To change or not to change? Help please

[LesPoissons]

Hey guys,
My 220g reef is 4 years old. I’ve been doing 45 to 50g water changes diligently every 2 weeks for 4 years but I would like to cut back, my nitrates and phos typically stay pretty low and I’ve mainly been doing it to replace trace elements. Due to a hip injury, I have not done a water change in 5 weeks.
My parameters are:

Ph 8.2
Sg 1.026
Nitrate 5
Phos 0-0.5
Mag 1350
Ca 425
Kh/alk 8.2/ 2.9
Those values seem pretty stable for going on 5 weeks and pretty much where I want them to be? So is a water change warranted? If I don’t need to clear out nitrates or phos? Do I just need to replace trace elements? I don’t have test kits for strontium and iron and all the other stuff- is there a bottled version of what you get with water changes that I can just add weekly or bi weekly with out testing?
I did watch some brs videos on the subject and googled some products- but many of them have seem to have copper in them? Is that safe for a reef?

The reason I’m looking at additives is that my corals are not vibrant in color and are slow growing- they seem to be lacking in something and I have very little polyp extension. The tank gets fed 3x a day, I add cultured phyto 1x a week and reef roids 1x every 1-2 weeks.

Thoughts? Thank you!

 

[csb123]

Numbers are good,but....
As a general rule, stability is important to coral health. Going from every 2 week water changes, to zero, seems too abrupt. If you can get some help, I would slowly decrease water changes over a few months.
There are plenty of people who don’t do water changes.

 

[LesPoissons]

Yes but I’m pretty sure those people also supplement with something. So I guess that is the real question. If you decrease water changes and are no longer refreshing the trace elements that way, what do you use? Do people test for every trace element or do they just use a general additive, and if so which one? maybe I should start a thread more specific to that query.

 

[Hermie]

You could try sending in triton tests if you have the money and dosing their recommended supplements

 

[Vinman]

Or smaller water changes weekly instead of every 2 weeks

 

[csb123]

Don’t forget to ramp up your nutrient export.