Water changes and Kalkwasser

[Drud0616]

Hello all, just wondering if all of you are doing scheduled water changes regardless whether the water chemistry is off or not.
I'm running a 55 gal tank with protein skimmer, cannister filter, some SPS and fish and have not done a water change in about 3-4 weeks now. I have been checking my salinity(via refractometer), pH, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and they are all within the required parameters.
I've been dripping Kalwasser and checking alk, Ca, and Mg with pretty good results. My main question is...why do scheduled water changes if the parameters are within normal limits?

 

[Im14abeer]

There have been numerous discussions on this topic, but here's my take; there are at least a dozen other elements you aren't testing for and have no idea if they're out of spec. Even if you could reliably test for them all, how would you supplement them? Besides that, water changes remove compounds that your skimmer and canister fail to. Not every deleterious component of your water can be filtered out. Thus, dilution is the usual go to method. That being said, there are some people doing just fine with little or no water changes. I'll leave that to them though, my fish poop, and my tank is not the ocean.

 

[Wryknow]

The solution to pollution is dilution.

 

[shesacharmer]

A captive reef is such a small microcosm that its a wonder we are successful at all in creating this cool niche for ourselves. Water changes are the cheapest and simplest of all the failsafes when it comes to maintaining a healthy tank. Trying to salvage a crashing tank is the last thing I want to do...there is just too much that might go wrong...if you've been successful with your water changes I'd say now is NOT the time to stop.

 

[murdock84]

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Haha, good one.

 

[Im14abeer]

Trying to salvage a crashing tank is the last thing I want to do...there is just too much that might go wrong...

And what's the first thing you'd do if you were trying to salvage a crashing tank???

Large water change.