Are Water Changes Over Rated?

[jiggy]

does anyone not do frequent water changes?
in the past, ive read about people that only do water changes bi-annually and annually and have successful reef tanks.. does anyone here do this?

are water changes over rated? if u can keep the levels of ammonia, nitrate, etc. down, and the levels of trace elements at where they need to be (dosing/ dosing via reactor), why even do a water change?

 

[PITSTOP]

water changes are awesome.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

in the past, ive read about people that only do water changes bi-annually and annually and have successful reef tanks..

People do all kinds of suboptimal things and still have fine reef aquaria. IMO, that is incredibly lucky for all of us.

As to water changes, I think they are generally good idea, and discuss what they can and cannot likely accomplish in this article:

Water Changes in Reef Aquaria
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php