Is it better to do frequent small water changes or large infrequent ones and why?

[aerotiy]

I just finished setting up my new Red Sea tank and was looking into buying the Auto Aqua automatic water changer and setting it up to do small water changes a couple of times a week. For the past 8 months I was doing weekly water changes of about 2 gallons on my Evo but I had problems controlling nitrates and had to dose NOPOX to lower it. My new system is clean and I want to keep it that way so I want to know if I should switch maintenance up. And advice would be great!

[ajkochev]

I personally would do small frequent ones.  It would keep the water more stable and not have wide swings in your parameters. 

[aerotiy]

1 minute ago, ajkochev said:

I personally would do small frequent ones.  It would keep the water more stable and not have wide swings in your parameters. 

Stability is a big pro for me for the small changes but I’m wondering if the nutrient export and addition of major/trace elements will be significant and worthwhile.

[Sjadet]

As small and frequent as possible to put the least stress on the inhabitants and keep stable parameters. 

[Sjadet]

7 minutes ago, aerotiy said:

Stability is a big pro for me for the small changes but I’m wondering if the nutrient export and addition of major/trace elements will be significant and worthwhile.

Lets say you keep a stocked sps tank then you'll need to replace elements everyday. Then you might be better off just dosing and doing less wces - unless you're having nutrient issues as well.

You know your tank best but from the looks of it, your tank is pretty light so I would say just go for frequent wces to kill two birds with one stone

 

Just a heads up for the future.

[A Little Blue]

Small WC are perfectly fine, unless you ran into more problematic issues that small WC can’t fix. 

[biofool12]

I do daily water changes and my parameters are stable as can be. But once a month or so I do a big water change, clean the back chambers in my AIO tank, blast the rocks with a turkey baster to get rid of built up gunk etc.  

[Nocturnal]

IMO it depends on your situation and priorities.  

 

Smaller/frequent

pros

more stability

 

cons

more work (doing 10% isn't much less effort than changing 30%)

Potentially less efficient nutrient export  (taking 10% of your dirty water out 4x a month isn't the same as 40% of your dirty water once a month). If you are also siphoning from the substrate and filter areas this may be offset or be more efficient.

[Sjadet]

saasssssssssssssss

[Nocturnal]

20 minutes ago, Sjadet said:

Lets say you keep a stocked sps tank then you'll need to replace elements everyday. Then you might be better off just dosing and doing less wces - unless you're having nutrient issues as well.

You know your tank best but from the looks of it, your tank is pretty light so I would say just go for frequent wces to kill two birds with one stone

 

Just a heads up for the future.

I'm starting to lean more towards that approach. WCs really don't remove much from your system. I hope to begin treating them as ways to resolve short term critical problems.

 

If your tank is increasing X nitrates per day because of your feeding/filtration, then doing a daily 10% water change doesn't do anything really do much to lower them. Day 1 would be .9X + X. Day 2 would be .81X + .9X + X....  You will hit some equilibrium level based on food inputs and WC and filtration outputs.

[aerotiy]

Thank you everyone for all the input.

15 minutes ago, Nocturnal said:

 

If your tank is increasing X nitrates per day because of your feeding/filtration, then doing a daily 10% water change doesn't do anything really to lower than. Day 1 would be .9X + X. Day 2 would be .81X + .9X + X....

 This is what I was thinking of in terms of the small ones’ effectiveness at nutrient export. I would have to be taking the nitrates out at the same rate they are created in order to maintain a low stable level, I just don’t know what that would be with two clowns and a neon goby. 

 

I plan on keeping my tank LPS/softie dominant with maybe an SPS or two down the line but I haven’t really thought much about going down that road. I want to have success getting what I have now to grow. I’m not too worried about dosing at the moment because I only have a couple LPS and my big three test high after each water change.

[Nocturnal]

26 minutes ago, aerotiy said:

Thank you everyone for all the input.

 This is what I was thinking of in terms of the small ones’ effectiveness at nutrient export. I would have to be taking the nitrates out at the same rate they are created in order to maintain a low stable level, I just don’t know what that would be with two clowns and a neon goby. 

 

I plan on keeping my tank LPS/softie dominant with maybe an SPS or two down the line but I haven’t really thought much about going down that road. I want to have success getting what I have now to grow. I’m not too worried about dosing at the moment because I only have a couple LPS and my big three test high after each water change.

The guy from BRS TV really breaks the water change concept down in their video on the triton method. I seem to have my nutrients too low on my tank right now and my SPS are suffering but I'm slowly trying to bring things in line.

 

I'm focusing on growing algae right now. I have my skimmer shut off. I think I went to far though and my nitrates are too low to keep my SPS happy.

[A Little Blue]

2 minutes ago, Nocturnal said:

The guy from BRS TV really breaks the water change concept down in their video on the triton method. I seem to have my nutrients too low on my tank right now and my SPS are suffering but I'm slowly trying to bring things in line.

 

I'm focusing on growing algae right now. I have my skimmer shut off. I think I went to far though and my nitrates are too low to keep my SPS happy.

Ever though about putting skimmer on timer? Say...... 5-6 hrs a day. Ofcause when you get your nutrients in order. Don’t quote me on this but I believe it’s Mr.Palleta’s formula. I do believe that he did Triton method once but went back to 2 part and Miracle Mud after a year of frustration. 

[Nocturnal]

2 minutes ago, A Little Blue said:

Ever though about putting skimmer on timer? Say...... 5-6 hrs a day. Ofcause when you get your nutrients in order. Don’t quote me on this but I believe it’s Mr.Palleta’s formula. I do believe that he did Triton method once but went back to 2 part and Miracle Mud after a year of frustration. 

I have actually, if anything so it wouldn't annoy me during the evening hours. I figure if my fuge starts to be unable to handle things I'll add the skimmer back at least part time and see what happens.

[A Little Blue]

2 minutes ago, Nocturnal said:

I have actually, if anything so it wouldn't annoy me during the evening hours. I figure if my fuge starts to be unable to handle things I'll add the skimmer back at least part time and see what happens.

I got you. My situation is somewhat similar. Have been putting off purchasing skimmer, at least till my nutrients level get where I want it. And I don’t want to starve my macro algae.  There isn’t any kind of algae in my display part of a tank. Didn’t clean my glass in a month. I feed kinda heavy..... not sure what’s going on? Which Triton method are you using at this time?

[Tamberav]

1 hour ago, Nocturnal said:

I'm starting to lean more towards that approach. WCs really don't remove much from your system. I hope to begin treating them as ways to resolve short term critical problems.

 

If your tank is increasing X nitrates per day because of your feeding/filtration, then doing a daily 10% water change doesn't do anything really do much to lower them. Day 1 would be .9X + X. Day 2 would be .81X + .9X + X....  You will hit some equilibrium level based on food inputs and WC and filtration outputs.

 

Instead of thinking in terms of just removing whats in the water.... a manual water change (an automatic wont benefit as much) you can siphon the sand, blast the rocks, clean the back chambers, ect... you end up removing a lot debris which could have broken down into Nitrates or PO4.

 

I would argue that water changes can be very effective in lowering nutrients (if that is what a person needs for their tank) but more because of the manual cleaning a person does and not the removal of the water itself.

 

 

[Clown79]

It really depends on the system and what's going on in it.

 

Some systems don't need weekly waterchanges while others need multiple weekly waterchanges.

 

 

[biophilia]

With nano tanks, I'm a big fan of large volume water changes because they eliminate guesswork and the necessity of dosing magnesium and trace elements... and effectively reduce PO4 which (can) eliminate the need for GFO media. I do weekly 25% water changes with my IM Nuvo 10, though I add potassium nitrate (Spectracide Stump Remover) and amino acids to the new water because I like to keep my tank at 10-20ppm NO3 and 0.01-0.03 PO4  in order to keep my acropora and other SPS colored up.

If you choose a salt with levels that you like to keep your tank at, there's really no harm in doing as big of water changes as you want  as often as you want as long as you maintain detectable nitrate and phosphate levels. I did weekly 85% water changes in my old pico reef and everything always looked great 30 minutes after the change. Your corals will adjust. The only real secret to big water changes is making sure your nutrients aren't stripped out entirely.

[Tamberav]

1 hour ago, biophilia said:

With nano tanks, I'm a big fan of large volume water changes because they eliminate guesswork and the necessity of dosing magnesium and trace elements... and effectively reduce PO4 which (can) eliminate the need for GFO media. I do weekly 25% water changes with my IM Nuvo 10, though I add potassium nitrate (Spectracide Stump Remover) and amino acids to the new water because I like to keep my tank at 10-20ppm NO3 and 0.01-0.03 PO4  in order to keep my acropora and other SPS colored up.

If you choose a salt with levels that you like to keep your tank at, there's really no harm in doing as big of water changes as you want  as often as you want as long as you maintain detectable nitrate and phosphate levels. I did weekly 85% water changes in my old pico reef and everything always looked great 30 minutes after the change. Your corals will adjust. The only real secret to big water changes is making sure your nutrients aren't stripped out entirely.

 

Been to three hardware stores... still looking for that stump remover stuff... 

[Nocturnal]

20 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

 

Been to three hardware stores... still looking for that stump remover stuff... 

Isnt that the stuff they use to cure meats? Sodium nitrate? 

[Tamberav]

Just now, Nocturnal said:

Isnt that the stuff they use to cure meats? Sodium nitrate? 

 

It is potassium nitrate I think

[Nocturnal]

7 hours ago, Tamberav said:

 

It is potassium nitrate I think

That's what I typed first but then I changed it. Figures. 

 

On my cube I've had to "dose" it with nitrate rich water from my mangrove grow out bin. Frigging hobby. Spend years trying to get no nitrates, then you get there and now too low. :/