the water parameters were always in the excellent range!
I would say that this was a very simple setup, but it worked well and required almost no maintence. I only added a half cup of salt to the tank a few times in 3 years due to saltcreep. The tank looked beautiful and everything was very healthy, all specimens are still healthy in other tanks. I wont recommend that everyone try this but It did work for me.
With proper balance a simple setup can easily maintain a healthy reef.
Of course all my current tanks have all the bells and whistles, mostly due to the fact that I move too many livestock in my tanks and cannot maintain balance in bioloads so I skim them like theres no tomorrow :)

Mitch, I can't answer your question with any proof, but as a side note, the amount of bacteria in the water column is insignificant with regards to the N cycle. All the bacteria you need are in and on the surfaces present in the system. I can do a 100% water change and not get a NH3 spike.

I don't agree, Brad. I would think that such a large water change would significantly change the water chemistry and PH to the degree that it would kill off a large number of organisms, resulting in an ammonia spike and resulting bacteria level swings.

Mitch

Mitch, I'm making the assumption that temp and pH are matched. And I'm directing the comment towards the bacteria count in the water column, not chemical considerations(although I stand by my statement).
While changing over tanks, I increased total volume from 60g to 160g (added 100g of seawater mixed that morning)AND I moved the sandbed. I tested for NH3 for 1 week following and did not detect any ammonia in the system.
This is tracking a bit off topic for this thread, so we can continue in a new thread if you like :biggrin:

Yeah, we're kinda out of the newbie zone...... :smile:

I just don't want newbies to think that keeping a reef is more or less a glorified goldfish in a bowl. Water changes in in a goldfish bowl are necessary, but there's much more to reefkeeping than that.
Saying that water changes for a reef are necessary is an over-simplification.

We should probably be emphasizing keeping a low bioload to start.

Very important.

Mitch

(I'm in the process of taking down my house christmas lights right now, so I better continue that. It's very important too.) :lol:

I do 20% water changes bi-weekly, have for four years now.

The water change is an important tool for a newbie. It can be an immediate source of aid in some cases.

The last article Mitch linked to specifically mentions water changes as necessary to correct ionic imbalances that cannot be corrected otherwise.

When messing with Ca and Alk, many newbies tend to start adding one sided supplements and throw off their Ca/Alk balance badly. Water changes are the way to remedy this and then proper supplementation can begin. More can be found in Craig Bingman's articles.

I will also quote a comment he (Craig Bingman) made (googlegroups):

"There are still some old hands who pride themself in having never done a
water exchange on their systems, or for having gone N years without
having done a water exchange. I've looked at the chemistry of some of
these systems. While some of them are OK, others are way out of whack.
The usual response to that is that "stability must be more important than
aabsolute concentrations." To a degree, there is truth to that, but
given advances in water purification technology, salt mixes, etc, there
isn't any real reason why doing a water exchange should be destabilizing
anymore. Doing a partial on these systems that have badly drifted over
time might be a bit of a shock to the residents, but man, it must be one
*hell* of a shock for an organism coming into that system. And if a
series of modest partial water exchanges had been done over time, the
system would have been stable, and it wouldn't have drifted that far from
normal seawater chemistry."

--end quote

IMO, the water change is one of the VERY most important aspects to be aware of, whether you keep it in your back pocket for when you feel you need it, or look at it as preventative maintenance. No two reefing situations are identical.

Yeah, a low bioload is very important for not doing frequent water changes. But almost nobody keeps a low bioload once they've been reefkeeping for awhile, so let's be realistic here.

I know the syndrome all too well as I've done it and have observed many other people do it too. Gotta get this coral, and that school of fish to go with that lovely tang I saw at the lfs, oh, and I should upgrade the light so I can keep all these other corals. Pretty soon, your corals have to be fragged because they've grown so much. And the tank is still having water changes for a relatively low biolad tank when strange sh*t starts to happen like cyano all over the place, corals not opening, etc.

If a person does have a calcium reactor, a low bioload and many other positive factors indicating less frequent water changes, that's fine for them. But not many of us have gone so high tech, so frequent, relatively small water changes are vital, imo, ime, ymmv.

Powerheads, mechanical filtration units, skimmers, and any other working part of a reef also needs frequent regular and maintenance. Doing so rids these devices of detritus and they simply run more smoothly. It's kinda like changing the oil in your car. If done infrequently, the car will not run as well and over the long term will suffer from your negligence.

I've got four vry low-tech, high light reefs running now. The three nanos are sub-tropical and the 42 gal hex is tropical. The nanos get a water change and filter/powerhead maintenance one day, then a couple of days later the 42 gets its work over. I like the rhythm of this weekly intimate maintenance contact with our reefs, it's sort of like eating supper EVERY night. The work is never put off until next month. Gawd, next month .... I can't imagine how poor my reefs would look if I let them go that long. And I'd feel really, really guilty about it too.

However, that's just me and that's what works to keep our four reefs in pretty good condition.

you eat supper EVERY night?? I gotta try that... :cool:

ROTFLMAO!

Yeah, and I usually cook the stuff too. Tonight we're having baked Altantic salmon, corn on the cob, carrots, and some great garlic dill pickles. Yummmmm :exclaim:

To change the topic even further, do other reefkeepers eat fish?

Hey gotta love that great atlantic salmon :lol: :mrgreen:

I think I eat more seafood than any other type of meat. I love fish, and everything else that comes from the water...
Good in my belly... Pretty in my fishtank....
Anyone else ever had Naso Tang??? Its really good. A traditional dish in Hawaii.

Hope that's not "BC Fish Farm" Atlantic salmon. :wink:

Fish Farms
 

Take it to the Lounge please.

Re: Fish Farms
 

the last post was on the 5th of may.. it had stoped..

Steve