Water Changes

[DeltaZ]

Hello,

 

Working with about 15% nitrates, I did a 30% water change yesterday with a new salt mix, went from IO regular salt to Red Sea Coral Pro.  I have a hi-fin red banded goby, candy pistol shrimp, and 3 nacerious snails.  I know that they are all sensitive to high nitrates, can I do another water change soon to lower my nitrates ??  or would I affect my livestock because that is too much water turn over a 2 or 3 day period ?

[Chris's Fishes]

You say 15% - maybe that's a way to measure nitrates that I'm not aware of, but I think you mean 15 PPM? 

 

The problem isn't with changing water - IMO, you can change out as much water as you want as long as you replace it with water of the same SG, temperature, and PH. The small spikes in ca, mg, and alk shouldn't be a problem, unless the tank is using a LOT of those in between water changes.

 

The problem is that when changing salts, you're changing everything in your water. Marine salts will all be similar to some degree, but the formula is usually slightly different. For that reason, I wouldn't change TOO much at one time, to allow your tank to kinda re-acclimate to the new salt. If you want to continue water changes, I'd suggest something along the lines of 10% per day for the next week or so - but that's just me.

[DeltaZ]

ooppps

 

meant to say 15 PPM, yeah I am concern for the invertebrates in the tank leaving the water at 15PPM till next week, you think that they should be fine till I change it next week ??? 

[Natereef]

3 minutes ago, DeltaZ said:

ooppps

 

meant to say 15 PPM, yeah I am concern for the invertebrates in the tank leaving the water at 15PPM till next week, you think that they should be fine till I change it next week ??? 

15 ppm isnt that high.

[Chris's Fishes]

As long as you don't have any super sensitive inverts or corals, I think you'll be fine. You want to keep them as low as possible to avoid algae and bacteria issues, but it shouldn't directly hurt your inverts.

 

15 PPM isn't too high for a FOWLR tank - in a reef, some inverts and some coral (more SPS than anything) would be pretty unhappy at 15 PPM. However, most shrimp and snails won't mind it too much.

[DeltaZ]

okay great, I only have 1 candy stripe pistol shrimp / hi-fin banded goby  and 3 nassarius snails for now.  so cool, ill wait about a week to let them acclimate to this water change and change it next week.

 

[Clown79]

15ppm is not overly high.

 

Doing waterchanges isn't an issue as long as params match.

 

The issue is you went from using a salt that has pretty low to normal params to a salt that has elevated params.

Doing large or frequent waterchanges can result in large fluctuations in parameters because of the change.

 

RSCP normally mixes high alk where as IO is within normal range.

 

So due to the salt change, I would be cautious on doing large percentages or too frequent of waterchanges unless the params are fairly close.