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

[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.

[Aquattro]

Agreed. I don't personally change water to dilute nutrients, my NO3 and PO4 are undetectable. It's more "the breath of fresh air", but with water, that I'm trying to provide. With it, replace some of the depleted things I probably don't even know are in the water.

[MarkoD]

i think the only people that dont do water changes are those that carbon dose or those who have deep sand bed

[lastlight]

Yeah I just mentioned nutrients since it sounded good. I don't know why my tank looks better with more water changes but it does and that's all the science I need to choose to do even moar.

[MMAX]

Used to do 20% bi-weekly on my 100 gallon and really noticed a difference in my SPS. Started dosing Prodibio and switched to 10% bi-weekly changes with the same results. I have been doing this faithfully for almost a year and the growth rates of my corals have been awesome. Before hand, I was a real lazy water changer--the only changes I did was topping up fresh water from evaporation.

[nlreefguy]

Yeah, same here. I don't do them often enough but doing a water change has a visible benefit to my corals. I assume I'm replacing something that I didn't even know was there. My nutrients are all undetectable too.

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Agreed. I don't personally change water to dilute nutrients, my NO3 and PO4 are undetectable. It's more "the breath of fresh air", but with water, that I'm trying to provide. With it, replace some of the depleted things I probably don't even know are in the water.