I do the exact same thing.2% a day. Works for me. Apex DOS makes it easy.
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I do the exact same thing.2% a day. Works for me. Apex DOS makes it easy.
Dear Abby,
I was told that water changes have a positive effect on my aquarium but what percentage of water should I change to make it worth it?
Sincerely,
Confused Reefer
image via @Reef Hacks and their Exploring Water Changes article.
I have yet to see anyone really breakdown this issue but I am sure someone has.
You can forego a lot of other husbandry with water changes. 10% weekly either continuously or at one time is a good goal. This isn’t feasible on a lot of tanks due to size or simply because coral uptake happens too fast…so we monitor things either in person or through the mail and add things accordingly in tandem with nutrient export controls.Dear Abby,
I was told that water changes have a positive effect on my aquarium but what percentage of water should I change to make it worth it?
Sincerely,
Confused Reefer
image via @Reef Hacks and their Exploring Water Changes article.
I agree. Depends entirely on why you are changing the water.Depends on what "issues" you are trying to resolve and the size of the tank.
It'll also depend on what kind of problem you're facing. High nutrients, low supplements, accidental high supplements and so on. I had a close call with my Dose failing on. Scraped a baseball size alk pile out of my sump. Took a couple of 50% water changes within a week. Didn't lose anything as I was lucky to work from home at the time and able to fix it.Definitely no one-size-fits-all answer to that. Depends heavily on what you’re supplementing and what you’re removing via nutrient export and coral consumption. Running aggressive carbon dosing, with phosphate removal, and a calcium reactor using coral skeletons will be running out with the bad — in with the good a lot more efficiently than a low tech tank with just rocks, flow, and fish food.
It just depends on the setup and the coral needs.
I may be wrong but I feel like water changes are best used for replacing trace and minor elements, and/or removing large amounts of toxin/contaminant.
Scenario A would depend (again) on how you’re supplementing to begin with, scenario B would obviously be a “bigger is better” situation.
Too many variables.
On my last sps tank with carbon dosing and calcium reactor I did about 10-20% a week, but that was always performed using fresh mixed water replacing what I’d take out in shipping bags. Rarely needed to just “do a water change” for water change purposes alone.
On my present tank, it’s been up for almost 4 months, very few corals, carbon reactor, and large algae turf scrubber. Phosphate stays down around 0-0.1 with 4-5 time a day feedings so I haven’t performed a water change at all yet