Water change how often?

[duanes]

I base my water change schedule using nitrate as an indicator of need to change.
My target nitrate number is 5ppm.
And I have found to keep my tanks at 5 ppm or below, I need to do a 30-40% water change every other day on my 180 gal, with heavily planted 125 gal sump/refugium, in total containing seven 5 -7" fish, and a bunch of shrimp in th refugium.,
Everyones tank, feeding regime, and filtration is different, there is "no" one size fits all.

 

[eon aquatics]

same as duanes, although when i use the multi test strip it says its clean, for some reason i only need to do water changes like every few months
does anyone know how the nitrate and nitrite levels always stay low without me needing to do anything?

 

[Crazylegs78]

I do 50% water changes once a week on a bare bottom 210g. Got my festae from 2-3" to 10-11" in about 1.5yrs. Hikari gold pellets 90%of the time.