Water Changes in a Large Tank

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

On my 240 water changes (which is what I prefer) kinda suck for me. A five gallon jug is roughly half my body weight and I was up to 60-80 gallons a week to keep nitrates etc down. Even running a larger skimmer for some reason (maybe my skimmer isn’t as good as I thought or my bioload is way off), but nitrates would stay 20-30 ppm.

I then started carbon dosing which has its bonuses and failures all in one. Some pros since I’m where I need to be now it’s only 16-20ml for my water volume of 240 plus my sump which is a 40 breeder (then minus rock, sand space etc you get the math) I’m about 200 water volume roughly. So it’s 30 dollars for one bottle that lasts close to 6 months on average, unless I have a spike which is rare. But I would spend close to 120 a month just for saltwater (because I don’t mix it myself) but it’s 1.00 a gallon for pro salt mix, and when I did it every week it was closer to 200 a month. Another pro is time, I have a small flow pump in my sump so I would fill up five gallon bucket that’s half my weight and dump them outside etc. But I had no way to fill it up faster (because who ever designed my fish tank stand failed in math and design horribly), because the stand is not very tall. So with a 40 breeder in there, I literally had to fill up a normal pitcher of saltwater and dump it in. So it saved time and lots of money, and sorry when you just shy of 90 pounds a 45 pound jug times 12 to load and unload really isn’t fun at all.
The cons well I have successfully addicted my tank to alcohol or aka nopox (and I’m a medical professional, how does that work knowing I had to say the Hippocratic oath?) hey let’s get your fish and corals addicted to drugs you will go far in life (lol) but yeah it’s extremely unwise to stop dosing it. Secondly I lose trace elements so I have to dose those as well, and if my math is right (which it always is), have to dose that correctly and keep records where calcium levels are because they are based on that. (I don’t use any dosers either, apex (simple system errrrrr sorta). Another con is I can risk bottoming my tank to low so I actually need to test weekly which I do with api. Now I know they are not spot on accurate but as long as I stay above 2 yay. Phosphates are pretty low as well, but I will say seeing some hair algae and or turf alage means I haven’t stripped my water to clean. Another con is you simply can’t forget, (in theory you can if the tank swings a little it’s fine), but again not ideal.

The meh(s) I haven’t seen any per say negative effects from my coral or fish if anything they do better. My skimmer is just obnoxious at times. Normally I can set it and it stays and other times it drops way down, or over flows. Yet, I haven’t changed anything for it to do so. I do feed frozen food with garlic guard and probiatic flakes. One it’s a little better for the fish and two it makes where I’m certain my corals don’t starve. I do (and need to actually) spot feed corals about once a week. It’s nice to know they have food because of this method. In all I spend maybe 20 min a day on my tank and on the weekend when I go through things about an hour. Before water changes was a long long exhausting day for me. I have also learned that when I have done changes (aka routine or methods), sometimes they backfire, so as of the moment things work well.

Yes I could make a water changing station, etc etc, but my house just makes it odd. More than enough room but I have three steps from my garage floor to the garage house door. Then my tank is on the far side of my living room, on hard wood floors. It’s not super easy carry five gallons, could I see myself pushing a large rubber bin with 30-60 in it or 50 who knows.

Getting the water out of the tank isn’t terrible, siphon and bucket. Tried the hose to the kitchen sink and interesting enough like my old house, the ends would unscrew, these do not. But again moving 12 five gallon buckets across my home out the garage and down the drive way kinda sucks.

 

[cracker]

Hi Jessica . I get the feeling you want a bigger tank. I'd guess a 125 gl or so ? I use several brute cans on a furniture roller. I'm assume You have seen them . A big help for moving a lot of water. I have 2 identical Brute cans.
I siphon old water onto the empty can& pump( doesn't have to be a big pump ) of new water back into the tank . It's all fairly easy. So with a bigger pump You can just run a hose from a can full of new water to replace the old water . Then no hauling heavy containers of water . It can be s simple to as elaborate as Ya want .

 

[laverda]

Hello,

On my 240 water changes (which is what I prefer) kinda suck for me. A five gallon jug is roughly half my body weight and I was up to 60-80 gallons a week to keep nitrates etc down. Even running a larger skimmer for some reason (maybe my skimmer isn’t as good as I thought or my bioload is way off), but nitrates would stay 20-30 ppm.

I then started carbon dosing which has its bonuses and failures all in one. Some pros since I’m where I need to be now it’s only 16-20ml for my water volume of 240 plus my sump which is a 40 breeder (then minus rock, sand space etc you get the math) I’m about 200 water volume roughly. So it’s 30 dollars for one bottle that lasts close to 6 months on average, unless I have a spike which is rare. But I would spend close to 120 a month just for saltwater (because I don’t mix it myself) but it’s 1.00 a gallon for pro salt mix, and when I did it every week it was closer to 200 a month. Another pro is time, I have a small flow pump in my sump so I would fill up five gallon bucket that’s half my weight and dump them outside etc. But I had no way to fill it up faster (because who ever designed my fish tank stand failed in math and design horribly), because the stand is not very tall. So with a 40 breeder in there, I literally had to fill up a normal pitcher of saltwater and dump it in. So it saved time and lots of money, and sorry when you just shy of 90 pounds a 45 pound jug times 12 to load and unload really isn’t fun at all.
The cons well I have successfully addicted my tank to alcohol or aka nopox (and I’m a medical professional, how does that work knowing I had to say the Hippocratic oath?) hey let’s get your fish and corals addicted to drugs you will go far in life (lol) but yeah it’s extremely unwise to stop dosing it. Secondly I lose trace elements so I have to dose those as well, and if my math is right (which it always is), have to dose that correctly and keep records where calcium levels are because they are based on that. (I don’t use any dosers either, apex (simple system errrrrr sorta). Another con is I can risk bottoming my tank to low so I actually need to test weekly which I do with api. Now I know they are not spot on accurate but as long as I stay above 2 yay. Phosphates are pretty low as well, but I will say seeing some hair algae and or turf alage means I haven’t stripped my water to clean. Another con is you simply can’t forget, (in theory you can if the tank swings a little it’s fine), but again not ideal.

The meh(s) I haven’t seen any per say negative effects from my coral or fish if anything they do better. My skimmer is just obnoxious at times. Normally I can set it and it stays and other times it drops way down, or over flows. Yet, I haven’t changed anything for it to do so. I do feed frozen food with garlic guard and probiatic flakes. One it’s a little better for the fish and two it makes where I’m certain my corals don’t starve. I do (and need to actually) spot feed corals about once a week. It’s nice to know they have food because of this method. In all I spend maybe 20 min a day on my tank and on the weekend when I go through things about an hour. Before water changes was a long long exhausting day for me. I have also learned that when I have done changes (aka routine or methods), sometimes they backfire, so as of the moment things work well.

Yes I could make a water changing station, etc etc, but my house just makes it odd. More than enough room but I have three steps from my garage floor to the garage house door. Then my tank is on the far side of my living room, on hard wood floors. It’s not super easy carry five gallons, could I see myself pushing a large rubber bin with 30-60 in it or 50 who knows.

Getting the water out of the tank isn’t terrible, siphon and bucket. Tried the hose to the kitchen sink and interesting enough like my old house, the ends would unscrew, these do not. But again moving 12 five gallon buckets across my home out the garage and down the drive way kinda sucks.

I had a 240 and like you used to lug water back and forth and up and Dow 4 stairs in my garage. It was a strain and I twice you weight. Worse yet I enevitably spilled water way to often filling the 5 gallon totes from my tank.
I tried several different ways to pump water before I found a hose that made that job much easier. I used superflex or ultra flex PVC tubing. It will not kink or crush easily. I once ran it over with my truck filled with 100 gallons of water in the back setting up for an early Reef-A-Palooza. You could barely tell I had. It is very flexible making it easy to roll out to my tank and roll back up after. Standard PVC fitting fit it. I put a ball valve on the end I put in the tank with a curved price ov PVC on the very end. When draining water I would add a screen on the end so I did not suck any fish into it. I just used gravity when draining my tank. To fill the tank back up I would hook up an old mag drive pump to the end of the hose and drop it into my mixing drum in the garage. I could change 60 gallons in about 20 min this way. Even better I never spilled water all over the house. I still like not having to do water changes much better. I hope this helps.

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

Yes it does . I just have to find a better way to fill the tank when I’m done. Literally a lemonade pitcher barley fits between the top and the side of my sump. I generally have to tip it side ways (which is round but works), and I fill it up then. But again, not sure if you had the nitrate probelms I did, but doing min 60 a week literally did nothing to drop them. That’s the main reason I started the carbon dosing because I couldn’t control the spike of nitrates.

 

[WVNed]

I built my station to handle 80 gallon changes and I am going to start with 1 a week and then go to 2 a month. With both vats filled it holds 180 gallons.

I am doing 20 gallons a week now on my 75. Takes 20 minutes if everything works an I don't have to carry water.

 

[laverda]

Hello,

Yes it does . I just have to find a better way to fill the tank when I’m done. Literally a lemonade pitcher barley fits between the top and the side of my sump. I generally have to tip it side ways (which is round but works), and I fill it up then. But again, not sure if you had the nitrate probelms I did, but doing min 60 a week literally did nothing to drop them. That’s the main reason I started the carbon dosing because I couldn’t control the spike of nitrates.

The hose would eliminate that problem. I don’t worry if my nitrates are at 20. That is pretty much wear I keep them. When they were lower my corals lost color. I use a simple easy and inexpensive ATSs to control my nitrates. If they get high I just increase my light duration for the ATS.

 

[Brett S]

I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but I have a Neptune DOS configured to do an auto water change on my 220G tank. It pumps out 80ml of tank water and pumps in 80ml of new salt water every few minutes 24 hours a day changing a bit over 2G every day. I have a 45G brute trash can in the garage that holds the new salt water. It will last for a few weeks, then when it’s empty my Apex automatically refills it with RODI water and emails me to tell me that it’s time to add salt.

 

[MnFish1]

I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but I have a Neptune DOS configured to do an auto water change on my 220G tank. It pumps out 80ml of tank water and pumps in 80ml of new salt water every few minutes 24 hours a day changing a bit over 2G every day. I have a 45G brute trash can in the garage that holds the new salt water. It will last for a few weeks, then when it’s empty my Apex automatically refills it with RODI water and emails me to tell me that it’s time to add salt.

using this calculator you're changing about 24% of your water each month - do you think thats enough? https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/EffectiveWaterChange.php
and adding about 60 gallons of NSW/month.

Using the same calculator if you changed 22 gallons/week you would have 35% 'new water'

I like the idea - just wondered if you thought It was enough

 

[Brett S]

using this calculator you're changing about 24% of your water each month - do you think thats enough? https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/EffectiveWaterChange.php
and adding about 60 gallons of NSW/month.

Using the same calculator if you changed 22 gallons/week you would have 35% 'new water'

I like the idea - just wondered if you thought It was enough

It definitely works for me. I’ve been doing it this way for the three years that I’ve had the tank. When I started I was changing about 3G per day, which works out to be very close to 10% a week (which is why I started there). I did that for several months and then slowly brought it down to where I am now (I’m doing 8000ml per day, which is actually about 2.1G). I didn’t see any noticeable changes as I decreased the amount, so I just stuck with that.

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

I used to do buckets for my 150 gallon, but did get tired of hauling around 6-12 buckets at a time. It was the last straw when I dropped a bucket I was carrying up the stairs form the basement. Made quite a mess. I've since set up an automatic water change that does all the work for me. I just press a button, and a peristalic pump empties and fills my tank up with however much water I want to change out. All I have to do is mix up the saltwater before a change. Sure does make the worst mart of the hobby much easier.

 

[SinkyShippy]

I used to do buckets for my 150 gallon, but did get tired of hauling around 6-12 buckets at a time. It was the last straw when I dropped a bucket I was carrying up the stairs form the basement. Made quite a mess. I've since set up an automatic water change that does all the work for me. I just press a button, and a peristalic pump empties and fills my tank up with however much water I want to change out. All I have to do is mix up the saltwater before a change. Sure does make the worst mart of the hobby much easier.

Y'all are too smart for me lol

 

[NeedMoreReef]

water changes on a big tank can be a real pain if your RO/DI and mixing area are far from your tank.
two grey "Brute" trash cans on wheels, one with new water mixing overnight. the other to siphon water into. I use a Mag 5 with 10' of 3/4 tubing. don't dump your tank water until you.

 

[Ironworm]

No. It connects to your water faucet. You wind up using more tap water removing tank water than you actually remove from the tank, but for me it's worth it.

You only need to turn the water on to get the siphon started then you can turn off the water. Unless your sink is higher than your tank.

 

[Brett S]

don't dump your tank water until you.

until you what? I feel like we might be missing some extremely important advice here.

Until you do a rain dance?

Until you have dinner to rebuild your strength from moving all those buckets around?

Until your wife goes out so she can’t see all the tubes running through the house?

Until you make sure the end of the tube isn’t in the middle of the living room floor?

Am I close?

 

[RobW]

I have a 280 gallon tank that I'm currently building. I am using a 75 gallon nowesco tank for fresh saltwater with a pump to keep it agitating. I also am using a 20 gallon norwesco tank for top of water. The line run through my ceiling and wall. I use three litermeter 3 series pumps. One pumps old water out of the sump down the drain at a rate of 3 gallons over a 24 hour period. One of the pumps introduced the fresh new saltwater to the sump at the same rate. The third pump tops off with fresh water from evaporation. It all works through the controller on the litermeter and I have a series of solenoid valves and float sensors to stop everything if the water level were for any reason to become overfilled, etc. The two hold tanks automatically refill when they are depleted. It does the auto water change 5 days a week. So every five weeks I make a new batch of saltwater and it stirs all weekend before kicking back on on a Monday. So 15 gallons a week is being changed. That gets me 1 bucket (150 gallon mix) of neo-marine salt every 10 weeks.

 

[AiKkz]

My tank is drilled 2/3 down with a union ball valve to drain water, and a mixing station to fill back up.

 

[MnFish1]

I used to do buckets for my 150 gallon, but did get tired of hauling around 6-12 buckets at a time. It was the last straw when I dropped a bucket I was carrying up the stairs form the basement. Made quite a mess. I've since set up an automatic water change that does all the work for me. I just press a button, and a peristalic pump empties and fills my tank up with however much water I want to change out. All I have to do is mix up the saltwater before a change. Sure does make the worst mart of the hobby much easier.

Which one do you use. Does it take water out and then put fresh in?

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

I use a masterflex pump with two heads paired to the same motor. This ensures they both run at exactly the same speed. My set up fills and drains at the same time. It would seem inefficient that way, but it's not really that bad for reasonable sized water changes. There was a long article on continuous water changes that spelled out the math, but basically if you use this method a 30% water change ends up in reality being about a 26 gallon water change as some of the water you just put in will be taken out. I do have mine set up to be a little more efficient by injecting new water in the sump, and draining water from the display way away from the returns. This gains a little efficiency because the drain line doesn't pull out any of the new water at first. I probably get something like a 28 gallon water change out of 30 gallons of new water, while wasting about 2 gallons.

This inefficiency can get bad if doing massive water changes, and is completely negligible for smaller water changes.

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Heres a pic of my pump. One of the hoses pulls old water from the tank and goes to drain. The other pulls new water from mixing container and puts into tank. Masterflex pumps are continuous duty, so can run non-stop. Many hobby grade peristaltic pumps are intermittent duty only and will burn up if used for long periods of time without being allowed to cool.

 

[MnFish1]

I use a masterflex pump with two heads paired to the same motor. This ensures they both run at exactly the same speed. My set up fills and drains at the same time. It would seem inefficient that way, but it's not really that bad for reasonable sized water changes. There was a long article on continuous water changes that spelled out the math, but basically if you use this method a 30% water change ends up in reality being about a 26 gallon water change as some of the water you just put in will be taken out. I do have mine set up to be a little more efficient by injecting new water in the sump, and draining water from the display way away from the returns. This gains a little efficiency because the drain line doesn't pull out any of the new water at first. I probably get something like a 28 gallon water change out of 30 gallons of new water, while wasting about 2 gallons.

This inefficiency can get bad if doing massive water changes, and is completely negligible for smaller water changes.

How far can the tubing be between tank and reservoirs?