Water change questions

[Themastaa]

I just decided to switch to Red Sea coral pro from Instant ocean reef crystals. I have been doing weekly water changes, 10%. I have a Biocube 32. In my back chamber I have a filter media rack with biofilter media gems, bio pellets, and chemipure blue. And on top is the coralife filter pad. My question is how often should I Take the rack out and rinse the mesh bags/ filter pad off with fresh saltwater. Also, should I be syphoning the sand every week? The chemi pure blue says to be changed every 2-4 months and I change the coralife filter pads every 3,4 weeks

 

[JCM]

I don't use any media like that so no idea but no need to siphon your sand weekly. A couple times a year has always been plenty for me (assuming a shallow sand bed)

 

[Screwgunner]

Clean sand with water changes. As far as cleaning your filter depends on your bioload. 10 percent should be fine i would not do a big water change with a new salt. They all have different values of this and that.

 

[mdb_talon]

Frequency of rinsing the pad really depends on how often you "need" to. I know that does not sound helpful but the variables are how quickly detritus builds up in there and what your nutrients are at.

In other words if your nitrate and phosphate is high amd you get detritus building up in pads quickly then rinse daily and vaccum detritus from sand very frequently. If you have low nitrates and phosphates there is no reason not to extend the time a lot between rinsing pads and cleaning detritus from sand.

The goal in either case is to remove waste before it breaks down into nutrients so the answer has to be based on where your nutrients are relative to where you want them.

Having said all that i do my sand every couple weeks and change filter socks every couple days(i feed extremely heavy and that is one of the ways i prevent nutrients going too high)

 

[Screwgunner]

We are keeping water for our fish and coral and inverts . So if a weekly cleaning keeps your water good then do it weekly if not do it more often and viscera.

 

[Brady4000]

I just decided to switch to Red Sea coral pro from Instant ocean reef crystals. I have been doing weekly water changes, 10%. I have a Biocube 32. In my back chamber I have a filter media rack with biofilter media gems, bio pellets, and chemipure blue. And on top is the coralife filter pad. My question is how often should I Take the rack out and rinse the mesh bags/ filter pad off with fresh saltwater. Also, should I be syphoning the sand every week? The chemi pure blue says to be changed every 2-4 months and I change the coralife filter pads every 3,4 weeks

I don’t ever clean my sand bed. I know many also don’t do this.

I also use chemi pure, I change it out every 4 months like it suggest.

As for the bio media, I asked this same question not too long ago. I was told every 6 months, some said to just replace it. Hopefully someone with real experience with cleaning bio media balls can chime in. I have not cleaned mine in 4 months and have not had any negative effects.

Edit: I also got a tiger conch snail that does great at turing up the sand bed.

 

[Themastaa]

Wow a lot of responses, thanks for all the advice!

 

[cngh]

How often you need to replace or clean that stuff kinda depends on your bioload and how much you feed and how well you clean detritus off your rocks and out if those corners it collects in.

One fish and light feeding, eh you probably can change/clean stuff at the long end of the timeframe they give you for whatever particular product. 5 or 6 fish and heavy feeding, you probably want to change it on the earlier side and clean it more frequently.

If you can see the pads are obviously heavily soiled like dark/olive green colored in just a week or two, then change it frequently. If it's barely dirty after a couple/ few weeks because you have a light bioload then I'd let it keep going till it's sufficiently dirty. But that's just me.