Hi there what is the general opinion concerning the amount of water change % wise, and the time line in a 200gal tank fitted with a sump? I also have a fluval 405 which i'm running on my old tank at the moment and was thinking of swaping it over onto the new one, any thoughts on this?

I think its better to do small 10% water changes once a week rather than stress the fish out doing larger ones , And personally I would not put the flu val 405 on your new tank( although some will say the more filtration the better) , as you already have a sump unless your going to fill with live rock. I am not a big fan of these filters, and find that even with regular cleaning my nitrates were higher than I would like , I have now ditched the rings and sponges filled my filters with live rock and totally rely on live rock in my reef system and the nitrates have dramatically dropped from 80 to 10. and would rather rely on my live rock in the tank , and caulerpa in my sump, to get rid of the nitrates for me on my fish only system .I am sure there will be many different views on this and a lot of you will disagree with me but that is my opinion also being old school and keeping marine fish 30 years ago I am toying with the idea of putting an under gravel filter( AAAAGH I hear you say) in a small sea horse only system as I had no problems for over 10 years when using them before , ( could be a costly mistake but I personally dont think so.

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senile old git

Thanks for the input, must admit had'nt thought of live rock in the filter might give that a go.

your welcome

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senile old git

hi all,

on my 6 foot tank i have a sump and a tetratec 1200 running in the sump with gravel carbon n floss it picks it up at end cycle of the sump and returns it to the begining of the sump so goes through the sump live rock etc twice before returning to main tank i have cheato in sump to have never had any trouble with nitrates nitrites etc and the carbon and gravel in my tetratec give me crystal clear water dont know if this helps i think you have to remove the sponges from the filter otherwise as grandad says you can have seriouse nitrate probs

i do 15-20 per cent a fortnight on my tank as u r always topping tank up due to water evaperation with a sump.

Thanks to Duncan jmg and Tankbuster and Grandad for the input this will give me some ideas that i can play around with

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Ex divers do it deeper