In episode #12 in our Building A Budget Reef Aquarium Series I covered water changes. This will be the first water change we've done with our new 55-gallon soon-to-be reef tank.

If you saw our last video (Part #11 Cleaning Glass), it was about done about 30 minutes before shooting this video. So, now the glass is clean and there is some detritus in the tank as a result. It's an excellent idea to do a water change right after you clean your glass and stir everything up.

You may be asking "Water changes do I really have to do water changes? I don't want to do water changes." What I'm going to tell you here is there are some methods of keeping aquariums that don't involve water changes, but I'm going to suggest that if you're on a budget, or if you're a beginner, you really, really, really should do your water changes. And that's because water changes do two things. When we take the water out of the aquarium we take out dirty water and things we don't want in the aquarium. But we're also then going to replace that water with new salt water with all of the correct trace elements in it, and that's going to add necessary supplements to the aquarium.

If you don't want to do water changes, then instead of just pouring a jug of salt water into the tank, you'll probably need to add calcium, alkalinity, magnesium, strontium, potassium, iodine, and molybdenum to the tank. You'll wind up looking like a mad chemist. So it's a whole lot easier just to do regular water changes to add those trace elements back. And it's a lot easier in many cases to just do a water change than to buy very expensive gear that requires special media cleaning and tuning. The easiest and simplest way to keep your aquarium clean is to do your water changes.

For this 55-gallon reef tank we're going to commit to doing about five gallons of water changes once a week. We generally recommend you do no less than 1/3 once a month. To make the calculation, keep in mind this 55-gallon aquarium doesn't actually have 55 gallons of water. Once we have all the substrate, rock, fish, filters, and everything else in it, it's probably closer to about 40 gallons. So if we do five gallons a week we're probably changing about half the water once a month. You could either do that one big water change once a month or you can do little ones once a week. We find for most people a small five-gallon water change is going to be a lot easier.

When doing a saltwater water change, the first thing you're going to need is salt water. We already prepared a jug of salt water. We're not going to show you guys how to mix saltwater because we did that in a previous Making Saltwater Video.

Next, we prepare a bucket for our dirty water. We recommend you use a bucket because when we put our dirty water in here it's also a great chance to grab a pump, put it in the bucket, and scrub it with a toothbrush to get it clean. A wide-mouth bucket opening is very nice for cleaning. You could also use an old salt bucket or pick one up from the hardware store. We've attached to this bucket a Flipper Bucket Buddy Hose Retention Clip. This is not necessary but that's going to keep the tube from our Gravel Vac in place so it doesn't flop around.

I use Python Pro-Clean Large, 2" X 16" Tube w/ 6 ft. Hose to suck the water out of the aquarium and into our bucket without sucking up the sand. As we get ready to do our water change we're going to start by turning all the equipment off except for the light. That's because if the skimmer filter circulation pumps or heater start to run dry they can damage themselves and we don't want that to happen. But we do want the light on so that we can see what we're doing when we do the water change. When we set things up we plugged everything into a power strip, except for the light, so that we can with one click leave the light on but turn everything else off.

We start by taking our bucket over to the tank and getting the siphon started. When it comes to siphoning the aquarium the most common way to get your siphon started is to take the dirty end of the siphon in the tank and suck on the clean side. But I don't recommend that. I remember when I worked at a fish store my first thought was if one of us has herpes we're all going to get it. So I'm going to show you guys a way to start the siphon without sucking on it. I'm going to leave the hose in the bucket. I take the siphon, drop it down just as the water almost reaches the top, push it back up, and then pull it down again. That's how to get the siphon started without sucking.

While the water is draining I kink the hose slightly to slow down the flow of the siphon, and that's going to stop the sand from getting sucked up. If you don't restrain the flow, the sand can get sucked up and wind up in the bucket. We don't want that. Some of the higher-end siphons have a valve to let you do this. I find it easier just to kink it.

To know when I've removed five gallons I've made a black mark on the inside of the bucket at the five-gallon level. Once I've taken the five gallons of dirty water out of the tank, I just leave the siphon in the bucket. We just have to pour the five gallons of salt water into the tank and we're done. This whole water change process only takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes. If you do this once a week it's pretty reasonable. If you like what you saw here today, stay tuned. Next up we'll have some more maintenance videos and then we'll add the corals.