daily water change amount?

[Pathagor]

Hi Guys

Im currently planning a semi-automated water change system for a new 680L (180gal) tank I will be getting. I am planning to set the system up to do a water change either every day, or every other day of a small amount. Considering a 10-15% water change weekly is usually reccomended, Im thinking a 3% water change daily, or a 5% water change every 2 days should be sufficient? Thoughts anyone?

For those interested, I will be using a microcontroller called Oopic to control the system (www.oopic.com). Basically the controller will activate a pump to empty the tank to a predetermined level into a waste water reservouir, and then will activate another pump to pump fresh water into the tank. The fresh water is heated to approximately the same temperature as the tank water, and has previously been treated to be as close as possible to the chemical composition of the water already in the tank.

All I will have to do is empty the waste water container and fill the fresh water container once a week - much easier than messing around inside the tank.

The controller will hopefully also have an emergency 30% water change button that can be activated at any time.

 

[Def]

I'm a noob so please ignore me, but the thing with that is that you won't be hoovering the junk off the gravel at the bottom.

 

[Pathagor]

Good comment, however I have already considered that. I will periodically be using a gravel cleaner which syphons the gunk off the bottom, filters it and returns the filtered water to the tank. I am also planning on using directional jets to increase water movement accross the substrate in an attempt to move most of the debris towards the filter intake before it has a chance to settle

 

[canarsie11]

I'd go for 10% every other day.

 

[David]

It depend on what kind of fish you want. for more sensitive fish like discus the more the better, so 20% every other day would be good. For hardy fish like livebearers what you first said would suffice.

 

[canarsie11]

It depend on what kind of fish you want. for more sensitive fish like discus the more the better, so 20% every other day would be good. For hardy fish like livebearers what you first said would suffice.

Take your own advice.