water changes

so i do 25 gallon every other week, so thats a total of 50 gallons changed a month, if i did 5 gallons every 3 days, thats still 50 gallons a month....would it be the same??? if i did 5 gallons every three days it would be much much much easier for me to do, pelase tell me what you think.

 

You would actually have a more constant level of Ca, dkh, Mg as well as all the other trace elements. How big of a tank do you have?

 

Short answer, IMO thats okay.
Long answer, It depends how big your tank is. If you have a 250 and 50 gallons is a 20% change than yes you can do that. If your tank is closer to 150 or 100, you shouldn't be changing that much water anyway. I do 5 gallons a week on my 90 and I have excellent water quality.

 

To not directly answer your question... if you did more frequent smaller changes, you would end up changing out water that is only 3 days old, more or less. I know it all mixes, but still...

If you did less frequent larger water changes every two weeks, you would be changing all old water (at least two weeks old) for fresh...

With that in mind, from one way of looking at it... 5 gallons every 3 days does not equal the same amount of water being changed as 25 gallons ever other week... does that make sense?

I would say its better to do 25 G every other week. Personally, I do 10% every six weeks.

 

its a 150 gallon tank, but i have a 55 gallon refugiuma nd 20 gallon sump....i have calculated the total water volume at 200 gallons. thats because all the rocks and stuff take up water volume.

 

I do 25-30% every other week. Works well for me. Plus from a time perspective, it is more practicle. If I am changing 5% or 25% it takes close to the same amount of time...making the water, aerating the water, heating the water, etc. Well the making takes a little longer (takes longer to make 20 gallons of RO water then 5 obviosuly...but you get my point).

 

Ah.......WC's........very debatable topic. I have a 150g system and I used to do 25g every week. I stopped doing WC and I only do them once in a blue moon or when its time to clean the substrate. And with a sand shifting star fish, the "blue moons" are few and inbetween. I just dose the necessary elements, food and top off water as needed. Between the LR, LS and the refugium, you should be fine with No3 and Po4 levels. One of the reasons why WC are preformed is to export those pathogens. The refugium takes care of that.
But to answer your Q, smaller more frequent WC are recommended over large ones.


[SCROLL]Luna[/SCROLL]

 

Honestly, I would do whatever you think is easier. Changing 5 gallons every 3 days will give you more steady parameters, basically along the lines of what Peredhil said. But 25 gallons every 2 weeks will allow you to change more depleted water. As long as you are able to maintain good water quality, you should be fine.

 

ok don't remember name of magizine but it is the only british mag on the shelf at barns and nobles. But anyway this month of that mag has a artical in it that talks about water changes. They were claming that more smaller water changes were better cause they didn't change the chemistry as drasticly as larger less frequent ones did. Artical was more indepth though, but that is the just of it.