people who go with "almost" no Water Changes needed!

[mandarinfanatic]

I am glad we have come to an understanding. These "feelings" tend to slip into the discussions. I know this because i have already fought this battle in my own country. Now it's quite general accepted that going without WC is a possibility for some situations.

cool stuff!

 

[tmz]

I like the pipefish. Thinking about adding a pair to my seahorse tank. How long have you had them? What do they eat?

 

[Dylan Ringwood]

So how do you keep your sand bed clean without doing water changes?

 

[Paul B]

New Born brine shrimp, I have those two a month or so and a dragonface for a few months.

My sand bed (which is gravel) is always clean and I don't have to do anything to it. I don't vacuum it or anything else except for once or twice a year with a diatom filter but that is not for anything on my substrait.

 

[saf1]

So how do you keep your sand bed clean without doing water changes?

Just wondering what a water change has to do with a sand bed? Unless you associate a water change with a siphon of the top most layer of sand and if so then I guess I see the point.

One of the few with a DSB here in the display and I never syphon the top layer. That is what the worms, micro hermits, crabs, clams, and whatever else walk the sub/surface are for.

Wish a 40 breeder was large enough for a Copperband. Such an amazing fish. Striking.

 

[Dylan Ringwood]

Just wondering what a water change has to do with a sand bed? Unless you associate a water change with a siphon of the top most layer of sand and if so then I guess I see the point.

One of the few with a DSB here in the display and I never syphon the top layer. That is what the worms, micro hermits, crabs, clams, and whatever else walk the sub/surface are for.

Wish a 40 breeder was large enough for a Copperband. Such an amazing fish. Striking.

Sorry a bit new.. but I have a 40 breeder aswell and I have a clean up crew and I siphon the sand bed but they don't keep it where I wouldn't have to do a water change.

 

[glennf]

Ik keep a cleaning crew to maintain my sandbed:
8 archaster typicus.
2 sand dollars
2 sea mouse
1 valenciennea strigata
They are enough to shift the sandbed around on daily base. Some days my sand bad looks like a moonscape .
Having them around saves me a lot of work.
So no need to siphon and throw away the water .
I do use a power filter beside my skimmer.
This is a perforated pvc pipe connected to the intake of the main pump wrapped with filter wool. This removes a lot of dirt out of the system. I replaced the wool every other day , sometimes up to 5 days.

 

[mandarinfanatic]

Ik keep a cleaning crew to maintain my sandbed:
8 archaster typicus.
2 sand dollars
2 sea mouse
1 valenciennea strigata
They are enough to shift the sandbed around on daily base. Some days my sand bad looks like a moonscape .
Having them around saves me a lot of work.
So no need to siphon and throw away the water .
I do use a power filter beside my skimmer.
This is a perforated pvc pipe connected to the intake of the main pump wrapped with filter wool. This removes a lot of dirt out of the system. I replaced the wool every other day , sometimes up to 5 days.

what is a sea mouse?

 

[glennf]

what is a sea mouse?

this one: (sea mouse was a dutch translation)
Maretia planulata

 

[Paul B]

Here is a video that was taken today in a tide pool where I get my bacteria, mud and amphipods.

 

[rabbitrun]

Paul... Excluding your years and years of experience.... you kind of boast about skipping some basic/easy maintenance steps in your tank.

- No water changes even though your reason for this is you believe your aquarium does better without them.... if so could you do water changes once to twice a month and then come back with some results and comparisons.

- You do not use test kits... I know you said you can just look at your tank and tell..... how do I acquire this skill?


- Finally your fish spawn and only die of old age... You know this cus you never make posts on here about sick fish? Another impressive skill I must learn, how do you know its old age if you cant test your water parameters.


I am not doubting you as I am pretty new to the salt water world... However just by reading some of your no water change posts here... it kinda contradicts everything else I have read about proper tank maintenance.

Anyways I am also a military man and have been taught about attention to detail and being proactive and not reactive.... so why not follow some simple maintenance steps.

 

[saf1]

Who is to say that simple maintenance can't include little or no water changes? It doesn't have to be one way or another but what works for you and your tank is the key. There is no rule that says you must run X, W, or Z to have a healthy tank and you sure don't have to test the water quality every other hour...

Just get the basics down. Then look at your fish. Then look at the corals you keep. Honestly if you can't tell from that something is wrong then you need to start over and do not pass go. To put it in simple layman terms if you own a house plant for example. If it is perky and green with full leafs then it is healthy, no? You don't do a soil sample or check to see who much water it is retaining. Agreed?

Corals and fish are really no different. Same to your shoes and laces.

 

[Paul B]

Paul... Excluding your years and years of experience.... you kind of boast about skipping some basic/easy maintenance steps in your tank.

I never said I didn't do water changes. I change water 4 or 5 times a year and always have. I have stated this many times on here and on my 9 year old thread about my tank.
I don't have test kits but I did for years. I also state that often. Occasionally I do let a LFS test my water but I know the readings as they are always the same as the tank is stable and I don't add anything that would change the parameters.
The fish are "usually" dying of old age because after keeping certain fish for many years I can figure out how long it is supposed to live and I know what fish look like when they are about to die of old age. I even put up a thread about this. My oldest fish now is a 23 year old fireclown, he will probably live 5 more years or so. My watchman gobies just died at about 12 years old, they spawned for all those years then just slowed down, stopped eating and faded away. I usually autopsy my fish and they were fine. Just dead. Not a single paracite, no liver, stomach or gill problems, no internal bleeding or tumors. Just old age and some fish only live a few years, fish like clown gobies. I had a breeding pair for a few years and the female just died. She was a few years old and I bought her as an adult. She spawned almost every week and covered my acropora with eggs. That can only happen for a few years as the fish gets used up.
To acquire a skill you just have to live long enough and keep fish for your entire life. I have had a fish tank every day of my life since I was about 5. I am now 65.
Even when I was in Viet Nam there was a tank home with an old catfish in it.

Anyways I am also a military man and have been taught about attention to detail and being proactive and not reactive.... so why not follow some simple maintenance steps.

My maintenance steps are vastly different from most modern aquarists. Did you see that video I posted above? I collect amphipods but more importantly mud for the bacteria. Almost no one does that because they are afraid of paracites, diseases or simply don't live near the sea. By adding bacteria I am by passing a huge problem that I feel is the bane of many tanks and the reason I don't have parameter problems. The bacteria eliminate those problems for me. If you never add bacteria from the sea, all you have is what was in the dealer's tank and his tank was probably medicated. I also feed live worms and clams every day. I only feed whole foods as I feel most of the nutrition in food is in the guts and not in the muscle such as shrimp tails or squid tenticles. This small thing keeps my fish in breeding condition so I don't have to quarantine as the fishes immune system
"always" protects them from diseases and paracites. Most people disagree with me on this but they "hardly" ever argue with me about it because I prove it works and has for many years. But it does take maintenance, just different maintenance than most people do. If your fish are not spawning or making spawning jestures, they are not very healthy as all fish spawn and do it all the time.

 

[tmz]

Paul uses an udergravel reverse flow filter system.Nobody else I know does. I think it's a very interesting approach since it flows up through the gravel and may help keep it clean. I've personally never tried it though.

Paul, do the pipes eat any mysis or other non live foods ,that's the main feed I use for my seahorses and would like to keep it simple . I do hatch atremia nauplii dialy when I have a new batch of fry but that feeding occurs in a different tank. I have a few aiptaisia from time ,I hunt them down but they proliferate with pink bellies full of baby brine when I feed them to the tank.

 

[Paul B]

Tom I have never seen the pipes eat anything other than live food except the blue stripe pipes. They are very easy. The rest of them you just can't fool, it is live or nothing so I do hatch brine shrimp every day and I would assume they hunt some of these amphipods which I just put in thousands.

Any tank that was started with in the last 15 or 20 years will have similar maintenance schedules and practices because virtually everyone in that time frame aquired their knowledge from the internet. i did not. :lol:

 

[tmz]

My tanks have a good number of pods and such ;not sure it would be enough without the yolk carrying nlwly hatched atremia though. I keep several mandarins and scooters and they are all fat and peck around but likely take some left over frozen foods too.

My first tank was 5 gallon thing with a black metal frame;,to 7 year old me it was a private lake. lake. I put all kinds of things in there from nearby natural pond.

 

[Paul B]

Here is a video of some of the amphipods I add every few weeks.

 

[samstersam]

Wish a 40 breeder was large enough for a Copperband. Such an amazing fish. Striking.

I hope I don't have to put my flamesuit on. I've had this copperband for 2 years in my 40b before I posted this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SFFemks3Dc

And that was over a year ago. So I'm at 3+ years with Willie the Copperband who still eats from my fingers in my 40B. My oldest fish is Marty the Clownfish who is 5+ years in that tank.

I used to do 20% waterchange once a month on the 40B, but 2 years ago, I stopped doing big water changes when I added an additional cryptic sump with ~60 lbs of live rock in both sumps (2 20g sumps filled to the brim with live rock, +40b main display +20g NPS/pistol shrimp and goby tank in one system: total water volume ~75 gallons I'd say with all that rock in the sumps), and ever since then I only top off evaporated water and wet skim maybe a gallon a day; a simple dunk of a pitcher into my rubbermaid container of fresh ASW before I leave for work; so in essence, I'm doing minute daily water changes I guess. I have a SS of about 2-3 inches in the main 40b display tank. I've also been busy as of late and the last time I did any alk/calc/mag/ph test was about a year ago. I've come to know the routine and alk consumption and know 2 capfuls of bionic ED, etcetc...of course if things look awry I will test, but so far so good for 5 years or so...

Cheers.
Sam

 

[Paul B]

Sam, you don't need a flame suit, my first tank was a 40 and I also always had a copperband in there and he shared it with a hippo tang. No problems.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I used to keep a hippo tang in my pico reef, but I took him out to add a gigantea anemone and a school of clownfish. The good part was, it could eat all the problem algae in a single bite.