Longest Time without water change?

I went about 8 months without changing the water. I dosed two-part during that time. Since then I was doing sporadic water changes and dropped my dosing. As far as feeding, I don't miss a day thanks to an auto-feeder. Plus my anthias wouldn't be too happy missing a meal. :)
 
so how did things look after that year what about nitrates,do things look better if you are doing water changes ?
 
I went about 7 months without a water change. I was rarely feeding my fish and letting everything go to pot. Funny thing is when I came back to it, my corals never looked better. One of my ballasts burned out on my t5's on the left side, and my bulbs are over a year old. The left side has more color than the right, even with 4 bulbs and not 6. It really got me thinking. Before all this I was doing 10% water change on a weekly basis. I had pale colors at best. Go figure. :)
 
2 months. I had ick on 2 of my tangs. I said the hell with it with the tank. If the tangs die then oh well and corals as well. Well after 2 months the ick went away and the corals looked way nicer (sps corals). Could it be that over changing water creates more stress and less stability.
 
I think you all have brought up interesting things.... In an ESTABLISHED tank with a low bioload, it may not be necessary to change water out that often as long as your are replacing some of the most utilized electrolytes in the tank, ie. calcium, mag, carbonate, iodine.

Also, I think some people tend to run their tanks too nutrient starved and that leads to very pale colored SPS... Essentially, anemia of the zooxanthallae. I just brought it up to see what others people's findings were.

I fed once a month, my Acan colonies grew, my zoanthids flourished, LPS did well and the three tank inhabitants, two ocellaris clownfish and a yellow spotted goby were fat and happy meaning that the tank was producing enough food for all of them. Also, I stopped skimming and the macro algae population became dense. Very cool experiment.

SPS populations died back a little probably because I stopped dosing calcium, carbonate and mag but everything else did well.

Definitely not something for everyone to try! Haha

Cheers,
John
 
kga943 said:
so how did things look after that year what about nitrates,do things look better if you are doing water changes ?
Click to expand...

Nitrates undetectable via salifert but a very interesting mix of turf and macro algae started growing on the rocks.

See my above post. SPS colonies died back a bit, but most everything else did well. It was unexpected.

Cheers,
John
 
Three years without a water change and one year without cleaning the glass. Fed the fish maybe twice a month, albeit I never saw the fish because the glass was covered with coraline.
 
Im 7 months into a new tank with no water changes. I've carried over the concept from my FW tanks where i have not changed the water in 3 years!!
So far so good for a young tank, No Nitrates/Ammonia but I do have a light bioload too, 1 Kole Tang, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 royal gramma and 1 cardinal. LPS and softies mainly, 1 gorg and a monti cap. I also dont skim and feed daily mysis + cyclopeeze and ground flake 3 times a week for corals and gorg. I keep cheato in my fuge and recently upped the amount of food because it was crashing due to lack of nitrates. Its all nice and green now :)

Should mention its a 150 Gallon tank. Sorry. lol
 
This no water change resulting in better color in corals and better health in fish is very interesting. In a large system this my hold true, but in smaller systems 200 and below a problem may arise. My total water system totals over 500+ gallons. Like i said after the 2 months of doing no water changes my fish are extremely healthy as well as corals.

My friend who owns a LFS has a very big system plumbed with corals and stock tanks all in one. He has never done any water changes since the store started since 2001 and his corals and fish are very healthy. The growth in his corals is amazing. I remember asking him if he ever does any water changes and he replied "nope, just dosing through the reactors and water storage through evaporation".

Makes me wonder, in larger systems constant water changes brings in-stability which may result in more stress among the corals. I used to do at least 100 gallon water changes every 2 weeks on my 500+ system. It has been over 5 months and no water changes. Corals and fish are healthy and happy.
 
I'm at around 7-8 months without a water change on total 110 gallons in the system. SPS are still growing reasonably well. Dosing done through a Kalk reactor. I'd go for longer, but I'm setting up a 210 with 255 total. I will start doing water change regularly, but eventually I'll stop.
 
Wow, this is interesting. My water parameters are a bit whacked out right now (Ca, alk and Mg all too high) and the culprit seems to be water changes with salt that's super high in these things; most of the corals are just tiny frags right now, and between their size and too-high PO4 they're not using up the Ca and alk; I think with every recent 20% water change I've been making things worse, not better. I wondered if anything bad would happen if I just left the tank alone for a month or longer, to let the levels settle... looks like it's not a bad idea to leave things be once in a while!
 
sanchoy said:
In a large system this my hold true, but in smaller systems 200 and below a problem may arise.
Click to expand...

Just speaking from my own experience, when I first got into salt, I ran a 10 gallon for 10 months without a water change. The purpose was for me to get my bearings in salt vs fresh and I chose a small tank on purpose with the idea that it is more volatile due to its small volume.

I did no water changes and I even used de-chlorinated tap water as top off. :eek1:

That stock, including the torch and monti corals are now in my 150. While all was stable, I learned a lot about keeping a SW tank, never had a loss but did decide to back off of tap water because its contaminants are less predictable and controllable. But I think the same concepts apply regardless of volume..all other variables being equal like light bio load, etc.
 
I only change water about 5 times a year but have gone probably 6 months.
My tank often goes 4 days without food.
 
I know it's sacrilegious to mention my freshwater tank here, but I didn't do a water change in the 55 gal tank in my bedroom wall for over 25 years. I've started to recently because the Python is so easy to use.
 
I dose 3 part, run a nitrate reactor, algae turf scrubber and skimmer.
I have not changed it in about 5 months, my tank seems to have healthier corals because of this. I think older/aged water allows your corals to a adjust without wild ramps in salinity, ph, calcium, alkalinity,etc from water changes. I am worried about some of the trace elements though.

Also have no mechanical filters ( other then protein skimmer ).
 
ACBlinky said:
Wow, this is interesting. My water parameters are a bit whacked out right now (Ca, alk and Mg all too high) and the culprit seems to be water changes with salt that's super high in these things; most of the corals are just tiny frags right now, and between their size and too-high PO4 they're not using up the Ca and alk; I think with every recent 20% water change I've been making things worse, not better. I wondered if anything bad would happen if I just left the tank alone for a month or longer, to let the levels settle... looks like it's not a bad idea to leave things be once in a while!
Click to expand...

Easy solution. Find a salt that coincides with the Alk levels you want to run. For example, if 8 DKH is your goal, find a salt that mixes to 8 DKH.
 
I had a 4 year old 55 gallon mixed reef. Only a pair of clowns and a sand sifting goby, cleaner shrimp, and a small cleaning crew of mixed hermits, and snails.

I went 6 months without a water change, and thought, oh well I can back off my water changes. So I did water changes on a 4 month cycle for the next year. All of my parameters were on the edge of okay, and bad.
Then one day my water all turned a dark green <unknown still what caused it> and would not go away, could not filter it out, did 50% water changes every week for a month.

Ended up with almost all my coral, both clowns, and the shrimp being dead. I managed to save two or three corals, or frags of the corals and get them into fellow reefers tanks before they died.

I have the feeling that my previous schedule of 20% water change every 6 weeks would have prevented that crash, but honestly can not say.

It has been two years since I crashed that tank and I am just now setting up a tank again.
 
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