Water Change Questions

paulcoates

Member
If all of my readings are fine, and I do regular topoffs with Distilled, do I still need to do a water change in my 55 gallon?
 

wax32

Active Member
Yeah, do 5 gallon bucket a week, make it easy to keep track of. When you count for water displacement from your sand and LR, 5 gallons is close to 10%.
 

bang guy

Moderator
Originally Posted by paulcoates
Bang,
Wont my skimmer and Emperor 400 reduce the pollution?
Yes, every little bit helps. There is no one sigle solution so a combination is needed. There are things Skimmers & filters can't reduce.
 

bseth90

Member
I rarely do water changes. Maybe three four times a year. I have read many people who do the same thing with an old estblished tank like mine. Add the top off, trace elements, etc. I used to do the once a month thing, but slowly moved away from it. I feel with the right filtration, etc all can be well. :happyfish
 

murph145

Active Member
yeah i have heard of people only changing some of there water every 4 months or more .... they say with the right combination of filteration clean up crew and set up it works good....
i still would rather not chance it when i have $1000's in living creatures in my tank.... i think a 10% water change every 2 weeks is worth the insurance.... even though i have enough filtration to probably not it still eases the mind :D
 

57chev

Member
Water changes are the best thing you can do for any system, think about it, for a fish only system if you did a water change every day you would almost need no filtration at all. Water changes also gives you a great oportunity to vaccuum up any nasties on your rock or what-ever else. The problem is that for most folks there a pain in the you know what. I tell anyone getting into the hobbie to spent the money on the hoses and containers it takes to do water changes more easily. It really makes a big dif in the growth of your growing corals
 

bseth90

Member
Murph that I can understand. It used to bother me, but I haven't had any disasters in a long time and especially any I could trace back to few water changes. The occasianal pest hitchhiker or brought in ick....things like that. You really don't want to vaccum to much out especially with a live sand bed so be careful there. :happy:
 

paulcoates

Member
as far as filtration goes, I have an Emperor 400 over a 55 gallon tank along with a SeaClone 100 skimmer. I also have two AquaClear 802 (400GPH) powerheads and a MaxiJet 260 GPH powerhead. I have 1560GPH of water movement (almost 30x)
In addition I just bought Kent Essential Elements in lieu of doing water changes every week. As it is now, I want to see if I can do 10% changes every 4-6 weeks. I have about 110 lbs of live rock over top of a crushed coral substrate. I tested all my water parms yesterday and everything came out great
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
PH 8.2
Ammonia 0
Calcium 450
Water Temp 78 degrees
Water is Crystal Clear and the only supplement that I add (besides my first dose of Essential Elements yesterday) is Tech CB "A" and Tech CB "B" to keep my calcium up and my PH stabile.
 

paulcoates

Member
Here is my coral list right now also:
1)Xenia
2)Favia
3)Fiji Polyps
4)Flame Polyps
5)Golden Polyps
6)Hammer
7)Cats Eye Bubble Coral
8)Yellow Fiji Leather
9)Frogspawn
10)Leather Toadstool
11)Candy Coral
And my fish list:
2 False Perculas
1 Yellow Tail Damsel
1 Longnose Hawkfish
1 Copperband Butterfly
1 Coral Beauty
1 Lawnmower Blenny
Others:
2 Sand Sifting Starfish
2 Emerald Crabs
50 Astrea Snails
2 Turbo Snails
3 Flame Scallops
 

murph145

Active Member
sounds like u have a nice tank... good mixture of things....
i mean u can try not doing water changes as often.... might work out just fine.... it would be a good test to let the rest of us know how things go if u only do a 10% change every 4-6 weeks ..... it would be a lot easier on me too i might try it if u found the results to be good...
heres what i have:
100G with 140lbs+ LR , 3" LSbed, 2 fluval 404's, 2 penguin 550 power heads, skimmer, uv filter 470W PC
corals:
xenia, metallic green richordias 14of them, teal blue shrooms 7 of them, yellow finger leather, brown toadstool, blue cup coral, bubble coral, colt coral, many different polyps, green flower pot, and a candy coral
fish:
tomato clown, hippo tang, dwarf lion fish, 2 yt damsils, blue damsil, 3 striped damsil, madarin, 2 siscor tail dart fish, red head jaw fish
inverts/othewrs:
24" white ribbon eel, purple LTA, green LTA, brown LTA, 2 RBTA's, 2 feather dusters, 1 serpent star, 1 electric scallop, 1 urchin, about 20 different snails and 30 different hermits
 
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