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Grab a water change system on sale and build one of these: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=33171

I have that one. its SUCH a time saver for water changes.

Oooo...

Ok, so if I don't have any gravel, and I have two fish and a small turtle in a 55 gallon tank (say 50 gallons of water), can I get away with not changing the water for a few weeks or should I still do the 25% weekly?

I've seen these at my local pet store but I never seemed to need them. I used to just use a small pond pump and drain it that way, then pump water from the sink (treated, of course) back into the tank.

This looks a heck of a lot easier.

The purpose of the regular water changes is to remove nitrates from the tank, so yes regular water changes are always needed.

I'm not sure how you're treating your water but most water conditioning chemicals contain a chemical called sodium theosulfate that is hazardous to aquatic life and to your turtle. The safe way to treat new water is to filter it through carbon. The thread I've linked is an option for doing so easily.

I use the blue bottle of turtle-safe dechlorinator from the pet store, unless I've gotten a bucket ready ahead of time to let the chlorine evaporate (?) out. I do have a larger carbon filter that I could use, though, instead, if that works better. The water here in town suuuuuuucks and our RO tank only holds about a gallon and a half, so trying to fill it from that is an entire day's worth of bucketing.

Unless you read the MSDS sheet for the products (and most companies omit much of the "info" for non-human products") you really don't know if it's safe or not. MOST water conditioners are NOT good for your turtle or fish regardless of the packaging. RO water is too soft - it has a hard time holding a stable PH and can even cause some pitting in your turtle's shell. Straight RO water should NOT be used.

It sounds like you have an RO system with a small tank. Most every RO system has a few filter stages prior to the RO membrane. Those filter stages (usually the downward hanging canisters) are sediment filters and a carbon filter. If your RO system has exposed tubing that link the different filtration stages together, you could easily put a "T" fitting in the tubing after filter stages prior to the RO membrane. Then you'd just need bit of tubing and a shut-off valve coming off that T. So one side of the T would feed the RO system as normal. The other side would exit the RO unit at that point and go to a valve that you could open and close. I've done this with my RO unit and the total cost for the modification was around $8. You don't need a tank for the filtered water (non-RO) side of the T. You can just use that to fill the turtle tank when necessary.

As for Chlorine... most municipals don't use chlorine anymore because it does evaporate. Most now use chloramine and that doesn't evaporate. Filtering the water through carbon will remove both.

Ah. Good to know.
I'll add checking on that and finding my other carbon filter to the list of projects for today, which include chipping the back off one of my cuttlebones and also filling the garage ponds.

OH - ok, if I'm going to fill the ponds outside, I obviously don't have enough conditioner to handle that even if it was useful / good, so ... if I just make a large carbon-filled filter, say, with pre-soaked / washed activated charcoal and a pillowcase (or a sock?), would that be ok?

It's a good thing you told me this or I would have felt silly dumping all those bottles of the blue stuff into the ponds.

... and I'm sorry, I totally did not mean to hijack this thread. :\
(I am learning so much today though.)

No problem. They're all good questions