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and how often should i be doing water changes and how much

A partial water change should be done weekly, with a full cleaning about once a month. That includes a good scrub and cleaning the filter, etc.

won't doing a complete water change kill all of your beneficial bacteria...and keep sending the water through cycles... can a res handle that

Rinsing the bio-media in tank water will preserve the beneficial bacteria

What kind of filter do you have?

i have an aqua clear minni...and a self built box filter i made from plax. glass....it has a power head made for a pond that pumps 400 gallons hour....i put bio balls,ginger filter pad, and a bag of carbon....and i also have a air pump that i pillied lava rock over for more bio filtration

The instructions with my filter say to clean the filter and change 1/4 of the water every 4 weeks, so that's what I'm going to do.

The problem with that, is that the filter is for fish, and turtles are messier than fish. Even if the water looks clean, there are still elements that you can't see, which is why is should be cleaned more frequently.

How often you do water changes and clean the tank depends in large part on how big the tank is and how good your filter is. You can tell the quality of the water (and usually when it's time to do a full/partial change) by testing the water for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Usually, though, the smaller the tank, the more frequently the water should be changed and the tank cleaned.

The Aquaclear mini is a very small filter with not much room for biomedia (I have a 50, which is larger than the mini and the quantity of biomedia is that fits into it isn't much). If you have a pump that's pumping 400gph, it may be doing a good job at mechanical filtration, but not at biofiltration.

I do a partial water change about once a month, and a change of filter media every three months. I test for nitrites and nitrates and I have an ammonia senor thing. It was pretty cheap, it suction cups to the side of the tank and changes call for SAFE, ALERT, ALARM, and TOXIC levels of ammonia.

I have a Fuval 304, I would definitely recommended it. Keeps my tank water sparkling clean!