The "proper" way to do a water change?

Jonjey

Jonjey

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I just purchased one of those siphons that hook up to the sink faucet and up until now I've been doing water changes by simply filling 5 gallon jugs and adding seachem prime, letting them sit out then using a bucket to drain water and filling it back up with the pre-dechlorinated water.
I heard that if you add prime, then put tap water straight into your tank from the sink, it can ruin your cycle? But I've also seen a lot of people do it that way... So just wanting to hear people's experiences and if it's okay to add cold tap water straight to the tank if you put prime in before adding it.
 
I've killed my cycle that way, even putting the prime in first. I wasn't able to restart the cycle until I dechlorinated the water beforehand. It might have been a coincidence, though.

I was using the API water conditioner, not the seachem prime, not sure if that's a difference that makes a difference.
 
Prime will NOT ruin your cycle. It rather protects it from chlorine and chloramine! Prime binds ammonia and breaks down chloramines into ammonium, an nontoxic form of ammonia that your bio filter can still eat.

What likely killed your cycle, if not coincidence, was the fact that you may have not dosed enough prime. When running water directly from the tap into your tank, you MUST dose enough prime to cover the WHOLE tank volume.

For example:

Youre doing a 50% water change on a 20 gallon tank. From 5g buckets, you would dose the water to be added with 1/5 mL of prime each bucket.
Taking the water directly from the tap, you would dose your tank for the full volume, meaning you need to put 2 mL directly into your tank. It never hurts to do more.

Hope this helped.
 
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