Water Changes On A Large Tank

[xxBarneyxx]

Just wondering what peoples opinions are on how often water changes should be done on large tanks?

Planning a 150g (uk) tank which will have a 40-50g sump and until I worked out the cost of the salt each year and the amount of wasted water when making the RO I was planning on weekly 10% water changes (like I do for all my tanks).

So just wanted peoples opinions on a good wc routine. The tank will be "over skimmed" and while I dont mind doing 10% weekly WC if thats what it needs I would not to be creating work for myself if it is not neccersary.

The other thing to think about is that its going to take a long time to stock this thing so it it going to running with very low stocking levels for the water volume for at least the first year.

As always any advice is greatly appreciated

 

[andywg]

Monitor your levels and decide. There is no hard and fast way to do things. I tend to do about 5 gallons a week on a system with a current total volume of about 160 gallons. This is keeping on top of nitrates in a system which has a main reef display tank, a predator tank with three messy eaters (porcy, picasso trigger and snowflake moray) and a frogfish tank with 2 frogfish.

I wouldn't want to be doing more than about 10% per fortnight to be honest on your tank. Instead look to get as much nutrient export as you can. Get as big a sump as you can easily fit and, if possible, have a completely separate refugium for growing algae, then you can easily put in a huge DSB.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

If I had some common sense I would be dangerous .

Very good advice, thanks. Makes sense just to watch what is going on in the tank and do water changes accordingly (stupidly this never even crossed my mind. Got into the habit of doing weekly 10% changes on my FW tanks so kind of blinded me to the obvious solution ).

 

[SkiFletch]

Umm, I won't mention the last time I did a waterchange on my system . Then again, as Andy mentioned, I've monitored my system and gotten used to its wants/needs. I never reccomend for newbies to do waterchanges as infrequently as I do, for it takes some time/experience to figure out nutrient export before aquarists really know what they're doing