How many people just have a skimmer and just rely on water changes?

[SARBoy]

Have kept SPS happy and growing with good colours of over a year in my old 30g with MM, LR, water changes and dosing. Quite labour intensive and I will be using a reactor and powerfull skimming in my next setup but it is not nessary for success.
The key is to work out how much Ca is needed in the system and dose accordingly, whilst using a good salt mix from the get go to make getting Ca levels up in the first place easy. This method is not full proof but good enough to start with in early stages. But would not like to do it for long on a tank over 100g.

 

[snarfe]

84chris, personally man i don't really think that you should waste the extra money on the pro reef salt over just regular tropic marin. The pro salt actually just has a lower ALK level than the regular tropic marin, it is supposed to be used with a calcium reactor. The regular tropic marin will be more useful to you.

 

[burton14e7]

On my 24g nano I had a Tunze Nano DOC skimmer and did twice a week water changes of 2.5 gallons with NSW. Ran great until I tore it down and moved to TX.

 

[acrohead500ppm]

heres my method on a 71 gal system
- calcium chloride 1x a week 1/4 tsp
- 2 gals of settled chalk water dripped in every night
-1/2 tbsp mag. sulfate 1x a week
- 2x week 5 gal w/c of coral marine pro salt (to keep ORP high)