Water change questions

[Hunter399]

I have a 24G cube with a 10 Gallon sump. I used to do weekly water changes with Red Sea Coral pro and lately stretched it too two weeks. The reason being my nitrates and phosphates are really low near undetectable and not detectable at all on other days using red sea test kits and salifert.

I recently started running Kalkwasser in my ATO as well as weekly dose of magnesium depending on my levels. I dose live Algaebarn phytoplankton that came with my copepods I add, reef energy A&B daily and Reef Colors ABCD weekly. I feed LRS Reef Frenzy daily and Reef Roids here and there.

Setup as follows.
skimz 127 DC skimmer.
marinpure plate
refugium with Kessil H80 (grows a ton of great chaeto).

My overall question is should I keep doing water changes? What are the benefits etc.

 

[hijinks7]

Depends on the corals you keep. They will use the trace elements you aren't dossing though. Look into the triton method if you want to invest in not doing water changes. The economics of Triton doesn't make sense on a smaller tank then they do with a 90+ gallon tank but if no water changes are worth it then look into it.

 

[Hunter399]

Ok thanks! Yeah I just don’t know if two weeks or one week is ok because other than the trace minerals I have no testing results that now differ. I also heard it could be too clean, but feel that would be very hard to do.

 

[hijinks7]

If you don't keep SPS corals you are ok with bi-weekly changes

 

[oscargrumete61]

It is depends how you tanks is mine is 20 gl nuvo fusion no sump not big skimmer ,small gfo a reactor and i do every 10 weeks just 20 % of water change everyday 1 ml nopox and every week 1 ml trace elements i got 0 ammonia 0 nitrites 0 nitrates
Phos .25 and works great

 

[malacoda]

I do a 20% water once a month on my 24g mixed reef (22g total water volume).

Like you, my PO4 and NO3 are barely detectable - rarely more than 0.012 and 1 ppm respectively. Could probably even get away with just 10% changes, but it's just as easy to mix up a full 5g bucket as it is to mix half a bucket. Filtration is a Tunze 9004 skimmer. Was running filter floss too, but stopped about a month ago.

That said, to keep trace elements on track, I just dose ESV Transition Elements. Much less complicated and involved than using Triton System on nano tank. And a $5 8oz bottle is enough to last a year for a 24g tank.