its def not a nutrient thing for me i never see a raise in nitrates or phosphates although water changes do help with the nitrates especially when i got my tank back and they were off the chart massive water changes brought them to undetectable levels in fact i find as long as you can get them to zero its quite easy to keep them that way.
i dont have a problem with feeding and a very low bio load, i have very good porous liverock and lots of different kinds of macro algae so nitrates stay at zero and i run a phosphate reactor so thats not a problem either.
so to clarify i have no sps anymore only lps and zoas a recent crash has wiped out all my sps which if that never happened i wouldnt even think about it as sps really do prefer clean water.
after brads thoughts on the fish i probably will stick with the water changes but lets keep speculating shall we lol
with the fish and sps thing aside do you think lps and softies benefit from weekly or regular water changes or do they prefer "dirtier water" ????
what do we really know about trace elements i mean if they are that small that we cant test for them what benefit are they really adding??
im going to use " chris88" as an example and i hope he doesnt mind but he claims to not do water changes or use ro water and we all seen the pics its amazing to say the least what happens in his tank for growth so whats everyones thoughts there??
(for the record im pro water change just been thinking lately about trying it out as a test to my self i like these kind of projects and a challenge)