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

kien · #1 07-19-2011, 04:27 PM

To me a water change is like putting on a fresh pair of underwear. It may not be necessary but it sure does feel nice!

ScubaSteve · #2 07-19-2011, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kien

To me a water change is like putting on a fresh pair of underwear. It may not be necessary but it sure does feel nice!

Hahahha! Love it!

I swear by my water changes, especially on my 40g (w/ skimmer). Typically I do 15% weekly but have been for the past few weeks doing 30% weekly (had a small cycle after the rebuild) and have noticed a pretty big difference. I have also been carbon dosing for over a month and it's helped a lot but I still do the water changes, though I find the dosing gives me a little more leeway in how frequently I do changes. I do the changes more for the general wellbeing of the tank rather than the whole trace element bunk.

I hate baths because I feel like I am stewing in my own filth... Its kinda the same for my fish and corals, so I try to do it often.

Now I'm going to go change my water and me undies! Gotta love that fresh feelin'!

Lampshade · #3 07-19-2011, 05:58 PM

I ran my tank for 6 months with no water changes when i first set it up, worked great. SPS growing like crazy, everything seemed to be balanced. Then my skimmer broke for 2 days shortly after adding some new baserock.... Hair algae explosion. I must have had a nice balance going on, but it was a teeter totter, and i broke it. So anyways, i'm back to changing water like my old system, and the colors my coral are showing are better than ever. It took close to 4 months to get the hair algae under control. I now change 15 gallons every 10 days. I was against it for so long, i don't know why. I don't have a water change station, i drag rubbermaids in from the garage, and empty my RO resivior, mix, cleanup, etc, still only takes 20 min's. I don't even know why i didn't do them originally. And 15 gallons every 10 days is only about $10 a month is salt, by far not the priciest part of my tank(stupid halide electrical bills...).

Seems like everything's happier with that bit of a refresher every little bit.

I've seen some amazing tanks that don't do water changes(One TOTM on here recently)

chris88 · #4 07-19-2011, 06:44 PM

I don't do them but i used to do 20% every two weeks. I havent done them in a year now and i notice no difference in my sps or zoas. I am not saying i am not going to ever do one again, but i will let me tank tell me when something is going wrong.

Doug · #5 07-19-2011, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kien

To me a water change is like putting on a fresh pair of underwear. It may not be necessary but it sure does feel nice!

I do about 30%/week. Mind you my tanks only 20g.

Reefer head · #6 07-19-2011, 11:57 PM

hmm i do 50g a month on my 300g fowlr system seems to work just great for me !!!!

MKLKT · #7 07-20-2011, 12:01 AM

I've done 2 water changes total in one year and they were only partials (~20%). I've had to start dosing because some of my corals have gotten massive but otherwise my setup has been great. I just went away for a week and had some neighbourhood kids feed my fish and it looks great still, no horror story this time.