Doing super frequent water changes.. what can go wrong?

[Delphinus]

Sorry Steve, I missed that you were only talking of nutrients. Somewhere on the first page Kien mentioned in passing that (to paraphrase a bit because I'm too lazy to go find it and quote it) that it would be nice if this could also eliminate the need for additives. Which I took to mean the big 3 (Ca/Alk/Mg). I wasn't sure if you were addressing that, or the nutrient thing. So I guess I'm in total agreement with ya, you were just better with the graphs and math and stuff.

[kien]

Thanks for all the input everyone. Some great information here!

To clarify, when I said I wanted to eliminate the use of additives I meant additive designed to reduce unwanted nutrients like Zeo,Fauna,Vodka,Gfo, carbon etc.. There is a lot of stuff out there And I was just wondering if there was a way to simplify nutrient export to achieve a near ULNS. That's when the frequent water change came to mind.

It sounds like some have tried this without it making much of a difference though. Yes, cost would be higher but then people with larger systems need to spend this type of coin on their "regular" water changes.

Aside from possibly nuking my beneficial bacteria it sounds like there isn't much that can go wrong here. As mentioned, I think stability is the key. Lots of small-medium water changes. I may try this out for a few months and see how it goes. I suspect in the end I will get sick and tired of all the water changes but I'm still curious to see the results.

[Delphinus]

I honestly don't see how the bacterial cultures would be adversely affected (at least in a significant sense). The amount of free floating bacteria is minimal compared to the amount bound to the substrate and rock. I've known people to do 100% water changes (and done some myself) without there being a cycle afterwards. I'm thinking in Kevin's example, the 3 60% water changes in quick succession maybe somehow shocked the system and there was a bacterial dieoff as a result. I'm not sure what happened there though so I guess I shouldn't speculate. But theoretically, smaller water changes more often should really in fact impact the bacterial cultures even less than the typical weekly/monthly changes.

So I think you're good to go.

[sphelps]

If you're going to give this a shot I would recomend daily changes rather than every few days. It would be easy to automate as all you need a pump on a timer that pumps water to a drain (be careful to avoid a siphon) and an auto top off system which allows you to top off with salt water with a lower salinity that maintains constant salinity in the display. A very simple system requiring very little time to maintain.

I agree with Tony about the bacteria, this is actually part of a myth similar to how UV sterilizers can harm your bacteria population. The fact is all you need is already attached within rock and substrate.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2009-04/newbie/index.php

[mseepman]

Kien,

If you look at this thread (and wow, what a thread!) you will see that he is doing continual water changes. Go to about mid-way down the page and start reading.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...0#post14332010

Hope that gives you food for thought.