4 gallon pico thread

[asylumdown]

So I got in a bit of a forum debate over the merits vs the risks of a 100% water change in a reef system. I obviously am of the belief that they are a good thing and are a totally legitimate method for maintaining a reef. There is another school of thought out there that believes that massive to 100% water changes mess with the 'constancy' of a system and can 'shock' it in some way, and should therefore always be avoided.

My theory is this - the term 'shock the system' is vague, and as far as I can tell, there's no operational definition for exactly what it means. The same way that people talk about 'toxins' in our bodies, I find the language surrounding a lot of the things in the aquarium trade to sound more like pseudo-scientific superstition than anything that's really happening. Since, in my opinion, being intangible and having no visible or testable effects is the same as not existing at all, I will define the term 'shock the system' to mean some sort of tangible deleterious effect on the health of a coral, and/or the disruption of bacterial metabolism to a large enough degree to cause system instability, as I believe that's what people who speak in these terms are generally referring to. Those two things are testable - coral health is directly observable both in the behaviour and growth of a coral, and the functioning of a bacterial bed is indirectly observable via the processing of nitrogenous compounds.

Two things have been suggested -

1. That the difference in parameters between the discarded water and the new water will be significant
2. That this difference will harm either the corals, or 'things we can't see', ie, the bacteria.

Here's how I'm going to test this:

1. I've never tested my pico for anything other than salinity and temp, so I'm going to test the major parameters both before and after a water change.

2. I'm then going to document the corals over the course of a week in photos, and use old photos/photos in this thread as historical comparisons

3. I'm also going to feed each one of my corals either a meaty food if they can accept it, or a Acans plus/Coral Frenzy mixture as soon as they'll accept it after the water change. I'd normally wait a few days to feed to try and max out the low N and P levels of my change water. I'll feed the corals again a few days later

4. I'll test ammonia daily for the week following the water change.

I am expecting to see a difference in the major ions between the old and the new, as I don't dose them via any method other than water changes. I'm also not expecting those differences to cause any sort of damage, either to the macro inhabitants, or the micro inhabitants. But we shall see, I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong.