Do reactors equal less water changes?
 

Just thinking of automating the setup a little more.
I do a 10-20% water change every 7-10 days. Currently no problems with algae but as time goes in the hobby the ole powerhead/heater in a bucket in the bathroom overnight routine is feeling a little monotonous.

Do people generally use reactors to allow less frequent water changes?
Or for other reasons?

Second option is to keep the same setup now and look into an auto water change system...

Basically, there's two purposes of WC:
1. To lower/control the nutrients in the tank
2. To replace the trace elements

Some have to do WC for both the reasons while others have to do for one or the other. Reactors, depending on the filter media, can cut down your wc due to number 1 but not for number 2. But if you use calcium reactor to provide all the traces and major elements along with a denitrifying media in a reactor, theoretically, you can lower you wc by a significant amount if not at all.

I was getting by on water changes for a while but then my levels started dropping as corals grew.water changes were not cuttng it anymore so put a calcium reactor online.I still do water changes though.I am using the Genesis Reef Systems gear.

IMO - it all depends on livestock,bio-load and equipment.

if you don't have a skimmer and or refuge i would say no.

if you are able to control NO3 and PO4 with calcium and trace elements then yes you could significantly lower the % of WC.

again IMO - WC can correct and keep things in check and not create an issue that takes time and energy to correct.

r

Maybe I don't understand your question.
I don't see how reactors relate at all to water changes.
So as I understand it at this point, my answer is no.

I think the question means:

If I am controlling nutrients already, such as a skimmer for nitrates, and GFO for phosphates, does a reactor contribute enough trace elements to extend the period between water changes.

I've often wondered this myself. If my nitrates are at 0, and my phosphate are .01 or .02 ... what am I doing a water change for?

I've heard of people adding magnesium crystals their calcium reactor media as well to help keep mag in check while running a reactor.

To add those "trace elements" that nothing but calcium reactors can provide only. Or unless you have a full balling system, gfo, heavy skimmer and some sort of nutrient export mechanism like biopellets or zeovit. Like zeovit tanks do wc to replace the trace elements only unless they employ something to replace that too through dosing or calcium reactor.

Here are some suggestions to help you with ridding the bucket with powerhead in washroom syndrome.....;)

I have 2 tanks behind my display, one for ato one for waterchange. I too was stuck lugging buckets for awhile and found myself post phoning WC's. It's quite simple to rig up and always have some spare ready to go if needed.

Some may say they lack room around display and hate the look of tanks behind their display. Tell you the truth for me it's hardly noticeable and hassle free. So if you're mixing up 4-5 gallons every week and a half get a 10g which really takes up a 12x16 foot print. I myself go for the largest tank I possibly can fit behind there so that I have roughly 5-6 changes on the go. Another thing is if you have a tank for ato already rigged up you could stack them to save even more space. Another helpfull tip is I run an airstone for circulation and oxygenation in both ato and wc tanks. When I mix a new batch of salt I will run the k4 and then unplug it once it's mixed. I also got some black perforated sign board to cover the tanks so that airborne contaminants like dust and hair keep out. This can be purchased at industrial plastics or any other plastic shop $8 for a 4x8' sheet.

And to answer your question reactors are used for a bunch of reasons, like removing P & N. Will this allow you to skip a water change or 2...sure but in reality waterchanges are to replace and displace dirty water. I have taken advantage of feeding more frequently with the addition of a gfo reactor. Algae shows up from time to time but that's when I get lazy and dump food in unrinsed.

I have a Ca reactor with added Mg. I have a zeo reactor that apparently keeps nutrients down to 0. I still do a 50g water change every 2 weeks, and wouldn't consider NOT doing them. I'm with Bill, I don't equate the 2 together.

Alot of dedication with reefers on here. I go through phases where I am diligent about maintenance and other months not so much. I really have respect for those who can keep up with WC over the years.

I'll miss one sometimes, but always make it up. So if one is 3 weeks apart, then the next one is a week later. Twice a month.

And hence I wrote theoretically. There's always a chance of introducing foreign things that might not be taken care of by any reactors and hence water change is the ultimate thing to do to keep tank going. I myself is also a regular water changer (10 gallon every 2 weeks for my 70 gallon but will be moving to 5 gallon every week once zeovit establishes its dominance).

Water change and salt are the best things for this hobby :smile:

I don't understand the logic here. You're removing more wastes with larger less frequent changes. Seems doing almost as much work, twice as often, for less results is counter productive.

Well according to zeovit, I should do weekly water change for 5% to 10% just to replenish the trace elements since nutrients will be taken care of by zeo. Hence the more frequent wc. Plus I am going for 2 part dosing using randy's recipe which will be introducing some ions (Cl- to be precise) and so I thought more frequent changes is going to be acceptable. But this is not going to happen for this year to the least since zeo will take couple of months to kick in.


OR maybe I will just stick to my current routine....only time will tell. But its a bit hard for me to carry around 5+5 gallons of water in and 5+5 gallons of water out at once.

Buy a long hose. If I had to carry buckets for 50g water changes, I would have quit a long time ago!! :)

Sometimes, simple things don't ring a bell till pointed out :redface:

Sorry for the delayed specifics, had a busy weekend

I was actually referring to WC's to reduce nitrates and phosphates VS reactors using GFO, carbon, bio pellets/balls etc... Taking care of Mag/Alk/Cal are dosed using Magnesion and C Balance part A+B (thats the extent of my dosing done). The tank uses a refugium, skimmer and filter socks currently to reduce bio load, and i don't run GFO. Until mrhasan touched on calcium reactors i hadn't done any research into them to know what they were even used for. Since reading up on them they make sense! Just not sure if they're worth the cost setup and space VS using dosing pumps + C Balance, we'll see.
So far it seems no matter how many setups i've seen with hundreds or thousands of dollars in equipment over and above what i have, people still do WC's from 5-100%. Auto water change systems such as the Genesis appear to accomplish the most of what i'm looking for, space however is the issue

Oh what a joy it must be to have a dedicated equipment room!

I can only imagine that would be great!! I have a dedicated 50g drum in my kitchen. :)

It all depends on what your nutrient loads are like. If you've got a heavily stocked tank that you feed a lot, there's a good chance that your tank is going to producing quite a bit of nitrate and phosphate. Depending on what inverts you want to keep, you may or may not be able to keep up with it just by doing water changes alone.

For example, if you've say got 20ppm nitrate and you do a 20% water change, you're nitrates are only going to fall 4ppm to 16ppm, which is not really that big of a drop. It will be tank specific, but let's think about a hypothetical situation in which your tank is heavily stocked and well fed, you've not got much by ways of denitrification happening naturally in your rocks or sand and you've got no nutrient export system other than a skimmer. It's not unfeasible that in a week, your nitrates could rise 8-10ppm. If you're only doing 20% water changes once per week, and on week 1 you had 20ppm nitrate, you'd do a water change, and by week two you'd have 24-26ppm. You'd do another water change, and by week three you'd have 28ishppm nitrate. This situation would either require much larger volumes of changed water, or more frequent water changes, which quickly becomes burdensome and inefficient.

The only time in which nitrate and phosphate control is feasible through only water changes long term is when their percentage increase in the water column in the time between water changes is less than the percentage of water that you change, and it is very difficult to gauge whether you're actually doing that or not because...

As tanks mature, nutrient cycles in them become ever more complicated, so the actual amount of 'nitrate' and 'phosphate' (as in biologically available nitrogen and phosphorous) that is accumulating in your system may not remain dissolved in the water column and visible to your tests. Algae and cyanobacteria are very efficient at drawing available nutrients from the water column, so it's entirely possible for you to find yourself in a position where it appears that the concentration of nitrate and phosphate in your water column is staying stable (or undetectable) week over week - implying that water changes alone are enough to control for those nutrients - and yet you've got uncontrolled, luxuriant growth of problem algae that are outcompeting your corals for light and space and directly stunting them through allelopathy. If you find you've developed such a nutrient regime, you can do all the water changes you want and it won't really help because your nutrients aren't actually in the water column, they're being efficiently captured and recycled by unwanted biomass. Those situations can be extremely difficult to break out of because they're a fairly resilient ecological state.

It's for that reason that I maintain some other permanently running method for dealing with nutrients in my tank. In my case it's GFO and biopellets that are acting as active competitors for nutrients as they become available in the water column 24/7, and not letting them accumulate over the course of a week waiting for me to physically suck them out.

I still do large water changes because there's other important parameters that can drift over time, some that I test for, some that I don't, and the easiest way to get them back to where I want them is to simply replace the water.

ETA: Additionally to the example above, if all you were doing to maintain nutrient levels was a 20% water change every week and your tank was adding approx 10ppm nitrate to the water column every week, your nitrate levels would drift up until stabilizing around 50ppm assuming you never missed a water change. Depending on the tank, that might be a perfectly acceptable scenario.