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Water changes

svreef

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When you do water changes, how do YOU make sure you remove the right amount of water?

I only have one Brute - which holds the new water and I use 5g buckets to measure the water I remove. But I’m always nervous that I’ll remove too much water and will have to scramble to make more. My guess is that having a second Brute is the best solution.

I also have a drain close to the tank, but I can’t use it directly because I can’t measure the amount of water I remove.

Seems like a stupid question but I feel I’m missing something here.
 
i use multiple water jugs that are the same size. (standard size 5 gal.)
i siphon our 2 jugs of tank water, and pump back in 2 jugs of new water.
 
When you do water changes, how do YOU make sure you remove the right amount of water?

I only have one Brute - which holds the new water and I use 5g buckets to measure the water I remove. But I’m always nervous that I’ll remove too much water and will have to scramble to make more. My guess is that having a second Brute is the best solution.

I also have a drain close to the tank, but I can’t use it directly because I can’t measure the amount of water I remove.

Seems like a stupid question but I feel I’m missing something here.

I drain water to 5g water jug until I have about 40g out, and mark a line on my tank with white market somewhere hidden away. So next time when I need to change water, I will just eyeballing that line on my tank.


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Do a water change with buckets, counting the buckets. When you remove what you normally do, mark the level on the tank. Fill till full. Nextime just drain to your mark. It also helps to have a bigger container of water ready, so you don't have to be exact.

Edit: ya, what @ashburn2k said. Haha
 
When you do water changes, how do YOU make sure you remove the right amount of water?

I only have one Brute - which holds the new water and I use 5g buckets to measure the water I remove. But I’m always nervous that I’ll remove too much water and will have to scramble to make more. My guess is that having a second Brute is the best solution.

I also have a drain close to the tank, but I can’t use it directly because I can’t measure the amount of water I remove.

Seems like a stupid question but I feel I’m missing something here.

Use a some kind of label (Like tape) in a semi-hidden area. Drain to that line to however much you’re filling back in.
 
I haven’t done this myself but I’m planning on installing an overflow on my sump that feeds directly to the drain with a valve for when I’m not using it. When I want to do a water change I’ll open the valve and simply add as much water as I want. The excess will go down the drain and I can add as much or as little as I want and I don’t have to keep track of it.
 
I’m always nervous that I’ll remove too much water and will have to scramble to make more
I’m in a similar situation with water changes. As a precaution I don’t dump the last last bucketful I drain out until after refilling the tank with new water. Worst case, I have to add a gallon or two of old water back to the tank.
 
I keep my return/sump running. As the water gets low in the return chamber I add some new water to above the normal level, about 5g at a time for my size tank. For what I expect to be the last gallon or so, I take out a little less than I expect and let it settle for a couple min before removing the last bit of water. This allows me to easily get the water level just right.

If you do the math this is not much less efficient percentage-changed-wise vs taking out all the water and then adding all the water, a lot less of a hit than you would think intuitively. Example: 10% water change would be 9.5% effective water change with this method (The 0.5% reduction is the new water lost). 20% water change would be 18% effective water change. So pretty negligible at the percentages we do.

It also means my display is always normally full so remains undisturbed, and since the return is running so are the heaters, etc, conditioning the water as I add it. Plus if I need to stop part way through it’s no big deal.

In reality, I don’t do large water changes anymore anyway, usually small volumes like 5g at a time in the context of some kind of maintenance, so even less of a loss in efficiency.
 
I just have more than I'll ever drain, so it really doesn't matter how much I drain every amount is the right amount! :D *power of the water storage container!*
 
When you do water changes, how do YOU make sure you remove the right amount of water?

I only have one Brute - which holds the new water and I use 5g buckets to measure the water I remove. But I’m always nervous that I’ll remove too much water and will have to scramble to make more. My guess is that having a second Brute is the best solution.

I also have a drain close to the tank, but I can’t use it directly because I can’t measure the amount of water I remove.

Seems like a stupid question but I feel I’m missing something here.

Since you’re by a drain make a u-shaped hook with 1/2” pvc and connect one end with soft tubing to go to the drain and the other end that’s in the tank cut to the height that you want to drain to so the siphon will stop at the same point every time.
 
I keep my return/sump running. As the water gets low in the return chamber I add some new water to above the normal level, about 5g at a time for my size tank. For what I expect to be the last gallon or so, I take out a little less than I expect and let it settle for a couple min before removing the last bit of water. This allows me to easily get the water level just right.

If you do the math this is not much less efficient percentage-changed-wise vs taking out all the water and then adding all the water, a lot less of a hit than you would think intuitively. Example: 10% water change would be 9.5% effective water change with this method (The 0.5% reduction is the new water lost). 20% water change would be 18% effective water change. So pretty negligible at the percentages we do.

It also means my display is always normally full so remains undisturbed, and since the return is running so are the heaters, etc, conditioning the water as I add it. Plus if I need to stop part way through it’s no big deal.

In reality, I don’t do large water changes anymore anyway, usually small volumes like 5g at a time in the context of some kind of maintenance, so even less of a loss in efficiency.
You had brought this up a while ago and it changed my view on this. I think those numbers are also on the conservative side. They assume that the water is instantly homogeneous. It could work out to where the new water displaces the dirty water and have a higher percentage of dirty water being removed making it even less of a loss.
 
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I used to mark on the back glass with a sharpie a line per either 5 or 10g (small and large tanks) when draining into a 5g bucket; then place a tape against the back glass in a sort of permanent mark.
I would drain the display to the desired marking and replenish the volume.
 
I just have 2 sharpie mark's in my sump. Onc for when system run normal, and one for when return is off.
I drain the sump, them fill it to the end mark. Done
 
I am lazy, water changes itself automatically, a bit every day.

But for the few manual ones, I have a water level mark in the sump.
 
I haven’t done this myself but I’m planning on installing an overflow on my sump that feeds directly to the drain with a valve for when I’m not using it. When I want to do a water change I’ll open the valve and simply add as much water as I want. The excess will go down the drain and I can add as much or as little as I want and I don’t have to keep track of it.

Hmm, I like this idea. Currently I’ve installed a drain, but I was originally planning on connecting it to my manifold with a ball valve. An overflow system seems even easier.

So I’m imagining a bulkhead in the sump, maybe on the back of the return section, above the ATO sensor obviously. I could plug the bulkhead up if I was worried, and remove it for water changes. A gate valve on the back seems hard to access and a plug would seem to serve the same purpose.

Then add water to the DT and let the old water naturally overflow out the drain. Afterwards there might be a few gallons of extra salt water that would raise salinity an imperceptible amount, maybe to balance out skimmate? Only problem is your high ATO alarm might be going off. Maybe you’ll need to take out even more water afterwards? That’s kinda annoying, defeats some of the simplicity of having an overflow. If I use it off the manifold I can dial it in exactly.

Is that what you we’re thinking? Any other ideas to make this the easiest/best way to water change?

Edit: maybe you can slow down your return pumps during the water change to raise the sump water level. Then when done with water change, ramp returns back up and water level in the return compartment comes down to normal levels.



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I haven’t done this myself but I’m planning on installing an overflow on my sump that feeds directly to the drain with a valve for when I’m not using it. When I want to do a water change I’ll open the valve and simply add as much water as I want. The excess will go down the drain and I can add as much or as little as I want and I don’t have to keep track of it.
Remember that when your return pump goes off, sump water level goes up substantially.
Even if you properly have the valve turned off, water will go in that overflow drain pipe you are adding.
And if you forget to turn the valve off, you lose a lot of tank water.
 
Remember that when your return pump goes off, sump water level goes up substantially.
Even if you properly have the valve turned off, water will go in that overflow drain pipe you are adding.
And if you forget to turn the valve off, you lose a lot of tank water.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t need to turn off any pumps. You just add water and let the extra overflow into the drain.

Sorry yes I misunderstood. Yes, need to plug or remember to have valve closed. Or just have the bulkhead high. Or install check valves.

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If I were to do the overflow water change method, I’d install it AT the proper water level maintained by the ATO, not above. Then keep the outflow closed all the time you aren’t doing a water change. This would prevent the annoying issues raised by Gabe of having a higher water level at the end of the water change.

Though I don’t like the idea of drilling a hole into the sump at the working water level, even with a valve. I like that at it’s most basic level it is a container that can hold all the sump water plus overflow of display water without leaking even if everything else fails, no way to forget something and have a disaster.
 
Honestly, AWC scares me a bit. A drain in my sump would scare me too...

If all you are doing is sucking out water and putting it back in, you should be able to get it down to like a 10 minute affair. Mine takes around 20 minutes, but im vacuuming the sandbed every time. I attach a 50' python to my utility sink, siphon the sand bed, disconnect the python from the sand cleaning tube and attach to my sump (hose connection in the top of acrylic sump), disconnect the sink end and attach it to a pump connected to water reservoir, pump water back into tank.
 
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