regular water changes thing of the past?? who doesnt do them who does????

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by reefwars

wow 30% every day even if it is ro only its def got to be a pain lol

When I had Discus I changed 90% everyday in 3 tanks. "Pain" doesn't quite describe it -lol

Compared to that, my schedule now is nothing!

I do water changes to freshen everything up. I imagine the fish living in the tank is comparable to when I go play squash. I get to the court, and 2 sweaty people leave, and in I go. And hold my breath because it's disgusting. I have to ask the club to turn on the AC each time, and once they do, it's, well, a breath of fresh air. I think this is good for the fish in a closed system, it's gives them a break from swimming around in fish urine....not to mention replacing lost elements.
Really, I've never looked at a tank and thought "gee, your tank looks like crap, you should stop doing water changes"
Not doing them, IMO, is being lazy and/or cheap. Reef keeping isn't a hobby for lazy/cheap people
As a note, I've been doing this 10 years now, and I have better results now, doing larger changes, than I've ever had. I'm actually considering do more frequent changes now...

[doch]

Knowing that I was going to be moving soon, and then once I moved, knowing that the upgrade was enroute, I stopped doing water changes. The results are really weird. Some of my corals turned way brighter. Some of them turned way more dull. The biggest things that I noticed were a significant increase in the algae growing on the side of the glass, and the skimmer was definetly pulling out more crud. I think that once all is said and done, I'll be doing less frequent water changes on the upgrade. I'm thinking about 10% every other week. I'll also be running full zeo on this tank. Oh, and I switched to RO this time around.

BTW, Most of my corals are SPS. ALL of the corals that I noticed a change in are SPS. LPS and Zoas did not seem to change at all.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

When I had Discus I changed 90% everyday in 3 tanks. "Pain" doesn't quite describe it -lol

Compared to that, my schedule now is nothing!

I do water changes to freshen everything up. I imagine the fish living in the tank is comparable to when I go play squash. I get to the court, and 2 sweaty people leave, and in I go. And hold my breath because it's disgusting. I have to ask the club to turn on the AC each time, and once they do, it's, well, a breath of fresh air. I think this is good for the fish in a closed system, it's gives them a break from swimming around in fish urine....not to mention replacing lost elements.
Really, I've never looked at a tank and thought "gee, your tank looks like crap, you should stop doing water changes"
Not doing them, IMO, is being lazy and/or cheap. Reef keeping isn't a hobby for lazy/cheap people
As a note, I've been doing this 10 years now, and I have better results now, doing larger changes, than I've ever had. I'm actually considering do more frequent changes now...

hummm good way to look at it brad, ive always said water changes is what makes a reeftank stable if you do regular changes your sure to see basic success.ive run many tanks with or without skimmers ive dosed and not dosed buty ive always done water changes sometimes twice a week but as of lately ive been seeing and hearing alot of people who dont do them have great success.ive been doing this for 10 yrs as well ,in my first years with folwlr i never ran skimmers or carbon sure i barely had rock half the time lol but water changes is what kept it all alive in my opinion.the times i didnt do water changes or neglected the tank i payed for it but with time comes knowlege and im thinking that it is possible to get away without as long as your not neglecting the tank.


im def not lazy or cheap i mean it takes about 3 mins to do a water change on my little 20g and a bucket of salt will do me a year+ but i got to thinking with all the knowlege weve learned over the years is it possible for the right person to have success or even astonishing growth by just practising good husbandry and keeping a low bio load.

theres prob other factors like source water,established lr,the corals we keep and the fish we have that play a role in whether or not to do water changes and i def wouldnt recommend it to any new people to the hobby, as a person who trys to help new people i actually push water changes on every one of them as well as carbon and skimmers.

the beauty of this hobby is that if you want to see successs then no two tanks will see it the same way i mean what works for one may not work for another and what one person does to achieve this success may not be what another would do.........i guess im more curios as a project more so than trying to save a buck if i had a 180 full on sps dominated reef i prob wouldnt even switch what i was doing in fear the result would be to dramatic but i have a 20g mixed reef with hardy lps and zoas and a very low bio load so im gonna try it as a little project ill still have saltwater on stand by in case something doesnt look right or goes wrong

[Aquattro]

I guess when I speak it's from a SPS point of view. With a LPS tank, or soft corals, I might be less inclined to change as much for corals, although the fish would still have to be considered. I guess my philosophy is to keep it as close to natural as I can, given the small space. I just know that when I'm swimming down in the tropics, I don't mind getting a mouthful of water, but I sure wouldn't want tank water touching my lips I've pulled fish out of the ocean for my selfish enjoyment, I feel the least I can do is keep the water as clean as possible.

Now sure, it can be done. Steve will pop in here shortly and tell us how he ran his tank for over a year without changing water, and his corals had some color. But....is this optimal for all the creatures in the water? Or is it sufficient to meet our particular requirements (color, growth, whatever it is we each want from the tank). I would guess the later. A tank can and often will be successful, within the measurements of our individual requirements for success, without water changes. Will it get worse by changing water? I don't think it would. Would the fish be healthier/happier with water changes? I suspect so..

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

I guess when I speak it's from a SPS point of view. With a LPS tank, or soft corals, I might be less inclined to change as much for corals, although the fish would still have to be considered. I guess my philosophy is to keep it as close to natural as I can, given the small space. I just know that when I'm swimming down in the tropics, I don't mind getting a mouthful of water, but I sure wouldn't want tank water touching my lips I've pulled fish out of the ocean for my selfish enjoyment, I feel the least I can do is keep the water as clean as possible.

Now sure, it can be done. Steve will pop in here shortly and tell us how he ran his tank for over a year without changing water, and his corals had some color. But....is this optimal for all the creatures in the water? Or is it sufficient to meet our particular requirements (color, growth, whatever it is we each want from the tank). I would guess the later. A tank can and often will be successful, within the measurements of our individual requirements for success, without water changes. Will it get worse by changing water? I don't think it would. Would the fish be healthier/happier with water changes? I suspect so..

another good point...the fishies..... i do want whats best for them and having a small tank means they are forced to breathe the same water more frequent........so i may have to re think for their sakes as i agree with your point that if were gonna box em up might as well give them the best we can

[Lance]

10% every other week.

[CoralineCori]

We do 10-15% weekly water changes. It is necessary in order to keep our nitrates at a normal level, and all other params perfect and consistent. We always use r/o water and add fresh treated water when we have evaporation, so that helps too as we usually have to add water every other day. All of our corals are doing very well with this as well as fish and we have not had anything die (yet *crossing fingers*). You are very brave reefwars...not sure I would want to take a chance on leaving the tank go myself. Isn't water changes and stuff all part of the hobby really? I would be scared of a spike or algae infestation, phosphates or extremely high nitrates. Just sayin

[lastlight]

Used to do 10g every week on my 110g system. After doing a large 45g change the other day to reduce nutrients and whatever I can't measure I was impressed how colors and growth picked up. I'm now doing 15g every week.

[viperfish]

Most people seem to address the water change issue from a nutrient point of view. Nutrients can be filtered out, there are many ways to do it with good equipment and media. There was an article in Coral magazine a while back asking the question "are water changes necessary" and it was concluded that normal water changes have a minimal impact on nitrates. I think the biggest challenge would be how to restore the depleted trace elements. The big three (calc, alk, and mag) are no problem but we all know there are a great deal of other elements that are essential, difficult/impossible to dose, and only seem to come from a fresh batch of reef salt. It sure would be nice to have a way of running an SPS tank without water changes but I think we're a long way from it right now.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Now sure, it can be done. Steve will pop in here shortly and tell us how he ran his tank for over a year without changing water, and his corals had some color.

don't need to now, you already did. but some color ..... come on

anyways I don't say you can go with out one but I definatly don't say you need to do it every month or week for that matter, if you have a good set up that is overskimmed, ect then you need to be the judge. do a couple at one month, then try two months for a couple then three months while keeping notes of different things as you go. this is what I did, and yes I did go a year once and that was sucessfull but shortly after that I had the heater incident and the sand bed removal.

Steve