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

viperfish · #1 07-17-2011, 11:12 PM

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 · #2 07-18-2011, 12:15 AM

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 · #3 07-18-2011, 01:17 AM

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

lastlight · #4 07-18-2011, 01:54 AM

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 · #5 07-18-2011, 02:06 AM

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.

reefwars · #6 07-18-2011, 02:27 AM

its def not a nutrient thing for me i never see a raise in nitrates or phosphates although water changes do help with the nitrates especially when i got my tank back and they were off the chart massive water changes brought them to undetectable levels in fact i find as long as you can get them to zero its quite easy to keep them that way.

i dont have a problem with feeding and a very low bio load, i have very good porous liverock and lots of different kinds of macro algae so nitrates stay at zero and i run a phosphate reactor so thats not a problem either.

so to clarify i have no sps anymore only lps and zoas a recent crash has wiped out all my sps which if that never happened i wouldnt even think about it as sps really do prefer clean water.

after brads thoughts on the fish i probably will stick with the water changes but lets keep speculating shall we lol

with the fish and sps thing aside do you think lps and softies benefit from weekly or regular water changes or do they prefer "dirtier water" ????

what do we really know about trace elements i mean if they are that small that we cant test for them what benefit are they really adding??

im going to use " chris88" as an example and i hope he doesnt mind but he claims to not do water changes or use ro water and we all seen the pics its amazing to say the least what happens in his tank for growth so whats everyones thoughts there??

(for the record im pro water change just been thinking lately about trying it out as a test to my self i like these kind of projects and a challenge)

Parker · #7 07-19-2011, 03:39 PM

I change about 70 gallons a month on my 265,( Limited by the size of my two mixing barrels ) with the salt I'm using now I can see an improvement in the tank after the water change is competed. I would probably do it more often but my bioload is low, as more fish are added I'm likely to increase the water changes to every couple of weeks.

nlreefguy · #8 07-18-2011, 02:04 AM

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.

Quote:

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.