Diluting Your Mistakes: How often are you changing out your water?

Do you believe that a long term benefit of changing out your water is diluting your mistakes?

  • Yes

    Votes: 315 53.0%
  • No

    Votes: 79 13.3%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 100 16.8%
  • Haven't really thought about that

    Votes: 100 16.8%

  • Total voters
    594

revhtree

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Changing out your water on consistent basis is a good practice for the long term health of your saltwater reef aquarium. It's like "refreshing" your tank! Refreshing your tank water is good on multiple levels like replenishing trace elements, reducing nutrients, etc. But another important factor in changing out your water is the fact that you can dilute your mistakes. Right?

I had a conversation yesterday with Ryan from BRS about water changes and he brought up the fact that with regular water changes you can dilute your mistakes and over time that could really add up! So I thought we could talk about it today. More than just the common benefits of changing out your water how do you feel about "diluting your mistakes?"

1. Do you believe that one of the good long term benefits of changing out your water is diluting your mistakes?

2. Currently how often are you changing out your water?



waterchange bucket.jpg
 

sde1500

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Used to be randomly because I didn't like breaking out all the buckets. Then it was 1% daily as I hooked up a system to do it automatically. Now it hasn't happened in some months as I work to transition my tank over to no water changes at all.
 

Waters

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I actually do automated water changes monday through friday every week at roughly 12-15%. It definately helps dilute any mistakes. Water that you are replacing (ideally) has all the correct amounts of the various elements needed. Water you are removing potentially can be out of whack for any number of reasons.
 

Reo2140

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I do a once a week water change but I’m bout do change to 2 buckets per water change. Now will that have a effect on the quality of the minerals ?
 

lapin

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10% a week keeps the tank happy. Corrects all the things I think are close, but in my case prob not close enough.
I do a once a week water change but I’m bout do change to 2 buckets per water change. Now will that have a effect on the quality of the minerals ?
If mixed correctly changing out 2x more water than normal might help or might not. Depends on how far out of perfect your tank is.
 

fish farmer

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I do about 15% every two weeks and I dose kalk and sometimes add Mg. I'm at the point where I think my "mistakes" have been addressed and may be able to not WC as much, maybe every third week.

I don't do WC's for adding elements, I do it for siphoning stuff out my tank as well based on how my tank is setup....which could be considered "poor planning" with regard to rock placement, circulation pump placement, overflow placement.
 

Vette67

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I do a 40 gallon water change every 2 months or so. I don’t believe it’s entirely necessary. I do it because I think that a lack of water changes lead to a massive GHA bloom I had in 2012 that wiped out 75% of my coral. So in order to ensure that doesn’t happen again, I do water changes. But I don’t know how effective a 10% water change is every 2 months. It certainly can’t make things worse, but it is nowhere near generally accepted water change frequency most people would recommend.
 

Niteowl

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I do small 20 gallon a week water changes. I figure 10%. Sometimes life gets in the way and I go 2 weeks and do 30. Normally I clean glass , blow rocks off and try to get stuff clean as well. I test water before the change and then a few hours after the change.
 

Reefs and Geeks

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I view normal scheduled water changes not as diluting mistakes, but more of a way of keeping trace perimeters that I don't measure, or don't understand enough to attempt to dose, in check to some degree. More along the lines of dosing than diluting.

Water changes CAN be used to dilute mistakes, and imo are generally unscheduled and why many keep saltwater mixed up ready to go "just in case". Dump too much food in, kid poured something in the tank, something toxic died in the tank, dose additives arbitrarily that build up over time, something unexplained happening to fish or coral...do a large water change to bring dilute the mistake as damage control.
 

Mhart032

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I run Triton, so i only do water changes if something is real wrong. But i have been rethinking this as or late, things seem to perk up a little bit with water changes.
 

PerplexyHexy

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I stopped doing water changes 6 months ago... Previously I was doing 20% water changes using natural sea water and on occasion TMpro... I found my water parameters hard to keep stable with water changes and I was constantly having to buffer the water to maintain big 3... I keep 8 alk, 450 ca, and 1375 mag. Im running a carx to keep up with the big 3 and Im dosing trace elements and aminos... I also added seachem matrix to help with bacterial growth populations... I have 400 gallon total system, all bare bottom tanks with about 440lbs of live rock... Before I quit water changes I was battling bubble algae, cyano, dinos, and I wasn’t seeing positive growth in corals at all... Since then all 3 are gone and everything has never looked better... I also integrated auto feeders with a consistent feeding schedule and a massive fuge (50 gallons) to control nutrient levels at 20 no3 and .1 po4... Thats where my tank settled in... I wouldn’t suggest this method... I’m just explaining what my process was for ridding nuisance algae and inconsistent water parameters... Im considering going back to water changes, but smaller more frequent to keep stability... possibly AWC setup for simplicity and consistency...
 

NS Mike D

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yes. to a point. If I over feed this week, Or I skip water tests. If I forget to dose or over spill some extra alk etc. I know that at I will be pulling out detritus out of the sand bed and replacing 15% of the water volume of with water I know is good.

I don't recommend it, nor do I think is can dilute a real mistake, but good to know each week we got pre-mistake water going in.
 

NS Mike D

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I stopped doing water changes 6 months ago... Previously I was doing 20% water changes using natural sea water and on occasion TMpro... I found my water parameters hard to keep stable with water changes and I was constantly having to buffer the water to maintain big 3... I keep 8 alk, 450 ca, and 1375 mag. Im running a carx to keep up with the big 3 and Im dosing trace elements and aminos... I also added seachem matrix to help with bacterial growth populations... I have 400 gallon total system, all bare bottom tanks with about 440lbs of live rock... Before I quit water changes I was battling bubble algae, cyano, dinos, and I wasn’t seeing positive growth in corals at all... Since then all 3 are gone and everything has never looked better... I also integrated auto feeders with a consistent feeding schedule and a massive fuge (50 gallons) to control nutrient levels at 20 no3 and .1 po4... Thats where my tank settled in... I wouldn’t suggest this method... I’m just explaining what my process was for ridding nuisance algae and inconsistent water parameters... Im considering going back to water changes, but smaller more frequent to keep stability... possibly AWC setup for simplicity and consistency...


my guess is the bolded part has more to do with your recent success. But I do get the difficulty in keeping stabilty
 

PerplexyHexy

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my guess is the bolded part has more to do with your recent success. But I do get the difficulty in keeping stabilty
I had no other choice... What I was doing wasn’t working for me so I just said, “Im gonna give this a try and see what happens.”
 

BigRedReefer MT

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A 20% wc every week has helped me get a terrible GHA outbreak under control, as well as led to better growth of my few corals. I also noticed an explosion of Coraline algae growth when I switched to weekly and not every two weeks. I don't dose, but that's cause my demand on cal and alk is low so a weekly wc seems to keep everything stable and happy.
 

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