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Adam wondering what your thought is on how often should you do a water change on a SW tank? I have always had a freshwater but now my mother got tiered of her 90gal SW tank so i got alot of her stuff including fish so i could have a salt water tank. Mine is only a 55gal but see i am a different fish owner than my mother she seems to get over zelous with her fish and i think she makes her tanks harder than what really is.
So what honestly is your opion on how often a water change should be done and a nitrate test on the tank be done?

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Life is just a game! So have FUN already!!!

Well I'm not adam but I'll tell ya what I think.

On a fish SW tank water changes should be done weekly or bi-weekly until the bio in the tank is really set then it should be able to get by with once a month.

But all this has different factors that change so the best thing is to get a test kit and test weekly for nitrates and see if water needs changed. Eventually you won't have to check it but once a month.

Nitrates should NEVER get above twenty.

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Clint
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Well it really depends on the hobbyist as well as your set up when it comes to water changes...

Personally I have about 1.5 lbs of live rock per gallon and 4 inches of sugar fine aragonite sand... I almost never do water chages with my set up

for a fish only tank I would recommend changing water whenever the nitrates get above 10 and like Clint said never let them get over 20. It is hard to say "Do this many water changes and you will be fine" when you are dealing with saltwater every tank has a tendency to behave slightly differantly then another... get some good testing kits and you will start to learn the cycle your tank goes though...after a while it will be second nature what your tank needs. However just so I dont cop out totally I would have to say that if you do 15-20% changes every month you would probably be safe

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Adam

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Thank you Clint and Adam. The tank i have is my mothers. She gave me all the live rock, fish and live sand right out of her 90 gal so it is very astablished. Thank you very much for the advise. I also recently did add a yellow tang and he was not doing so well because the pet store had him at .028 and in a 10gal tank so his fins were bad but now i think he will be ok his fins are almost all healed and he now eats his greens (thats what i call em)
Thank you again for your advise.

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Life is just a game! So have FUN already!!!

.028 salinity shouldnt have been the problem with his fins... natural seawater generally ranges between .026-.028 so while it was high it was also still within the acceptable range. I generally try and keep my tank at around .024-.026. Corals like higher salinity, but fish can handle much lower salinities, like .011

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Adam

Come see my website!
Adam@cichlidfish.com
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