Proper Way To Do A Water Change

[kevin34]

Can anyone tell me this? What I do is syphon water out of the tank and also scoop (too low to syphon) water out of the sump. Then I usually dump the fresh water back into the tank. I know that this stresses out the fish and will have to stop once I get fish in the tank. Right now its just the CUC. So can anyone give me some tips on how to do an easy water change? And I also noticed tonight that my tank stinks like low tide. It smelled like this when I added my LR but it went away once the rock cured. Now that the CUC is in there it stinks again. Is this normal?

 

[yukon]

I change my water the same way, siphon out pour back in new with a 2qt pitcher scouping from 5 gal buckets. I've been thinking the same thing about stressing fish and coral so I'm looking into getting a small pump or powerhead to use to pump water out of the buckets and into the tank. Does anyone else do this? If so what size pump do you use?

 

[gatorwpb]

I use the pump from my phosban reactor to pump out as much as i can from my sump and then the rest is just from the top of the DT.
Also, I try to do it with the lights off so the fish arent stressed as much and the corals certainly dont know the difference. Some people even have their corals exposed to air during WCs. Its like low tide on shallow reefs.
I really dont think they are stressed all that much even if the lights are on.
EDIT: the pump is a small RIO, maybe the 150??