astro Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 It is as the subject asks:P : How do you perform water changes in your tank? (what equip do you use, do you take new water from premixed bucket, etc) Just curious to see what methods people used!! Link to comment
vyger Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 I'm not sure what other people do but it seems pretty straight forward..I have been taking a gallon of R/O water and mix salt from Instant Oceans till I reach the desired salinity at 80 degrees. Since it's such a small volume of water i just put it in a pitcher and place that in my sink which is full of hot water. My tank is at 1.0245 so that is what I aim for as far as salinity. then i siphon a gallon of water out of my 6 gallon tank and add the the water I just made up..making sure the temp.is about the same as my tank.. I do a one gallon water change once a week for a 6 gallon tank..My tank has been doing fine since i started 8 months ago. Link to comment
emarti20 Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 I do a one gallon change per week on my ten. I bought a one gallon jug from the local water store and drilled two holes in the top the size of airline tubing. In one hole I put a short length of hose maybe ten inches long with about one inch in the jug, the rest hanging out. The other hole has a long length of airline that can reach the bottom of the jug and about two feet outside the jug. At the end is about 18 inches of rigid tubing. (I'll take a picture later to illustrate this). I mix up my IO in a bucket with a powerhead and heater. To siphon water out of the tank you just suck on the short length of hose and water will start flowing into the jug. No nasty SW in the mouth, and no mess sense it going into the sealed jug. The rigid airline at the end makes sucking junk up in the tank pretty easy. I then do the reverse to add the fresh water back in. Fill the jug up with the fresh SW and then blow into the short tube to get the water flowing out into the tank without creating a sand storm. I wish I could give credit to this method to the right person, but it was something I read about one I started a couple of months ago. Link to comment
mapv281 Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 i have a 5 gal sterilite container that i got from walmart, it's great by the way, it put in a powerhead and heater, mix ro water with IO, let that run for 24 hrs so that the temp, ph, salinity settle and get where i want it to be, before i change my water, i test the new water first, then i siphon out 1 gal from my tank, and put in the new gal in, works everytime and my tank has been coming along great since i started it Link to comment
samksy1 Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 How do you deal with evaporation? Or is it just plain simple, just pour back how much got evaporated? Link to comment
nanocat Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 Throw heater in 5g. container of NSW. Sit back and enjoy tank for a couple of hours. Drain (siphon and vacuum) about 2.5g. from each nano. Pour NSW back in. I'm done Takes maybe 15 minutes to do two nanos. As far as evap, you aren't waiting until you do a water change to do top-off are you? I just topoff daily whatever evap's with RO/DI (or RO, or distilled). Link to comment
twflys Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 Seriously, I'm a total noob.... had my tank for over a year and have NEVER cleaned it. Everything seems to be living great, same corals, serpent star and blenny for over a year too. The only thing that is I have trouble with are my snails and hermits keep disappearing. Hmm..... think I'll post something about that. But, water changes aren't necassary for coral life, I'm a firm believer, just because I know it works. Link to comment
astro Posted March 17, 2004 Author Share Posted March 17, 2004 Hmm I have a question concerning syphons for those who use the syphon-into-bucket-and-refill-tank method Since its not suggested to gravel vac the substrate of a reef tank, what do you guys do to syphon the water out ? :)And what brands of syphons do you use/recommend? Link to comment
vyger Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 If you have a bare bottom tank you can vac any crap that's on the bottom. I' f you have live sand or crushed coral or some other substrate just siphon the water from the top part of the tank and if there's any junk on the rocks use the hose to vacuum that off... I just use a length of 1/2 inch id. clear hose. for a siphon....works fine...Also I'm sure that not cleaning a tank will result in a catastrophe at some point. I had a 30 gal before I dropped down to a 6 gal and I didn't keep up with the water changes and the whole tank went to crap....algae everywhere things died off regularly... The tanks you see on this forum are no doubt the result of regular maintenance... Link to comment
joedirt00 Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 Just remember when you do your top off for evap. use plain ro/di water not mixed with salt for water changes or your salinity wil skyrocket. as water evaporates the salt stays in the tank. Link to comment
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