Frequency of Water Changes?

[igorres]

Hello everyone!

 

I am new to reefing, and I of course started out with a nano tank in my college dorm room (non-ideal, I know). I have a standard 10 gallon tank with about 10 pounds of aquacultured live rock, one inch of live reef sand, an Aquaclear 50 HOB filter with activated carbon and filter floss, Coralife Marine clip-on lighting (I'm only planning on keeping soft corals and potentially some low-light LPS corals), and an inexpensive HOB ATO. I cycled my tank using Dr. Tim's live nitrifying bacteria and ammonia, and after two weeks, my tank was able to cycle 2 ppm of ammonia to 0 ppm ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in 24 hours.

 

I have added the following livestock: 6 blue leg hermit crabs with lots of extra shells, 6 turban snails, 1 peppermint shrimp (I had a small aiptasia problem that's been taken care of), an orange sponge (I know they're difficult to care for, but it was free), tons of micro brittle stars, pink colt coral, green mushrooms, some zoas, green star polyps, and pulsing xenia (the last two are isolated on a piece of live rock).

 

I feed with Reef Chili every three days, and sometimes I drop in some seaweed pellets and regular sinking pellets for the snails/hermits/shrimp if there isn't enough algae in the tank.

 

I'm wondering how often I should be changing the water. I initially was doing 20-30% water changes weekly, but recently there has been 0 ppm ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate (sometimes ~5 ppm nitrate) before I go to change the water (I guess Dr. Tim's works?). Should I still change the water? I'm worried if I don't that I will not have enough iodide for when the shrimp molts.

 

Thanks everyone! Sorry if this was already answered. I can post pictures later.

[seabass]

 to Nano-Reef.com.

 

That's a very aggressive water change schedule.  I'd probably drop it down to 10% weekly and see how that goes.  I'd probably try to keep nitrate between 5 and 10 ppm.  If it goes up much more than that, you can increase the volume of your water changes.

[Clown79]

Waterchange frequency and size will depend on the tanks needs.

 

Some need to do larger waterchanges and more often while some tanks won't benefit from that at all. 

 

If your nutrient levels are low to non existant than frequency and size of waterchanges should be altered.

 

I do 10% weekly or 15% every 2 weeks, depending on my tanks needs.

[Murphs_Reef]

I tend to do 5% on a Wednesday and 5 on Sunday. More because these are my 2 "nothing to do" evenings that anything else but it seems to work well... During these changes I change floss and use a baster to clean the rockwork.