Water Change Question

[mluntz]

I have a very busy schedule and sometimes I can't do a water change for 3 to 4 weeks. With that being said, after 3 weeks my current parameters are:

SG- 1.025
Calcium- 420
Mag- 1385
Alk- 8.3
Phosphate- 0.02

My real question is should I be adding trace elements or just leave well enough alone?

Thanks

 

[jraker]

Your levels are fine. Keep doing what you are doing. What are your nitrates?

 

[mvallee_ma]

yes your numbers are fine as long as you are running a protein skimmer and feed accordingly (less) if you know it is going to be a while you should be fine

 

[TimeConsumer]

Trace element supplementation is not a good idea. Never add something that you can't test for.

 

[PatW]

I have heard of people going for extended periods of time, over a year, without a water change and supposedly doing fine. By that, I mean no catastrophes and probably everything doing ok. It seems extreme to me. But if you have a well maintained tank and don't have it way over stocked or under filtered, you should be ok.

 

[reefer1970]

Just tell your boss you need Fridays off to change your fish water. Seriously, What I do is make a 30 gallons of salt water at a time, put it in old Absopure bottles so its ready (enough for (2) 15 gallon monthly water changes) and spend 10 minutes a month siphoning 15 gallons of tank water into 3 empty water bottles and dump the premix in. I also make plain RODI for a month+ of ATO. That gives me more time for daily and weekly maintenance. Trying not to sound jerkish, If you don't have 10 mins to spend...