Are regular water changes necessary

[dodgy67]

I have a Red Sea 130 and a 44inch self build, recently joined both tanks together on a 30 gall sump have been dosing with Kalk for about a year and although corals are growing fine decided to leave off water changes for a while (now two months) as everything seemed fine.. N was 0.00, Ph 0.04.. On a previous post I queried why although running kalk my Ca was only 300, now corrected with CaCl to 460 am now dosing 120ml CaCl and 120ml Baking Soda daily, have just retested and N is 0.5 and Ph 0.08, should I revert to water changes or leave alone, I know quite a few guys don't change water often

 

[dodgy67]

Tank pics added

 

[kevin21]

Seems that you have a lot of algae and macro in there. Is that your preference? If not, you have an excess of nutrients. Or phosphates leaching from your rock. If you are pleased with the way your tank looks you can obviously continue what you are doing if all stays stable. If you want to decrease the amount of algae, I would suggest weekly water changes to help reduce nitrate and phosphate (which wont show up on a test due to all the macro consuming it)

 

[Timfish]

Absolutely water changes are necessary! What we cannot test for are Dissovlved Organic Carbon, DOC. Skimmers do a lousy job removing them and the DOC's released by algae promote heterotrophic (oxygen consuming) microbes as well as pathogenic microbes and viruses on corals. The only way to get rid of the refractory DOC that builds up in a system is with water changes. Forest Rohwer's book "Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" is a very readable book and an excellent introduction to more recent research looking at DOC and microbes with extensive refferences if you want to dig deeper. The kindle version is only $10.

 

[sde1500]

Plenty would say they are not needed. I can't be bothered to get enough different test kits and dosing ingredients to be at a level where I wouldn't do water changes, so I'll stick to changing water. But, GlennF's tank is sure an inspiration for those that want a tank loaded with corals and not do water changes.

 

[ca1ore]

There have been many threads on this topic and of course people will have differing views. Also depends a little on the kind of tank you intend. SPS, for example, is typically more exacting of water quality. I would suggest that as our collective knowledge improves, along with nutrient export/trace replenishment techniques, water changes have become less necessary. I'm not personally ready to dismiss them completely yet though

 

[jacksonpt]

There have been many threads on this topic and of course people will have differing views. Also depends a little on the kind of tank you intend. SPS, for example, is typically more exacting of water quality. I would suggest that as our collective knowledge improves, along with nutrient export/trace replenishment techniques, water changes have become less necessary. I'm not personally ready to dismiss them completely yet though

Exactly that. It depends on what you want for your tank... what you want to keep, how healthy/happy you want it to be, and how much time you want to spend maintaining the tank.

Most tanks won't REQUIRE regular water changes to survive... but most will certainly benefit from them.

 

[jda]

Some of the harder-to-keep zoas and palys, which are not all that hard to keep in totality, will start to recede and melt without water changes - likely a trace element thing. Although you might not keep any of these specific types, it is pretty good evidence that you can get something out of a water change. Those macros will stop growing once all of the Iron and Calcium (some of them) is used up.

Water changes are cheap and don't take too much time - if you have the cash nor time for either, then this might not be a great hobby. I would do them at least once a month.

 

[WatDatThing]

Every observable living things seems to be happier after a nice fresh batch of water. So ya, I will stick with water change.

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[jonwright]

So if you do a bit of reading on the balling method for reef supplimentation you dose a solution that has no salt to make up for the ion being created with the addition of the alk and ca suppliments. Now, it isn't a great amount but this is *partly* why folks are doing regular water changes.

I'm converting over to balling method in thoughts of not doing water changes so often among other things.

I had a situation where in order to get control of dinos and cyano in a little tank I STOPPED the water changes.

I'm not saying that you should never change water, just that maybe doing a lot of water changes isn't really helping that much. If you follow folks that have N and P problems it's pretty clear that just changing water doesn't usually help much. Plus you can introduce other problems IMO with water that's way different than what's in the tank (i.e. alk in tank = 9 and new water alk = 12) if you change it often which can throw off dosing and stability and all that.

Just need to balance it all out.

 

[jonwright]

Absolutely water changes are necessary! What we cannot test for are Dissovlved Organic Carbon, DOC. Skimmers do a lousy job removing them and the DOC's released by algae promote heterotrophic (oxygen consuming) microbes as well as pathogenic microbes and viruses on corals. The only way to get rid of the refractory DOC that builds up in a system is with water changes. Forest Rohwer's book "Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" is a very readable book and an excellent introduction to more recent research looking at DOC and microbes with extensive refferences if you want to dig deeper. The kindle version is only $10.

Tim: I read that book and what I took away was to not have macro in the first place if I want heavy corals. :smokin:

 

[PatW]

We can test for the major ions: calcium, alkalinity and magnesium, pretty easily. We can also control N03 and P04 pretty well. The problem is the micro nutrients. As corals take up calcium and alkalinity, it is pretty easy to maintain them by dosing. But eventually, the micronutrients that most people do not test for will be depleted or that is the thinking. Water changes are a way of maintaining these hidden nutrients. That being said, I have heard of people who have not done a water change for years. But remember there is also the problem called "old tank syndrome" which might be a combination of micronutrient depletion and the buildup of organics over time.

 

[jason2459]

Absolutely water changes are necessary! What we cannot test for are Dissovlved Organic Carbon, DOC. Skimmers do a lousy job removing them and the DOC's released by algae promote heterotrophic (oxygen consuming) microbes as well as pathogenic microbes and viruses on corals. The only way to get rid of the refractory DOC that builds up in a system is with water changes. Forest Rohwer's book "Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" is a very readable book and an excellent introduction to more recent research looking at DOC and microbes with extensive refferences if you want to dig deeper. The kindle version is only $10.

Woa, I totally agree with all this. :strooper:


Only reason I would consider going 0 or greatly reduced water change method is if in a drought stricken region or really really wanting to be a water conservationist.

There are tanks that are awesome that do "0" water changes or very few of them.

But water changes are more beneficial then not that helps to export stuff we don't want and import stuff we do want. And a little of both will most likely creep into both.

 

[jason2459]

There have been many threads on this topic and of course people will have differing views. Also depends a little on the kind of tank you intend. SPS, for example, is typically more exacting of water quality. I would suggest that as our collective knowledge improves, along with nutrient export/trace replenishment techniques, water changes have become less necessary. I'm not personally ready to dismiss them completely yet though

We still have no reliable cheap way to test trace or even minor elements reliably or accurately. Triton's ICP-OES is the best we have but the OES method is not good at all at accurately testing trace elements of seawater and if not done right the minor elements as well. It's ok at the major ions. Many of the trace elements we still don't exactly know what their roles are or how damaging or beneficial they can be at certain levels.

 

[Green Chromis]

:fish1: I have tried the less water change program, and to me their is not any benefits to this program, while the Bi-Weekly, or Monthly water change routine, shows a beneficial effect to my system. The corals, gorgonians, and all other life in my system, seems to look better and happier, the corals open up more, as do the gorgonians, and other life on the rocks. I believe that by changing the water on a regular basis, you reduce the amount of waste products in the water, and add beneficial trace elements to the water that we cannot add, from a store bought product in a bottle. I just did a 110gal NSW change, and I definitely see a positive change in my system, every time I do one, also in my case, since I use freshly collected NSW, I get the added benefits of live plankton in my water for a short period of time. :fish1:

 

[Timfish]

Tim: I read that book and what I took away was to not have macro in the first place if I want heavy corals. :smokin:

That's a pretty good initial take away but remember Rohwer's book is just an introduction to the research looking at roles of microbes, algae, corals and DOC. (To add another layer of complication not touched on by Rohwer cryptic sponges are screwing around with DOC and nitrates and making DIC for the corals.) When you start digging into it under the best of conditions reefs have only 60% coral coverage and the rest is algae. But on healthy reefs large herbivores and/or urchins are controlling the algae and releasing the nitrogen and phosphate sequestered back into the water. This constant grazing keeps the unhealthy DOC released by algae to a minimum.

Chasing the research further there is quite a bit of difference in the DOC released by the different kinds of algae. What we consider nuisance algae releases significantly more harmful DOC (promotes heterotrophic or oxygen reducing microbes) than some of the algae species we generally consider nice to have like chaeto and halimeda. The DOC released by coraline algae is in the same catagory as DOC released by corals in that it promotes autotrophic or oxygen enriching microbial populations.

 

[jonwright]

There you go again...bringing facts into it.

 

[DasCamel]

This gets brought up so often. How hard is it to change 25% every few months at least for the super lazy?

So 80% to 90% yearly? I just don't understand the logic.

 

[ReefChasing]

My corals always look happier after a water change. Keeping things stable is key. If you look at the reef tank of the month winners, pretty much all avg 10-15% change a week

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[ca1ore]

This gets brought up so often. How hard is it to change 25% every few months at least for the super lazy?

So 80% to 90% yearly? I just don't understand the logic.

Logic's not complicated. If something is unnecessary, why do it. Not sure laziness has anything to do with it. Trouble with most thing reefing, there's very little data one way or the other .....the many laughable comments about things looking so much better after a water change not withstanding. I have never observed any material changes to any of the corals I keep after changing water.

I do a 10% change on my system about every two to three weeks. Mathematically, it really shouldn't do all that much, but I continue to do it 'just in case'.

I do agree with the point about difficulty in measuring DOC buildup and trace depletion though. Trouble is that water changes are a 'shotgun' with no way to know whether more natural levels are maintained. Heck, do we really know that freshly mixed salt is better proportioned with trace elements, or do we just assume it is? My own opinion, after using one for almost two decades, is that the calcium reactor is actually a good way to replenish trace elements ..... even if we cannot directly measure it.