1st water change

Need help, I want to do my first water change and i have been reading many diferent ways of doing this

1) remove 10%-15% water then add newly mixed water but only 1-2 gallond back, then wait a couple of hours or day and add the rest of the mixed water.

2) remove 10%-15%, then add all the mixed water back.

I have a coral banded and a skunk cleaner so i dont want to kill them, what is the best way to do the water change? Also i just added 2 clownfish a week ago(already had 2 small damsels and 7 snails) and dont see any change in water parameters since adding the clowns, dont know if i should even be changing the water yet because i added fish a week ago (the only reason i want to change it is to get nitrates down wich are at 20ppm or a liitle higher)?

Any help is greatly appreciated

last readings

amonia <0
PH 8.2
Phosphates .1 ppm
Nitrates 20ppm might be a little higher than this
alk 12
calcium 440
nitirites 0

 

I do mine all at once, if you match the salinity and temperature you should have no problems

 

I also return as much as I take. 5 gal out 5 gal in.

 

Dito here .....

temp is the biggest problem...

I mix my water up and let it sit for a day then add....but I do it all at once roughly 10 gallons out and the 10 back.... (About 100 gallons total system water)

 

Water change

Well i did it and had all the parameters correct before i put it in, only thing i noticed is that one of my shrimp shed its skin last night. This seems to happen when i do large top offs 1/2 gallon also( not every time). Could just be a coincidence, everyone else looks like they are normal.


Thanks for the advice.


i dropped the nitrates to 10ppm from 20 or 15(test kit hard to read)

 

Hello x, since you say this is the "first" water change, I would not do a change if the tank hasn't been up for more than 4-6 weeks. You have a 26 gal. (from your profile) so a common 25-30% would be about 7.5 gal. if you really have 26 gal. of total water volume. Remember, you must subtract for your rock and sand and add for sump/refugium to get total volume.

 

yea i take out a 5 gallon gas jug and replace with a 5 gallon gas jug that has been sitting for a day so the temp is exact...any room on the top i top it off with r/o water unless the salinity is a bit low then i grab a lil more salt water...if you don't have a large bioload im pretty sure u can just do 10% every week and be more than fine;D;D;D

 

you did it right. make sure the params are good, then add it all back in. The shrimp molting is probably more of a coincidence. Either way, molting is a good sign.

 

Its been set up since september 11th, nitrites and amonia have been 0 for weeks. i actually changed like 4 gallons yesterday. didnt want to do too much, i want to spread it every 2 weeks to make up 25% total in a month.

 

O.k. X, the problem (or lack of benefit) from doing small changes over a month is that those small changes become insignificant as far as a diluting effect. We really want to dilute (not to extreme) the existing tank water. Look at it this way, say you change the 4 gal. as you said, that calculates to about 18% which leaves 82% of the water unchanged. In 1 week (let alone 2) your water has has gone back to about 95% un-replenished. So, to use a term, you are spinning your wheels. Does that make sense to you? Many aquarists have a hard time understanding dilution. Let's say you go 4-5 weeks between changes (as many of us do) and then you change out a full 30% of your 26 gal. You then have changed about 8 gal. leaving only 16 gal. of un-replenished water or about 70%, so you are adding in 30% pure water with new minerals (from the salt mix) this is better than the insignificant amount of smaller more frequent changes. It may get confusing but the science is behind the fact that larger less frequent changes are the way to go.