100% Water Change Vs Media

[dgphelps]

100% water changes on both my tanks today - within an hour everything had reopened including the acros. Now, 2 hours after wc and just after lights out the Favia and scoly are both sending their sweeper tentacles into the water. Funny thing I noticed was the fresh salt water was nice and clear and the old tank water was a solid tea/pee yellowish in the tank I couldn't tell but the white buckets made it noticeable!

[brandon429]

dg we were discussing the 100% wc as it applies to larger tanks say 20 on up this is my opinion

 

it becomes impractical to do them as much, but the biology scales the same. Fish won't appreciate flopping on the sand like good inverts will lol so we are talking in the order of 80%, or back to back 80% if full export was the goal

 

kicking up sandbed waste upon refill will always be the top risk for all these tanks, the source of mini cycles (not the lr, misnomer) and any large water change that is engineered to not kick up waste has the same impacts as they do in smaller/accessible tanks. I know this sounds redundant info but imo we are emerging from years of partial water change information that has resulted in eutrophic tanks averaging 18 mos lifespan before algae challenges in one form or another, relating these actions helps imo.

 

The top current algae battling info for April 2015 is: export

 

ya'll thought id say peroxide nope that's your bouncer at the door. the dj everyone wants to see is export.

 

removing accumulations removes the basis for algae invasions, the partial water change out of balance concern tends to store up waste, and if you check most tanks on algae challenge threads most are storers per pic details.

 

Export will not prevent or cure all algae issues across invaders, when it does, they'll be 60 page threads or at least one 10 pager on the whole Internet to show for it, imo.

but export is your best preventative above all, and many algae issues namely the chief nemesis gha are traced easily to detritus storage in the rocks, sand, both. big wc act directly against that trend, the action of big export is helping us get an edge on future algae battles... How have others carried this action over to larger tanks? inversions and gfo or carbon.

 

Paul B with his example of 40 yrs running tank = uniquely exported. He doesn't do 100% weekly, but his tank is cleaned and the rock taken down and sand cleaned as part of this longevity. He didn't set up the tank, put on a big skimmer, do partial wc and wait to see what happens, he had hands on approach as it aged.

 

proactively exporting still factors into one of the longest running reef tanks even though it's not weekly. he uses a reverse under gravel filter, this reverses a lot of the typical storage capacity for the deep sandbed.

 

The statement that dsbs are bad does not hold up with example, the longest running large and small reef tanks use them, but they are exported, the recurring theme of success in getting repeatable long term results.

 

The 4 gallon tank mentioned above whose sps don't like the action can do well on smaller more frequent ones as long as the detritus is taken out as well. From pics the dsb looks small and easily fully cleaned.

 

 

Another inversion ive seen is building aquascapes where the rocks are removable, from time to time you move them to a balanced scrub tank or bucket and toothbrush, wash clean them with corals still attached which dislodges detritus in a creative and thorough way without mudding up the dt.

 

The fish and filtration systems in place for the larger tank don't have waste cast around as much nor a big wc work, and you can clean that rock over and over in the holding bucket until it retains no waste. With no rock, all areas of the main tank can be accessed without most of the work focusing on gallons done.

 

add to this creativity in export the typical balance of grazers to pick up the loose ends for minor algae growth, and carbon systems that use live bacteria to take up waste mass which are then exported, and chemical binders like gfo which uptake wastes leaking from whatever sources of waste, and we have an effective plan for total waste dealings when a tank design doesn't want full changes.

 

Some people with larger tanks still do the dance however

http://reefbuilders.com/2013/05/21/fix-fish-tank-reef-aquarium-problems-95-water/