Who Doesn't Do Water Changes
- Thread starter pitmindi
- Start date
outy
New member
you mean you havnt done one yet LOL dont worry its coming
outy
New member
some systems can get away with it for a while, thay cannot get away with it on a long term basis.
fish only Ya no problem
Reef not a chance for long term success and I dont know anyone who sets a tank up for just a year or two on purpose
lisafoster
so much to learn
Cut back on your feeding way to much. ditch the bioballs nitrate factory . Get a good skimmer do the water changes. If you don't want to mix saltwater buy it premixed thats what I do. I have topped off with tap water for 1 1/2 years not a speck of algae in my tank . I have tried to go the no water change route but all the coral looks better when I do it. Lps coral can live with higher nitrates but the fish's health will suffer from too high. I do not feed any of my lps.
InsaneClownFish
New member
Even I do water changes. 
outy
New member
everyone confuses long term success and short term, its been that way since I started. I made all these mistakes and lived it for for almost 15 years now. Thats why i have a bit of passion towards helping people not make the mistakes I have.
I did no ro/di for years until it came down to the fact I had to. My tap water comes in at 17-27 PPM which is extremely clean water and not many water supplies come close, the sad fact is you could have less numbers then mine and the water could be worse do to higher parts of silica in the water. No matter how you cut it RO/DI is a nessesity for this hobby.
I have done the no water changes for close to 7 years, the longest run was like i said 4 years with 3 being the sweet spot i should have started taking care of buisness.
theres no guessing here and I run LPS tanks, there is no way I could have kept SPS and pulled of the stunts I have.
heres my 100g tank at the very end of 4 years needing love [i now have no cyano and HA is almost gone]
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O.k. I disagree On Ro/DI water being necessary. I have a friend that's been into reef tanks since '99. And has used RO water the entire time (No DI) and he has advised me to not worry about RODI water. It's overkill. I'm not saying any one person is right or wrong..
I agree that RODI water will increase the potential for a tank and decrease the chances of things going south quickly. I totally agree it eliminates uncertainties. After all, if water has 25 TDS, we don't know if that 25 TDS is sediment or Copper. So, I agree, RODI eliminates the uncertainties.
With that said, a water softner / RO filtration system combination should eliminate a majority if not all heavy metals from the water. Leaving nasty things like phosphates as possible pollutants of a tank.
Either heavy macro or additional filtration to remove phosphates and carbon to remove anything else is probably a necessity. With that all said. I believe water changes can be done with RO water and the tank be successful and full of life and longevity. Tap water? I agree, Tap water should just be avoided. It has the most risk of pollutants getting into the tank as cities change their treatment plans, so too may water have additional polutants, fleuride, and other chemicals that could be detrimental to a reef. Can it be done. I'm sure people have done it for years. The chances of success for more than 1 year? Hard to say.. Depends on what's in the tap water.
As far as water changes, I read an article on water changes from Randy Holmes-Farley. There are 2 major reasons to do water changes. If you're not doing this or have other methods to do this, then water changes may not be necessary:
1. To remove waste / excess nutrients from the tank.
2. To add minerals essential to a coral reef. (alk, ca, magnesium, strontium, ph buffers, etc, etc).
To oversimplify: To take something out and / or to add something to the existing water.
If there's otherways of doing these two things, then, theoretically water changes aren't needed as much. The person I bought my live rock from hadn't done a single water change for a over a year. The corals and fish were doing good.
He had a huge refugium full of macro algae, and he ran a skimmer. (Huge being 50g +... I have a 14g sump , so 50g sump would be huge to me.
)
I think it best to do water changes, just a matter of how often... And that depends on a ton of variables.
I agree that RODI water will increase the potential for a tank and decrease the chances of things going south quickly. I totally agree it eliminates uncertainties. After all, if water has 25 TDS, we don't know if that 25 TDS is sediment or Copper. So, I agree, RODI eliminates the uncertainties.
With that said, a water softner / RO filtration system combination should eliminate a majority if not all heavy metals from the water. Leaving nasty things like phosphates as possible pollutants of a tank.
Either heavy macro or additional filtration to remove phosphates and carbon to remove anything else is probably a necessity. With that all said. I believe water changes can be done with RO water and the tank be successful and full of life and longevity. Tap water? I agree, Tap water should just be avoided. It has the most risk of pollutants getting into the tank as cities change their treatment plans, so too may water have additional polutants, fleuride, and other chemicals that could be detrimental to a reef. Can it be done. I'm sure people have done it for years. The chances of success for more than 1 year? Hard to say.. Depends on what's in the tap water.
As far as water changes, I read an article on water changes from Randy Holmes-Farley. There are 2 major reasons to do water changes. If you're not doing this or have other methods to do this, then water changes may not be necessary:
1. To remove waste / excess nutrients from the tank.
2. To add minerals essential to a coral reef. (alk, ca, magnesium, strontium, ph buffers, etc, etc).
To oversimplify: To take something out and / or to add something to the existing water.
If there's otherways of doing these two things, then, theoretically water changes aren't needed as much. The person I bought my live rock from hadn't done a single water change for a over a year. The corals and fish were doing good.
He had a huge refugium full of macro algae, and he ran a skimmer. (Huge being 50g +... I have a 14g sump , so 50g sump would be huge to me.
)I think it best to do water changes, just a matter of how often... And that depends on a ton of variables.
joe143
New member
I've had my 55g up for 6 months now. I do about a 5-10 gallon water change every month. However, I get quite a bit of evaporation so i'm putting in around a gallon of new water every week. I use a skimmer and distilled water. Cyno is almost all gone and corals/fish are happy campers.
Skinnysloth
New member
So, which hobby is more expensive, the helis or the reef tank?
serpentman
part time superhero
IMO, not doing water changes is like not flushing the toilet. It works for a while but sooner or later a problem or two arises
RotaryGeek
New member
Dude a gallon a week is nothing. Im doing a gallon a day in my 46 bowfront. I used to not do any water changes and i thought everything was doing great, but them I had to do one, and after that everything lookes so great, literally like 2 days afterward all my algae was gone, and all my corals were huge. I started doing them weekly now, and haven't looked back. Oh i do use tap water, but only till i can afford to buy an rodi unit.
outy
New member
So, which hobby is more expensive, the helis or the reef tank?
helis are lol until you add electricity cost to that tank for 14 years then its no contest reefing drinks the money out lol
dlh5150
New member
I have spent the last year and a half focusing on my two young kids (3 and under) instead of my tank. During that time, I would do a 15G water change about every 6 months. I didn't lose anything (I guess the most sensitive inhabitant would be a bubble tip anemone). I would experience more algae than I would like and had pretty aggressive algae growth on the tank glass - seemed like I had to clean it every few days. I have now re-committed to doing my 15G changes again every two weeks. I have a 120G tank and I too run the eco system, but supplement with a Remora skimmer (designed for 75G use). Hope this helps...
Gary Majchrzak
Team RC
it's simple:
it's simple:
if you don't want to do water changes .... don't!
SOMETHING has to survive, right?
it's simple:
if you don't want to do water changes .... don't!
SOMETHING has to survive, right?
I am hiring someone to do a monthly water change of about 25% (to the top of my corals). However, it will not include syphoning near the sandbed, so I dont know how much help it can be, since the debris wont be syphoned out. It seems to me that all a water change will accomplish is decreasing my pod population as they are removed with the water. I cant disturb the area of the DSB or I will kill the critters that make the dsb function, so the syphon will be kept on the top half of the tank. As of now I am still using tap water. Someday I might switch to a RODI unit, but it seems wasteful. I do have macro caulerpa in my refuge and some red hair algae, that I like, in my display tank, plus another red macro, (rubbery and starts with a "g") plus a green macro algae that came on a coral and is growing faster than the coral. I wont get a protein skimmer since the LFS that I bought my setup from said that a skimmer will remove the elements that are needed for the ecosystem to work. The LFS also said they have the same system with many more fish and they dont do any maintainence and it is perfect. They also suggested no water changes since that also gets rid of the nutrients needed for the macro in the refugium. I am trying the eco-system modified since I use a dsb and the inventor suggests bb. I am just wondering who else uses a more natural way with a macro refugium, a dsb, and no significant water changes or protein skimmer.
