Water change advice?

[kimberly]

We just got a RO filter and I want to know the best way to do water changes. How much at a time and how often to fix the fact that we have all tap water in there now? It is a 92 gal.

Thanks,
Kimberly

 

[electrikat]

You will probably still want to do regular water changes. You can't change it out in massive changes. It will shock your animals. IMHO you should go with maybe 20 to 25% maybe every 5 or 6 days or once a week as usual. Eventually you will have a pretty much changed over tank.

 

[ellisz]

Are you having an algae problem? There is nothing wrong with tap water unless you are getting a buch of nuisance algae growth.

Just do normal water changes and go from there. 10-20% every other week or so would be ok. Trying to get all the tap water out would be crazy. As you do water changes and top off, you will weed out the impure water.

JMO

 

[mjvincent]

I do 10% weekly. I wouldn't worry about getting tap water out unless things are dying. The regular water changes will dilute anything unwanted in the tap over a course of time.

 

[fishfreek]

You will need a water storage vessle to collect the water for your water change. I wouldnt change out any more than 20 gal of water at any one time for a regularly scheduled water change.

Its going to take quite a while to theoreticly remove all traces of tap water so I wouldnt have that as a real immedate goal.

I use 30 gal rubbermaid trashcans to store my water change water and my top off water. One trashcan is dedicated to salt mixing and one is dedicated to holding fresh RO water for evaporation top off. In the mixing trashcan I have a 100W heater and a medium sized powerhead. Mix up the saltwater at least 24 hours in advance so the water has a chance to come to tank temp and all the chemical reactions with the salt disolving can run their course.

Now that your saltwater is ready its just a process of removign water from the tank and adding new back to the tank. That process is somewhat unique to every tank. If you have a sump you can just pull water from the sump and add water to the sump for your water change if you dont want to syphon off your rock. On my tanks that have sumps I always add water to the sump for water changes as I find this less stressful on the fish and corals since water isnt being dumped into the tank. You can make the whole process faster and easier if you have a medium sized water pump like a maxijet 1200 or Hagen 802 powerhead to pump water thru a hose from your storage vessle into your sump. I use a maxijet 1200 to pump water from a bucket into my sump for water changes on one tank and I just pour the water in the sump on my other tank.

Total time for a water change is often less than 15 minutes for me from start to finish.