I think I figured it out (sort of) my guess is you can get away with less water changes if you feed small amounts to your fish and don't feed frozen food very often. IMO the more you feed (especially frozen foods) bigger more often water changes will need to be done.

I feed heavily do 10% weekly water changes and my nitrates are still high :neutral:

I do around 30% every 2 weeks give or take a few days- its just easier
I can change 35-40 gal in 15-20 min tops

I have a tee off my closed loop pump to pump water out and a mag 9.5 to pump it back in. Super simple works great and no buckets required

Almost there myself for the super simple WC!


I think you can dose your way out of WC's if your careful and feed just the right amount but it's also expensive. Consistent WC's are a sure bet.

if your paramaters are good, and you have had success so far don't change what you are doing. Just make sure that your D.O.C's are not building up, and that you are only using RO Water for top ups. . .

I'm pretty poor at the WC right now as my tank requires the full bucket treatment rather than anything automatic. I do about 4G every 3 weeks. Since my tank has been taken over by mushrooms, it's hard to be motivated to do more.:sad:

Give the current tank of the month on reef central a read. The guy hasn't done a water change in over 3 years and his tank looks great.

With that said I do 30% every two weeks. Seeing his success almost makes me want to try no water changes for awhile as I really hate doing them but things in my tank just seem so much happier after doing a change.

on the subject of water changes, I have been scanning a few forums and see people telling others to do 100% WC in the even of emergencies? I think thats going to cause a cycle among other things wouldn't it?

It depends, if you can change 100% of your water without killing off things like sponges growing in your rocks then it won't cause any issues. The bacteria you use on your tank is mostly attached to surfaces, while the water does contain bacteria as well in comparison it's minuscule. Things like pH and temp obviously have to match to minimize effects on livestock but realistically it's a proven approach to treating certain containment.

That said 100% maybe fairly aggressive though, more commonly large water changes in the range of 50-80% are used as a more efficient way of dealing with such issues.

I don't do massive water changes, my tank has been running for 2 years. I run skimmer, bio pellet, and algae scrubber. Feed pellets daily, brine and mysis Which I don't prerinse.

I now do 2-5g a week for fun but sometimes not even a gal....I don't do waterchanges for trace, as I use IO salt and we all know IO is a basic salt that lacks a few things but it's consistent which is why I am a fan.

I use brightwells full line and dose spastically whenever couple drops here and there...

Calcium is dripped through a container with an irrigation line, and my ato has mg sulphate/ chloride and Kalk water.

Everything is growing and doing well I would say growth isn't as fast as I would like but I have to consistently prune to fit the 100ish peices of coral in a tiny 75g....

If you do dose trace do it in small amounts once a week however I wouldn't be too woried as long as the major 3 are taken care of.

Hope this helps!

dont ever admit on a forum that you dont do frequent waterchanges.