if you could, what would you do?

If your water changes were set up automatically, would you do a 1% every day, a 10% every week, a 25% twice a month, ect ect ect?

I know that we do water changes to replace trace elements and was thinking that if you do them too often, then we'd be replacing the elements that havnt even been used yet, and want to know the beat way to go about setting this up.

My buddy scottmwoods will be setting this up in his 90 gallon mixed reef within the next couple weeks, and we dont want to waste salt, but at the same stime keep everything as good as possible as far as trace elementa go.

Thanks for any words of wisdom.

 

I'd say in general that water changes are more to remove waste than to replenish elements.

So if you dose the elements and don't have much bioload, you can get away with less water changing.

If you have a high bioload, then you'll want to do more WCing.

If you have a lot of hard coral, you will probably need to dose anyway, so the wc will be for removing waste.

10% weekly is just a generality - adjust it to your circumstance. I'd probably do a little every day if it were automated. Keeps the waste and elements more level. Bigger water changes will potentially cause bigger swings in all the levels.

 

my opinion i do 1 every 2-3 weeks only 10%

best way is obviously check parameters but it really depends on your load...

reef vs fish only live rock vs fish only

also live sand how deep what kind of filtration would all play a part of this

newyorksteelo on youtube has a gorgeous 90g reef tank that he has not done one waterchange in over a year!!!!!!



but if i had it automatic i didn't do anything i would say every 2 weeks no more than 10% would be my preferance

 

I do 10% weekly on my reef tanks since I do not dose. On my FOWLR I usually do 10% once or twice a month.