Water changes or not

fishytoo

New member
The fact is changing water maybe helpful in a crisis, however if all you levels are good there isn't any indication to change water. In fact changing water and adding supplements which are not 100% pure unless the supplier is willing to provide a certificate of conformance. You may be introducing ppm of unwanted components that will build up over time. My determination is that if all the levels are good then why adds something that you are not aware of its purity. Just run carbon and a calcium reactor.
 
There are some corrections that cannot be made any way other than a water change, and that assumes you could test for and supplement anything potentially needed, which you cannot, or export anything that builds up undesirably, which you cannot.

I discuss water changes here:

Water Changes in Reef Aquaria
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php


from it:

Conclusion
Water changes are a good way to help control certain processes that serve to drive reef aquarium water away from its starting purity. Some things build up in certain situations (organics, certain metals, sodium, chloride, nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, etc.), and some things become depleted (calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, strontium, silica, etc.). Water changes can serve to help correct these imbalances, and in some cases may be the best way to deal with them. Water changes of 15-30% per month (whether carried out once a month, daily or continuously) have been shown in the graphs above to be useful in moderating the drift of these different seawater components from starting levels. For most reef aquaria, I recommend such changes as good aquarium husbandry. In general, the more the better, if carried out appropriately, and if the new salt water is of appropriate quality.

Calcium and alkalinity, being rapidly depleted in most reef aquaria, are not well controlled, or even significantly impacted by such small water changes. In order to maintain them with no other supplements, changes on the order of 30-50% PER DAY would be required. Nevertheless, that option may still be a good choice for very small aquaria, especially if the changes are slow and automatic.
 
Run a chromatography on the water and the supplements (reagent). The fact is any supplement that is being introduced isn’t pure so of course you would need to change the water and reduce the unwanted components. It is a waste to add some reagent and remove it. Run macro with a protein skimmer on low and extract non benefit components from the tank. I suggest you provide a chemical reason why it is necessary. The numbers are what they are.
 
Run a chromatography on the water and the supplements (reagent). The fact is any supplement that is being introduced isn't pure so of course you would need to change the water and reduce the unwanted components. It is a waste to add some reagent and remove it. Run macro with a protein skimmer on low and extract non benefit components from the tank. I suggest you provide a chemical reason why it is necessary. The numbers are what they are.

Indicate to me what is being extracted in a 20% or larger water change and what is being gained by introducing new salt water that cannot be added? Do the math 20% is reducing how much of what?
 
There are some corrections that cannot be made any way other than a water change, and that assumes you could test for and supplement anything potentially needed, which you cannot, or export anything that builds up undesirably, which you cannot.

I discuss water changes here:

Water Changes in Reef Aquaria
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php


from it:

Conclusion
Water changes are a good way to help control certain processes that serve to drive reef aquarium water away from its starting purity. Some things build up in certain situations (organics, certain metals, sodium, chloride, nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, etc.), and some things become depleted (calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, strontium, silica, etc.). Water changes can serve to help correct these imbalances, and in some cases may be the best way to deal with them. Water changes of 15-30% per month (whether carried out once a month, daily or continuously) have been shown in the graphs above to be useful in moderating the drift of these different seawater components from starting levels. For most reef aquaria, I recommend such changes as good aquarium husbandry. In general, the more the better, if carried out appropriately, and if the new salt water is of appropriate quality.

Calcium and alkalinity, being rapidly depleted in most reef aquaria, are not well controlled, or even significantly impacted by such small water changes. In order to maintain them with no other supplements, changes on the order of 30-50% PER DAY would be required. Nevertheless, that option may still be a good choice for very small aquaria, especially if the changes are slow and automatic.

So quick to response But no reply?
 
Because explaining chemistry to people with no idea of what it is and how it works is pointless.

It is not pointless adding product that you don't know what the purity is requires you to change the water. Knowing what is being uptake by the corals needs to be replaced. Water changes are just a waste of time if you have a protein skimmer and macro to remove waste. Nothing else is needed if you keep your levels constant or unless you want to keep the supplier happy in buying something that makes you feel good in adding to the tank.
 
There is nothing added to my tanks that requires the water to be changed. It is the fish and corals and other organics that require water changes. You say your levels are good- are you running a chromo or spectro on your water- or just testing certain parameters? Just because you are testing 20 diffrent parameters, doesn`t mean the ones you are not testing for do not exist. How are you testing for hormones? How are you testing for the unknowns that cause fish illnesses like LLE/HE? What waterborn bacterias are you testing for? What are all of your metal readings? Its quite easy for you to prove your point if you just provide the data from your tank now and then after doing a water change. Just get a proper lab to run the tests.
 
There is nothing added to my tanks that requires the water to be changed. It is the fish and corals and other organics that require water changes. You say your levels are good- are you running a chromo or spectro on your water- or just testing certain parameters? Just because you are testing 20 diffrent parameters, doesn`t mean the ones you are not testing for do not exist. How are you testing for hormones? How are you testing for the unknowns that cause fish illnesses like LLE/HE? What waterborn bacterias are you testing for? What are all of your metal readings? Its quite easy for you to prove your point if you just provide the data from your tank now and then after doing a water change. Just get a proper lab to run the tests.

I run oz3 to keep any bacteria’s down. If you think a 20% plus heavy metals would be reduced in a water change it maybe reduced slightly, however what spectrum of heavy metals are you referring to? And how did you obtain them thru supplements? It didn't happen on it's own. It must have been intorduced somehow.
 
So quick to response But no reply?

You posted that 34 minutes after you asked the question. :lol: Sorry, I have a life outside of reefing that sometimes requires my attention for as much as an hour at a time!!! Incredibly rude of me, isn't it. :D Nevertheless, I have found time to have answered tens of thousands of reef chemistry questions. Now it is tens of thousands plus 1. :)

I'm not going to argue whether water changes are needed or not. There are hundreds of such threads. I am simply addressing your stated reasons for not needing them, which I think are not justifiable reasons.

Run a chromatography on the water and the supplements (reagent).

I have actually analyzed supplements and read every salt mix analysis going. Of course they are not pure.

The fact is any supplement that is being introduced isn’t pure so of course you would need to change the water and reduce the unwanted components.

You believe that unwanted components only come from those sources? Why? What about foods? What about the calcium carbonate you use in your reactor? What about leaching from rock and sand? What about many types of organisms releasing organic matter? Eliminating additives will not eliminate the addition of everything that might build up.

I have analyzed the impurities that come from all sorts of sources, such as in this article:

Reef Aquaria with Low Soluble Metals
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-04/rhf/feature/index.php
 
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OK, moving on from imports, we need to recognize that there are exports that also need to be dealt with, and without supplementing to replace them somehow, one may end up depleted in something that is important. Let's take some examples from your own suggestions:


Run macro with a protein skimmer on low and extract non benefit components from the tank.

Macroalgae take up many components from the water. Unless you are somehow replacing them, you may find that the macroalgae and possibly other organisms may slow their growth. Iron is an example. So is iodine. It can become rapidly depleted in tanks growing a lot of macroalgae, and supplements could solve that problem. How do you solve it?

Indicate to me what is being extracted in a 20% or larger water change

Well, that's easy. 20% of the built up organic matter and particulate detritus, 20% of the nitrate (if elevated), 20% of the phosphate (if elevated), etc. in the water column are all removed with a 20% water change with an appropriate salt mix. I show what that accomplishes over a year in many different chemicals in the article I posted so quickly but which you apparently did not think was a useful reply.

and what is being gained by introducing new salt water that cannot be added?
If you are against supplements, how do you propose to resupply things that may be depleted? Strontium, iodine, iron, silicate, certain nutrient metals, etc.? A water changes replaces them to some extent, assuming they are in the mix.
 
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I run oz3 to keep any bacteria's down. If you think a 20% plus heavy metals would be reduced in a water change it maybe reduced slightly, however what spectrum of heavy metals are you referring to? And how did you obtain them thru supplements? It didn't happen on it's own. It must have been intorduced somehow.

You still have not provided what your water parameters are-provide the data to prove your theory.
 
It is not pointless adding product that you don't know what the purity is requires you to change the water.

Why do you think the need to do water changes is driven solely or even mostly by impurities in additives? Copper elevating in reef tanks is a reason, for example. Is it from additives? Maybe in part (FWIW, I don't use many additives), but foods contain it as well. A water change in my tank reduces copper levels back toward where I prefer them to be. :)
 
a protein skimmer on low

What do you believe that a skimmer removes? Only undesirable things?

What if it removes something you want? Like iron.

How can you get that back without any water changes or supplements? Foods? Maybe. Depends on how much of what.

Have you determined that your food additions and CaCO3/CO2 reactor provide back everything desirable that your macroalgae and skimmer removes? How did you determine that?
 
a protein skimmer on low

What do you believe that a skimmer removes? Only undesirable things?

What if it removes something you want? Like iron.

How can you get that back without any water changes or supplements? Foods? Maybe. Depends on how much of what.

Have you determined that your food additions and CaCO3/CO2 reactor provide back everything desirable that your macroalgae and skimmer removes? How did you determine that?

I am still trying to uderstand where the heavy metals came from. It didn't happen own its own.


If I wanted to sell salt and other supplements that are not pure I would recommend a water change, however the numbers are what the are and only removing toxins’ and adding what has been uptake is needed. You can spend money and go round and round. Prove me I am wrong and do some assay for support. I will be looking forward to the data.
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I am still trying to uderstand where the heavy metals came from. It didn't happen own its own.

Fish foods are a source.

From my article above in discussing copper (Table 2 is too hard to post here, so see the article):

Input of Metals: Foods


If the goal is to reduce metals, then looking at the foods that you feed can be important. It will be impossible to eliminate all additions of metals this way, because all marine-sourced materials contain significant amounts of metals that they absorbed when growing in the ocean. Some of these metals are used by the organisms involved, and some are just incidentally accumulated. Nevertheless, there are some things that you might consider when selecting foods if you want low metals.

It turns out that there has been a fair amount of study of many foods for certain metals because they impact human health in various ways. For healthy people looking to ingest adequate copper levels in food, the USDA recommends shellfish, among other things, because they have a naturally high level of copper and zinc.7,8 Some fish and shellfish may also be unusually high in many metals (including copper, zinc, cadmium, mercury, and lead) because of local pollution in the areas where they are harvested.9,10

People with Wilson's disease have problems dealing with elevated copper levels, and they need to restrict dietary copper. At a website designed for people with this condition is a table listing the copper levels in many foods, including many that we feed to our aquaria (Table 1).

Table 1. The copper concentrations present in certain shellfish.
Food
Copper Concentration (ppm wet)
Fish
0.61
Scallops
0.27
Clams
6.1
Crab
7.4
Shrimp
1.8
Oysters
2.9
Mussels
4.8
Lobster
37.0
From this table it is clear that one can select lower copper foods when shopping at the grocery store. Scallops and shrimp, for example, would be much better choices than clams, crab, or lobster. Also, the viscera of squid and crabs contain much more in the way of heavy metals than does muscle tissue.10 Over the course of a year, these contributions really add up. If you add 5 grams of each of the foods in Table 4 to a 100-gallon aquarium every day, the addition over a year amounts to 178 ppb of copper using lobster and 1.3 ppb of copper using scallops. For comparison, the amount of copper in the salt mixes described in Shimek's article1 as being high in metals are on the order of 100-200 ppb copper (but only 18 ppb copper in an earlier article2), and those low in copper were 1-40 ppb copper (for comparison, my aquarium using only Instant Ocean salt mix presently has 10-13 ppb copper). So obviously, the choice of foods can potentially make a big impact on the copper levels.

Many aquarists feed commercial foods to their aquaria, rather than fresh seafood. In a study of the amounts of different elements in certain foods,11 Shimek presented the results shown in Tables 2 and 3. While none of these foods appears as high in copper as lobster, lancefish is close and the differences between the various foods are significant. In these tables I have highlighted those values that stand out as unusually high in red and unusually low in green. Bear in mind that some of these foods contain substantial water, and so are naturally more "dilute." For that reason, I included the first line in each table that shows the calories/gram for each food. In this sense, it is easy to see that the "wet" foods are about 4-5 times less concentrated than the dry foods, so in looking at metals, their concentrations need to be multiplied by 4-5 to get equivalent values in terms of actual dosing.

Based on this metals analysis alone, and no other nutritional properties, the Tahitian Blend would seem to be a good overall choice if lower metals were a significant goal (However, Eric Borneman has indicated that Tahitian Blend is a plant material suspension that is of a particle size that will be unusable by many organisms (pers. comm.)). If we knew exactly what specific metal to be most concerned with, the choice might well be different.
 
I refer to my first response- stop wasting your time randy. This gentleman will not even provide his tank parameters- much less any other data.
 
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