Tired of weakly water changes

D

Daddyrawg

Member
1 yr in and I have 90 gal with about 9 fish and 7 corals ..mainly soft and a couple acros..I've been doing 10% wkly water changes and frankly I'm tired lol..I recently got turbos algae turf scrubber..

Anyone have advice for me? I dont dose at all..

Maybe with the ats and if I started dosing I could push back water changes?
What yall think??

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Whats your concern? Soft coral and LPS is ok to drag to fortnightly or mthly water change imo.

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Coral health can/will be fine with dosing and bi-weekly water treatments. GHA is a different monster, have to figure out what's fueling that fire.
 
There are ways to do a tank without water changes. The Dutch Synthic Reef or DSR is basically what I am doing. I have not had any issues that I believe are related to it. Twice in the last year my ALK dosing pump was turned on instead of auto somehow on my apex, causing ALK spikes. Other wise I love not doing water changes for almost 3 years now. It really is pretty simple and uses a spread sheet to help you figure out how much to dose. There is a good thread on the reef forum with a 2 in the name on it as well as other sites.
 
Ask yourself the question, "why do I do water changes?". What are they for? If it is just to replace 'stuff' that has been depleted, just find a way to replace the 'stuff' that is depleted. I do not do water changes and I use Red Sea Colours ABC&D to replace elements that have been depleted. I manually dose these once a week. I have Calc, Alk and Mag added via a doser.
Good nutrient export is also important as well.
 
What would be acceptable for you?... 10% a week is certainly quite a bit of work.... Every 2 weeks?... Once a month?..
As stated with few corals you can certainly slow down your pace..
 
mcgyvr said:
What would be acceptable for you?... 10% a week is certainly quite a bit of work.... Every 2 weeks?... Once a month?..
As stated with few corals you can certainly slow down your pace..
Click to expand...
I like 10% water changes...maybe once every 2 or 3 wks at 10% would be ok.

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Whwn i had my 55g hex setup i did 0 water changes.. I just dosed.. i had no sump no gfo all i did was make a denitrate canister from scratch set flow to 30gph using a tiny pump and nitrates never went above 15 to 20.. When green hair algae showed up i just got two urchins some snails it slowely went away.. and i had 35 diff corals in there.. sps lps leathers ect
 
laverda said:
There are ways to do a tank without water changes. The Dutch Synthic Reef or DSR is basically what I am doing. I have not had any issues that I believe are related to it. Twice in the last year my ALK dosing pump was turned on instead of auto somehow on my apex, causing ALK spikes. Other wise I love not doing water changes for almost 3 years now. It really is pretty simple and uses a spread sheet to help you figure out how much to dose. There is a good thread on the reef forum with a 2 in the name on it as well as other sites.
Click to expand...
Wow

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PCguy21 said:
Whwn i had my 55g hex setup i did 0 water changes.. I just dosed.. i had no sump no gfo all i did was make a denitrate canister from scratch set flow to 30gph using a tiny pump and nitrates never went above 15 to 20.. When green hair algae showed up i just got two urchins some snails it slowely went away.. and i had 35 diff corals in there.. sps lps leathers ect
Click to expand...
That's awesome..maybe I should look into dosing with minimal water changes..maybe 10% water change a month and see if I need to dose with current coral setup

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Personally, I use the Triton method with daily dosing and I do about a 6% WC biweekly when I clean out the sump and get rid of the lose chaeto. Seems to work okay for me
 
You can stop doing water changes(I may change 25% once a year through bagging frags, spills, etc etc)

IF you are:
-replacing basic elements(Ca, Kh, and Mg are what I concern myself with)
-exporting nutrients - can be done a number of ways(heavy skimming, refugium, Algae scrubber, and other chemical methods)
-run carbon
-manage Po4 with any number of products(GFO).
-use an ATO - keep salinity DEAD ON!

You will be good. Your corals will be happier because the chemical composition of the water won't be constantly in flux! Salinity and temp are two of the most important factors...well, just monitor your saltiness because it can creep up since you will be dosing.


For me, I dose every couple of days...so it takes me about 5 min of maintenance per day. Granted I am not just schlopping any random amount of elements into the tank...they have all been figured based on the daily depletion of elements in my aquarium. Once you figure that out...dosing is real easy:)
 
It takes more then just dosing ALK, Ca and Mag. There arr other criticsl elements that are consumed as well. You also need to export excess nutrients some how.
 
Daddyrawg said:
That's awesome..maybe I should look into dosing with minimal water changes..maybe 10% water change a month and see if I need to dose with current coral setup

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Click to expand...



This was my 55g hexagon before i moved it to my 135g.. my 135 ive been dealing with ich and velvet and stuff with my tangs and stuff.. so my corals have been in a 20g long chilling while i deal with the 135 but yea.


Screenshot-20190506-132612-Video-Player.jpg


Screenshot-20190506-132626-Video-Player.jpg
 
It's foolish to dose any major or minor foundation elements without testing them regularly to understand what you need and at what rate. What specifically do you think you need to dose?


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Bpb said:
It's foolish to dose any major or minor foundation elements without testing them regularly to understand what you need and at what rate. What specifically do you think you need to dose?


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Click to expand...
I have not had the need to dose anything since I water change every wk but I wanna slow down on wkly changes. I'll just go 2 wks without water changes and test then and see what's up

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Yea of coyrse do testing.. but for the smaller coral frags i had in a 55g and the amount of them. I had to dose half the dosage recomended daily to keep alkalinity stable at 8 to 9 if i waited a day or two it would drop a point easily. For calcium and stuff i only had to dose every 4 or so days those elements usually stayed stable
 
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