Water Changes When Nitrates consistently read zero?

[Lance]

Originally Posted by christyf5

There for awhile there was a thread on RC advocating waterchanges via wet skimming. It was quite an interesting read and I did think about it for awhile but it was still too labor intensive for me

Yeah, I read that thread. I even tried it a few times, but like you said, it was more trouble than it's worth.

[Eb0la11]

Hmmm, interesting topic. I think I might do the larger changes once a month though. Just "easier" haha. Mostly cause Id need another barrel to mix in for the smaller more frequent changes.

[Delphinus]

Salt buckets work pretty good for that sort of thing though, and odds are you'll have a half dozen of those before long in this hobby anyhow.. I find that the size of system makes a big difference too. My big tanks get by with a 25% monthly w/c if need be. Any nano (well let's say 40g or under) that I've tried that on ends up as a mess. Whereas 10% weekly and they do great. And the big tanks do better on the same weekly schedule. So I think it stands to reason that perhaps even more frequent, but smaller (and thus more manageable) w/c's might even be that much better.

[kien]

ahh, water change discussions, gotta love 'em :-) Not too long ago I was on a two water changes a week schedule. That didn't last long. Although things always had that "breath of fresh air/water" look. I'm now back to my weekly water changes but I do quite a bit every week, like 17%. Sounds like I can drop that down to 6% a week!?