How much water change is to much

jed im not trying to say you dont know what your talking about but wouldnt he be under estimating becuase of his sump? i know rock and substrate take up alot of room but hes got a 45 gallon sump that should knock the impact of the rock and whatnot right out?

 

Again, that would all depend on what is in the sump. Many aquarists keep live rock, filter media, skimmers etc. and the 45 gal. sump may only in effect have 25-30 gal. of actual water.

 

Unless things were dying off, or showing major signs of distress I would do small water changes with 2 days between each.

 

ok ty

 

In the sump is just media trays that I keep filter media carbon and phosban when needed. I keep no live rock in the sump and have a large skimmer plumbed into the sump. To give the whole picture there is between 350 and 375 of lr in the main tank. I have a precision marine xl1 skimmer that is way over rated for this tank. MH lighting and the corals are all browning and look pretty rough. The fish are ok but they can handle higher nitrates. I lost 4 of my 8 sps corals this week totally and are just white stalks now. ph is a little high at 8.7 but everything seems in normal paramaters and the ph has been high forever as I think I made a post about a year ago on being stuck in this range. I am willing to give any and all info needed. I am in the process of mixing over 100 gallons of water and it will not be ready to my liking until tomm afternoon sometime.

 

And thanks for everyones help.

 

There is no danger from doing large water changes as long as the parameters such as pH, temp and salinity are close to oiginal. What would be detrimental would be a significant change in pH and to a lesser extent temperature.

 

Hi,
I'm fairly new here on this forum although,In your case if you have a phosban reactor with a media type...remove the phos media...purchase a 500mg bag of biobeeds(swc my preffrell)
let that swirl in your reactor for a week...you will see your nitrates deplete ...
as for your water changes do your normal water change and stay with that...
do a test for nitates and you will see basically it's at 0...
when this test is done with remove the biobeeds after the 2 week peroid and change water...
either keep the media(biobeeds)
or return your phosban remover media...
but doing this keep your carbon intact with another reactor as the nitrates deplete the clarity is still clear...
thus being said is when you do cycle beeds it's a litlle cloudy for the first day but with the aide of another reactor and running carbon the clarity will stay at your needs

 

I thought that those beeds took a month to start to work as they need to increase the bacteria levels like you live rock does? I may be wrong I have seen the beeds but never really looked into them after a lfs owner telling me they take time along time to work?