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A calculator that can be used to see how much water is actually being removed/added with water changes.
(note the key here is the fact that there is a calculator available to do this - not a criticism of vibrant)
Background:
So. I recenctly tried vibrant - which worked great - and also inexexpectedly rose my nitrates from their usual 5 to >120. Coral started to brown a bit - stopped growing - a couple had problems (as the algae melted away). Ive read many threads where people have high nitrate - and they seemingly battle it for weeks and weeks - so I looked for a way to calculate how much water needed to be changed (assuming no new production of nitrate/day) - that would help me get it down more quickly
I found this one online (At Hamza's reef) - It basically is a calculator that lets you enter the amount of water in your tank, the amount of water you are planning to change , and the interval of the changes - in my case 140 gallons of water, 40 gallon changes, every day for 5 days.
Here is the calculator:
SO this means that after the 5 days of changes - My nitrate should have dropped by 80% or my nitrate should measure about 20 ppm. I measured today after following this protocol and indeed it had dropped nicely to around 20 ppm
(note the key here is the fact that there is a calculator available to do this - not a criticism of vibrant)
Background:
So. I recenctly tried vibrant - which worked great - and also inexexpectedly rose my nitrates from their usual 5 to >120. Coral started to brown a bit - stopped growing - a couple had problems (as the algae melted away). Ive read many threads where people have high nitrate - and they seemingly battle it for weeks and weeks - so I looked for a way to calculate how much water needed to be changed (assuming no new production of nitrate/day) - that would help me get it down more quickly
I found this one online (At Hamza's reef) - It basically is a calculator that lets you enter the amount of water in your tank, the amount of water you are planning to change , and the interval of the changes - in my case 140 gallons of water, 40 gallon changes, every day for 5 days.
Effective Water Change Calculator
Aquarium calculator; Estimate the effective water change amount of several combined smaller water changes.
www.hamzasreef.com
Here is the calculator:
SO this means that after the 5 days of changes - My nitrate should have dropped by 80% or my nitrate should measure about 20 ppm. I measured today after following this protocol and indeed it had dropped nicely to around 20 ppm
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