yikes heavy nitrates reeked havic in my reef

[Snappy]

Originally Posted by michika

Hopefully your skimmer will take care of your nitrates, along with water changes I'm sure your tank will be back looking beautiful in now time.

I also just noticed that you said you were using Reefresh on your system. How did or didn't the product impact your system while you were skimmerless?

I think it helped to keep things stable for quite a while. The more I think about it, my old aquamedic skimmer was not working well for months. Half an inch of skim mate in a week with my bioload isn't much. I know better and should have reacted much sooner but I guess I was in denial. Man, that's two summers in a row. Darn! I definately know better. If I ever buy another aqua medic product I want someone to just shoot me. And if I have the same problem again next summer, I think I'll just have to shoot myself.

[Delphinus]

I've done 100% water changes in the past on smaller tanks. Well, down to about 1" of water anyhow. Didn't have fish though to worry about in that particular tank. But, it sure cleared up a high nitrate buildup lickedy-split! Corals were fine through the ordeal. They slime up a bit, but, the slime sluffs off eventually.

In my experience, in general, larger (eg. 40-60%) water change volumes are not that bad as all that. Yeah, water is cloudy initially, but after a day and it's cleared up, everything just tends to look awesome for it. New water I guess just tastes better for everyone who has to live in it.