No water change sps tank?

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hi Randy; I was very interested in Feldmans articles. I respect him as I do you & hope I haven't misrepresented his finding.
The following is what I took from his research.

I certainly do not doubt the experimental result that GAC can drop TOC a lot lower than skimming, and that may well extrapolate to most or all aquaria.

While he and I may not be in perfect agreement on the underlying physical chemistry principles involved in every aspect of his experiments, the primary one I am pointing out in this context (and I do not know if he actually made this conclusion anyway) is that one cannot only analyze skimmate for DOC and properly conclude how much DOC is removed from an aquarium when the skimming process itself is expected (by me, at least) to convert DOC into POC. Yes, if you monitor DOC in the aquarium you can make such conclusions, but not from skimmate analysis.

 

[Will Milberger]

Emmmm, not filter sock really, more likely a coffee strainer . A picture of my 10G sump with nothing in it except my bacteria driven reactor, a coffee strainer, a small wavemaker as stirrer, an air stone for aeration at night and a bag of cheap activated carbon along with a return pump. This is my tank life support system that enable me running a SPS dominated tank with no WC.

How do you make the reactor? Or is this a purchased one? Really want to know how you do it?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

For example, Ken used BSA (bovine serum albumin) to test skimmer removal of protein.

But that same protein has been shown to become POC (insoluble aggregates) from the starting individual proteins molecules (DOC) during foam fractionation.

Protein aggregation in foam fractionation of bovine serum albumin: Effect of protein concentration
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369703X15300334

" In the concentration from 0.05 g/L to 0.20 g/L, the highly unfolded BSA structure and the high enrichment jointly resulted in the formation of insoluble aggregates."

 

[Donovan Joannes]

How do you make the reactor? Or is this a purchased one? Really want to know how you do it?

Easily made reactor my friend. Look at DIY section, my reactor build thread is there somewhere.

 

[TbyZ]

I certainly do not doubt the experimental result that GAC can drop TOC a lot lower than skimming, and that may well extrapolate to most or all aquaria.

While he and I may not be in perfect agreement on the underlying physical chemistry principles involved in every aspect of his experiments, the primary one I am pointing out in this context (and I do not know if he actually made this conclusion anyway) is that one cannot only analyze skimmate for DOC and properly conclude how much DOC is removed from an aquarium when the skimming process itself is expected (by me, at least) to convert DOC into POC. Yes, if you monitor DOC in the aquarium you can make such conclusions, but not from skimmate analysis.

Ok, I understand your point, thank you for that information.
So the DOC content of the TOC removed from the aquarium may be greater than the skimmate anaylsis indicates. But overall the TOC removed from the aquarium via skimming is still only about 30%, leaving GAC (& perhaps Purigen) a much better choice. If your running a no water change system this would be important, I believe. Unless, perhaps, no soft corals are kept, as they are notorious for adding toxic compounds to the water.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

How? What is routine or what do you do? I have a basic system, but I must do something wrong.

Other than feeding my reactor (5 second routine, twice daily), cleaning glass, feed the fish and daily dosing in the morning, there is nothing much to do here. Alk dripping method (replenished weekly) and topping off RODI when water level drop. Other than that, the tank is well behave and corals are being nice to me.

 

[nashorn]

Other than feeding my reactor (5 second routine, twice daily), cleaning glass, feed the fish and daily dosing in the morning, there is nothing much to do here. Alk dripping method (replenished weekly) and topping off RODI when water level drop. Other than that, the tank is well behave and corals are being nice to me.

I run a zovit reactor in my no wc tank.
While I do use the stones I do not follow the directions.
I tried to shake them twice a day but I have never replace the stones since I installed it 6 months ago.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

I run a zovit reactor in my no wc tank.
While I do use the stones I do not follow the directions.
I tried to shake them twice a day but I have never replace the stones since I installed it 6 months ago.

There is some similarity with my diy reactor. Fully bacteria driven is my weapon of choice to combat nutrients. Has been using the reactor for many months without any maintenance other than feeding the bacteria in it. Very happy with the result, best of all it only cost less than USD20 per year to run.

 

[Reef Monkie]

Folks who say they do no water changes are certainly correct that they may do no "water changes", but that does not mean that they change no water.

If you are using any two or three part dosing scheme, you are necessarily changing water, and the higher the daily demand, the more you are changing.

If you dose the equivalent of about 3 dKH per day, you are effectively turning over about 0.3% of the water each day (totaling about 100% in a year).

But in the context of this discussion are people talking about water change as a means of diluting TOC to achieve 'clean' water? Isn't the dosing effectively only replacing evaporated water, or does that evaporated water contains (some) TOC?

I thought the link to the updated article about skimmer performance very interesting. In that experiment it looks like they moved away from using BSA to test and used water from a existing aquarium, they also tested the TOC remaining in the reservoir (simulating a reef tank) as opposed to what is actually in the gunk removed by the skimmer. I am not a chemist so I could be completely off base in my thinking but isn't all we really care about the TOC that remains in the reef tank to judge if this is a healthy system and not so much if it is made up of DOC or POC? What I found most interesting was that when testing in the actual tank they found that within about 6 hours after feeding the life that is in the tank reduced the TOC from 1.4PPM to 0.6PPM, a reduction of about 60% and that the trail with the skimmer did not achieve a reduction in TOC beyond the level of the baseline achieved by the tank itself. Does that not suggest that if one feeds the tank daily then the skimmer isn't doing anything the life in the actual tank can't achieve by itself, and that it is only removing (some of) the TOC in a different way to that life?

The only thing missing from that experiment from my point of view is what happens longer term, the 30 day experiment in that article seemed to suggest that even with weekly 10% water changes, the use of a skimmer, and using GAC for 30 days without replacing it that TOC continued to build up in the system, but that experiment did not appear to have occurred under controlled conditions. For example we don't know if the 'correct' amount of GAC was used, if replacing GAC more often would of helped to reduce TOC buildup over time(and potentially replace water changes), if it was the skimmer or the GAC that was responsible for the actual reduction, or if there was a nutrient or (trace) element preventing the (bacterial) population of the tank from dealing with the buildup of TOC by itself to then potentially be removed from the system via a filter sock or skimmer.

As I said I am not a chemist so I could be wrong but isn't that buildup of TOC over time the one remaining question that people are arguing over and since most people use a combined approach to combat nutrient buildup and nobody measures TOC at home as far as I can tell then then it would seem to me that without some additional controlled experiments we can't really know if the no water change approach is a valid one or which methods of combating nutrient buildup are really necessary, or effective.

 

[Curious reefer]

Wow jbny nice tank!! Also no w/c but protein skimmer and I dose bacteria & use a uv I have a bra reef saver rodi feel like I wanted my money but I still use it for top off which is 5 gallons every week.

 

[Curious reefer]

Wow jbny nice tank!! Also no w/c but protein skimmer and I dose bacteria & use a uv I have a bra reef saver rodi feel like I wanted my money but I still use it for top off which is 5 gallons every week.

I meant brs and wasted my money

 

[JAMSOURY]

Reviving this thread, since salt is getting expensive!

We know keeping up with trace elements is important for no water change tanks.
What else do you feel allows the tank to go on without water changes? Do you think bacteria dosing, UV, or carbon (either one or all three) keeps the water clean to allow it to go without having to change the water?

 

[areefer01]

Reviving this thread, since salt is getting expensive!

Salt isn't that expensive especially when you can find it on sale. Instant Ocean. On the other hand making RODI water is wasteful and depending on location and amount made the water bill may be expensive

In any case both are good enough reasons to look at limiting or no water changes.

 

[Pod_01]

We know keeping up with trace elements is important for no water change tanks.

Same applies to tanks that have regular water changes. I do water changes and need to add trace elements…
No different to Alk or Ca, water change alone will not supplement these…
Maybe on a tank with few frags water change works…