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

AcroporAddict said:
Your tank is beautiful, Glenn. Just another example that there are many different husbandry methods to use to have a nice reef tank!
Click to expand...

Thanks,
There are many ways, some better than others. Some take more effort then others. But most important... the tank owner should experience his reeftank on his way and not the way others think he should.
Many people are so fixed on one way that they leaf no space for others. If they were told then that lead is gold , they won't even recognise real gold even if they stumbled over it.:)
 
Paul B said:
OK I change a teaspoon every 15 minutes. :wave:
Click to expand...

That may sound ridiculous, but I actually change something like 0.08% about 12 times a day, and each change is spread over about 15 minutes. It is done slowly and automatically, and eliminates any concerns over matching temperature or anything else (including salinity). :)

So if your tank is small (say, 12 gallons), your plan sounds perfect to me. :lol:
 
Paul B said:
Of course we need ASW as many people don't live near the sea. I myself use more than 90% ASW as I am getting lazy and it gets heavier every year. But to me, there is no comparism to NSW. It even tasted different. Go ahead, stick a straw in your tank and drink some. What are you, a Sissy? Then jump in the surf and taste real water. Big difference. I wonder why.
This is what I am talking about.

-----------

Recently I posted a question about the odors aquarium produce and whether or not they have diagnostic value. Except for detecting death not much was the consensus. I don't believe that is quite true. And now you bring up taste, which is for the most part all about odor!

Don't be surprised when the next big trend after probiotics for aquariums, is electronic sniffers and neural networks to monitor and diagnose the health of aquariums. This will be a great way to deal with chaotic systems like aquariums.

Paul, I think you have a nose for success, and like a great chef, make additions and withold reef ingredients for reasons no amateur could possibly fathom!
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they won't even recognise real gold even if they stumbled over it.

There is a lot of pyrite out there for unsuspecting buyers. Caveat emptor.

Posting pictures over and over a again really doesn't prove anything. I've read all the threads on your system including those that were removed for commercial interest and the later one where you solicit contributions for continuing research for another party.

I think it's only fair to note and explain that what you say you do involves a lot of testing and number chasing for at least 10 or so elements to substitute for water changes. It's a bit complex but leaves gaps. Seems like if you can't measure; it is dismissed as unimportant.
On it's face it's a nice effort that may offer some opportunities for learning and improvement. It might be a good thing to control what goes into the tank without relying on salt manufacturers;though,even if that were achievable, it doesn't account for any export at all in the method for elements that may prove harmful over time.

It does,however , involve chasing a bunch of numbers and dosing a bunch of elements and is not typical of what most folks envision in no water change approaches ;so,it seems your criticism of "chasing numbers" made in an earlier post is at best duplicitious:

Isn't that what we are aiming for instead of chasing numbers?
 
I do think water changeless is possible with proper balance . Thats the key with anything , Ballance . If you can find that balance without water changes great I think its an awsome idea . I went long periods without water changes about 4 months and only had a canister on my last tank it did well . I can see how with even better filtration it could become stable .... I've done freshwater set-up's without water changes and no filtration , just potting soil, plants, shrimp , over stocked with fish and a light and a little air pump for a little oxygen . Had no algae problems and was stable for the year I had it . ( I know freshwater on a saltwater forum ) but shows that you can get surprising results ..
 
I've recently been through a divorce and that led to 1 change every 4 months or so, new algae grew and my frogspawn grew like mad. Everything survived with no supplementation.
 
tmz said:
they won't even recognise real gold even if they stumbled over it.

There is a lot of pyrite out there for unsuspecting buyers. Caveat emptor.

*****
So you suggesting they are all fools who can't think for themselves ?

This thread was about finding people who does not do water changes. But it seems the pro water changers gets te say it all again.
That is what i meant with people don't bother sharing new idea's, they get resistance from people who think their way is the only way to go. So why bother....


Posting pictures over and over a again really doesn't prove anything. I've read all the threads on your system including those that were removed for commercial interest and the later one where you solicit contributions for continuing research for another party.

******
Isn't that the only prove needed?
Long time result, broad amount of species and good coloring.
Not just a tank with limited species with brown corals as you might think.

So you can't be convinced, so i am not trying to.

i do support forward thinkers and people who want the hobby to move forward.
i suppose you mean this: (i also did a donation)
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22618214&postcount=15



I think it's only fair to note and explain that what you say you do involves a lot of testing and number chasing for at least 10 or so elements to substitute for water changes. It's a bit complex but leaves gaps. Seems like if you can't measure; it is dismissed as unimportant.
On it's face it's a nice effort that may offer some opportunities for learning and improvement. It might be a good thing to control what goes into the tank without relying on salt manufacturers;though,even if that were achievable, it doesn't account for any export at all in the method for elements that may prove harmful over time.

******
You don't get results by just sit and watch it happen.
By just saying it's to complex you're just just saying that working without waterchanges is only reachable for smart people?
I prefer some test once in week (not all) instead if water changes. Buy measuring you get a better overall understanding what goes on in your system.
It may or may not prove harmfull over time, for now it working just fine for more than 8 years. It seems to prove more than just a "nice effort". Some people don't even get to the one year mark because of failure.


It does,however , involve chasing a bunch of numbers and dosing a bunch of elements and is not typical of what most folks envision in no water change approaches ;so,it seems your criticism of "chasing numbers" made in an earlier post is at best duplicitious:

Isn't that what we are aiming for instead of chasing numbers?
Click to expand...

*****
The difference is:
- chasing numbers = trying to measure it all and mimic sea water . Trying to account for all numbers and parameter.
Trying to explain all.

- What i do = what need to be done, controlling the known and useful parameters. You need to start somewhere.

- i always stated no "water changed is possible", but you need to do something in return. YOU CAN JUST OMIT WATERCHANGES AND EXPECT GOOD RESULTS.

I am try to contribute something usefull to the hobby. By just saying i won't work is no contribution and stops any development to move forward.:)
 
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That may sound ridiculous, but I actually change something like 0.08% about 12 times a day,
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It does actually sound rediculous but hey, I use asphalt for rocks, Clorox to purify NSW, mud from a bay for bacteria, a hypodermic needle to cure pop eye and an undergravel filter so who am I to say something is rediculous?

Paul, I think you have a nose for success, and like a great chef, make additions and withold reef ingredients for reasons no amateur could possibly fathom!
Click to expand...

I also make a mean Linguini and clams.
This hobby is in it's infancy, maybe pre infancy. It has been going on (in the US) for 44 years and there is no reef cure for ich, hair algae, bryopsis, red slime, HLLE or anything else. There are dozens of "cures" for those things but if they worked this, and other forums would not be totally filled with a plethora of "cures" that do not work. The most prescribed "cure" is to change the water which will almost never work. Don't believe me,
Just pick any thread about fish and see how many problems you will find.
Take HLLE for instance. It is caused by induced electricity, carbon fines, lack of vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin D, improper circulation, wrong food, bullying tank mates or a combination of all those things. In other words, we have no idea and could be caused by
Angelina Jolie's wedding dress.
This thread is about if a tank can exist with no water changes. A few people posted and said they went years with no water changes which means to me, that "yes" a tank can go a few years with no water changes. Like "Duh", that is what it means. I run an undergravel filter and I can hear most of you laughing right now. Well, stop it, unless your tank is running longer than mine so at least I know that works and works well. Ich, we know all about it.
"NO" we don't. If we did, my tank and many other tanks would not exist because studying something in a sterile area in a lab by a scientist for a few months means absolutely nothing unless you keep your tank in a lab.
Quarantine or don't quarantine, it both works just as good as I have some 20+ year old fish that can't even spell quarantine. It is just another way to get by in this hobby.
Hair algae. Simple, but when we get it, what are we told to do? Yes, Change water. Does that ever work? No it does not, but thousands of gallons of water is changed to no avail and eventually the algae gets bored and dies on it's own weather you changed water or not. How do I know? I have had cycles of hair algae for longer than Barak Obama has been alive and it always went away with no help from me. I didn't start this last Tuesday and if you can imagine a tank problem, my tank has had it 17 times. I don't mention some of the "cures" because I don't want to argue. But as I said, this hobby is at it's infancy. In time, ich, hair algae, bryopsis, flatworms and the heartbreak of psorisis will be taken care of to such an extent that we will never hear of them. Possable something will be added (or removed) from ASW to acomplish this.
I personally don't have a problem with any of those things because I have been around a while and learned through doing, how to not get those things naturally in the first place. I also have learned to do all these things very cheaply without the use of any dosers, controllers, test kits, media or magic wands.
Soon, this hobby will get much easier and these forums will be filled with successes instead of failures.
Have a great day, my linguini and clams is ready. :wavehand:
PS there are plenty of hobbiests that had their tank nominated for TOTM. That is a success for the time the picture was taken. My tank has been TOTM 6 or 7 times on different forums and featured in a few paper aquarium magazines. (Paper is made out of the same stuff we make trees out of) Does that make my tank better than anyone elses? No, but I would imagine at the time the picture was taken it looked better than the other tanks at the time. Everything I have ever written and submitted to a magazine was published as fact. I am an electrician with absolutely no schooling on marine anything except I have a Captains Lisence and not much help in this hobby. We can't believe everything we read as fact. When I started in this hobby I read like a sponge. Later I came to disagree with most of the things I read about because of my own research and diving. I learned more about moorish Idols in a few hours underwater with them than in all the literature I read about them.
Just saying. :uhoh3:
 
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Paul B said:
Later I came to disagree with most of the things I read about because of my own research and diving. I learned more about moorish Idols in a few hours underwater with them than in all the literature I read about them.
Just saying. :uhoh3:
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Oh so true. I think the instant gratification mentality leads to a lot of frustration in this hobby. You don't like something in your tank and want it gone NOW, so you read a bunch of "well meaning" advice/tank lore that usually ends in an even worse fail.
Hair algae? Get an urchin/lawnmower blenny/unholy sized army of hermits etc. Most just lead to more fail or frustration. Urchin starts eating your coralline instead, lawnmower blenny starves to death because, as it turns out, hair algae is not so tasty, 950 of your 1000 hermit army die within the first week and the ammonia spike causes more death... etc.
The advice may be sound, based on one persons experience, or even many. But scientifically, it has to be repeatable with the same results every time to be proven. That is quite difficult given that each tank environment and its inhabitants are unique (different salt blends/chemistry, bacterial populations, micro and macro organisms, etc.) What works in one situation does not always work in another.

Long term success is still fairly rare in this hobby, but obviously possible, even with a variety of husbandry practices. I think our natural instinct to seek out the "quick fix" will continue to cause a lot of heartaches to new hobbyists in the short term, but may also eventually lead to new innovations in care practices. Certainly a huge potential market for "pills" to eliminate a lot of standard "problems" that hobbyists don't want to go through.
 
So you suggesting they are all fools who can't think for themselves ?

No, I didn't say that but there are misrepresentations and that restatement of my position is just one example. Most folks can sort the wheat from the chaff once the facts are out.

Many people are so fixed on one way that they leaf no space for others. If they were told then that lead is gold , they won't even recognise real gold even if they stumbled over it.

That supercilious statement to which I responded , seems to imply that folks not choosing your method are worthy of disdain and too dumb to know the difference between lead and gold and that the true gold is in your method. Most folks are smart enough to know better.

Complex dosing schemes and measures for some of the elements in lieu of water changes without the benefit of export isn't my choice; less so when a commercial interest is involved .
Learning about the organisms response to certain element levels and organics is useful but there is little of that out there beyon anecdotal infroamtion which is useful but less probative ; enough though on some, like copper and other metals bound or unbound to warrant some attention to export,IMO.

I am interested in options to ASW but haven't found any real reason not to do small water changes with ASW mixes ,yet.

I'd like to hear more about other successful systems without water changes and discuss them. Raising questions and provoking thought does not stall progress,it can help map the way. If you don't know where you are going any road will get you there.
.
There is no reason to believe small frequent water changes are harder or less expensive than complex though incomplete measuring and dosing schemes;certainly they are not less complete in effect ,IMO and IME.
I don't mind testing, probably do more than most including major minor and trace elements I can measure; I just like to know what they are in my aquariums and if any trends develop that I can gain insight from; but I don't chase numbers with loads of supplements and knee jerk reactions . I rarely see a need to dsoe anything other than fcalcium hydroxide and sdome solubne organic carbon.. The small frequent water changes and food seem to take care of the rest.
So for now I 'll keep doing what I do with regard to water changes. That doesn't mean others may not have other prefered methods for success ; nor that one way is better than another.
 
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i haven't changed any water in four years:facepalm:
i never use carbon or GFO:wildone:
i have no snails or hermits:p
i never add trace elements ;)
i rarely test my water:eek1:
my tank is 2ft in front of a 14' window:hammer:
 
I failed to read the first post on this thread and reilized it is sad that this thread was someone asking if they can do water changes monthly instead of weekly , not a thread ment for passive-aggressive arguments and this has been going on since 2011 ?
 
mm949 said:
i haven't changed any water in four years:facepalm:
i never use carbon or GFO:wildone:
i have no snails or hermits:p
i never add trace elements ;)
i rarely test my water:eek1:
my tank is 2ft in front of a 14' window:hammer:
Click to expand...

And your point is?
Would love to see a pic?
 
I had the pleasure of reading this thread from start to finish (up to last night). Being interested in the consensus, I pulled the information into Excel this morning. The plot below shows the trend in when data was provided, early on in the thread's lifecycle but then petering out over the years and turning into a more philosophical discussion what seemed like fewer members.

c5471dad634f12f340eef2f6f5c609d6.jpg


More to the point what did the data suggest? Is there a relationship between water change frequency and the age of the set up? Hard to say. If we believe that as tanks matures, water changes aren't as important AND the aquarist relaxes a bit, we might expect to see longer periods between changes as the tank ages. I don't see a trend. There doesn't seem to be a trend between no water changes and age of set up.

839fa9ace7e8a3a15fd17669b33c7ba4.jpg


What about frequency of water changes and tank size? As you can see, there does not seem to a pattern. One might postulate that bigger set ups would tend to be more stable and not require as frequent water changes as smaller systems.

ec1329747fe7e35ad1d3c27c9ec6904f.jpg


What about the size of the water change and the size of the system? Again, no trends

cde4b5207392fc727b63b639cbcd5c6c.jpg


While the data did not explicitly give a direction to take, I offer you a potential take away message based on the many arguments that I heard:

1) The frequency and/or the size of water changes will/should decrease as the system matures.

2) Animal and plant growth, and maybe the overall appearance of the tank, should be the guiding principle about water changes, frequency and volume, should or can be altered. Water chemistry tests alone represent an incomplete diagnosis of the system's health.

3) Every system is different and the age of the system alone is an inadequate way to describe its maturity.

4) There is likely to be a lot of implicit knowledge each aquarist possesses about his system that is typically not shared in forums or lectures. Just looking at pictures of aquariums will not lead me to understand why a particular aquarist is so darn successful.

There is probably plenty more to say on this topic, so, I plan on updating the analysis in 2017 or when we double the amount of data.

Dan
 
Paul we have discussed this before but no harm in mentioning. A lot of what you do to your reef..how much you mess with it..stems from the prevailing attitude or idea of what a reef tank should look like.
I have a lot of relatives that are farmers. There front lawn were full of weeds alfalfa, whatever the wind blew across the field. If the lawns got long they let the resident goat(s) onto it. I remember my father pulling out weeds adding fertilizer watering constantly to keep his grass up like the neighbours.
A lot of refers do not like cyano of any form algae some dirt on the sand bed and absolutely freak out if they see an aptasia head. They want to spend 40 bucks on aptasia remover and then do a series of water changes to counter act the aptasia remover. It goes on and on and on til they get this tank that has no algae no cyano and no life at all on the reef rock.
Your tank is fantastic and one of the most natural ones I know of but a lot of my clients have hired me just to destroy a tank like yours.
Sometimes I feel guilty about this but then friends and colleagues remind me that I am least keeping 100,000 dollars in live stock alive in these tanks and hopefully as unstressed as possible
 
Capn that is true, many people hate my tank and wish I would drink anthrax and die, I understand that. My tank evolved and did not start like virtually any other tank on here. I had to collect much of my stuff and all of my rock, build my lights, skimmers, ozonizers and UG filter. But there is just about no algae visable in my tank. It does grow in a trough but very little grows anywhere else. There is some growth on some things but I am not sure I would call it exactly algae. It is the same growth you will see on rocks in the sea because my tank was started from the sea and much of what I add came from the sea. Also I have spent almost 300 hours underwater so I know what a reef looks like. My reef is not a depiction of a reef in Tahiti as most reefs are. I have been to Tahiti and although that is beautiful, I personally don't like it for my tank which is more like a lagoon would look like. I am not in this to have a picture perfect tank with wall to wall corals. I am only in it for personal gratification so my tank is the way I want it. I go for health and to me health means everything that can spawn is spawning. A tank that has paired fish that are not spawning is not very healthy at all and is only surviving. That is not a natural condition and I would feel the tank is crashing if that was happening in my system. Also if I see absolutely no algae, that is another sign of a problem as algae grows at least a little on every healthy reef, including Tahiti. My corals grow where they want to grow with little help from me. They shade each other there by killing their cousins. It is what it is but it is natural. As for cyano, I don't have that either except a little below the UG filter on the front glass. It is also natural. There is no detritus at all visable in my system although I don't feel like most people that it is in any way detrimental. It's just me and I don't want to argue about it. If you don't like detritus, vacuum it out, no one cares. :dance:

Now thats a pregnant fish


See any detritus, algae, or cyano in here? That fireclown is over 20 years old and stil spawning.



I took this in Kaui last year, disquesting isn't it? But that is a natural coral reef.



So is this.



I think this was the Florida Keys, but I don't remember. It could be anywhere
 
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