Water Change VS Dosing Additives Poll

[ReeferNoob]

I’m trying to choose between running an AWC or something like the Triton/ATI method. I’m interested in the pros and cons of doing regular water changes or dosing additives with no water changes. Just want to see what everyone else is using and why. Thanks!

 

[estebanb450]

Tagging alone I stoped doing water changes on my tank about 3 months ago. 50g total water volume just dosing 2 part and the Red Sea colors a-d everything seems to be ok just think you can over do on the colors I have a pink milli that’s starting to get a blue hue to it. I think it’s because I don’t have a test kit and it’s overdosing the blue just thoughts not to sure for my system I think I’m going to continue to do small water changes daily to try and help eliminate large swings in chemistry. Along with giving the kz 1,2,3,4 a shot

 

[ReeferNoob]

Bump

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Unless the demand is very low, water changes are not adequate unless you change 10-50% DAILY.

I show that here:

Water Changes in Reef Aquaria by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php

Figure 23. Alkalinity as a function of time when performing very large daily water changes of 0% (no changes), 5%, 10%, 15% and 30% of the total volume EACH DAY. In this example, alkalinity is present at 4 meq/L (11 dKH) at the start and is depleted at a low rate of 0.2 meq/L (0.56 dKH) per day.

 

[BoomCorals]

I currently do very low WC (2% a week) and dosing 2 part plus additives. So far it’s working well. I’ve been wanting to pick up the triton core 7 additives and eliminate WC altogether. If only triton 10L was ever actually in stock that is.

 

[Dan I]

I rarely do water changes. I'm keeping the big 3 in ideal range and dosing trace elements. Everything looks good at the moment.

 

[ThunderGoose]

Why isn't there an "it's complicated" option? I'm trying to reduce water changes on my "big" tank and just do dosing and run carbon and gfo. My nano, on the other hand, gets regular water changes.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Let's use a real world example to give this discussion some context. Let's say you have a 120g tank. Let's say your alkalinity is 7 dKh and you want to raise it to 8 dKh. Let's assume your salt mix produces water with alkalinity around 11 dKh.

To get your alkalinity from 7 to 8, you'd need to d a 25% water change, or 30 gallons. If, however, you dosed some BRS soda ash alkalinity supplement (or used Randy's supplement for an even cheaper additive), you would need only 85mL to raise your alkalinity from 7 to 8. To put this more plainly, in the scenario above, you're dumping 30 gallons of good saltwater down the drain to avoid having to add 85mL of concentrated sodium carbonate to your aquarium. And that's just a one-time increase. If you're tank is using 1 dKh per day, which is not uncommon in tanks with lots of fast-growing stony corals, you'd need to change 30 gallons a day to keep up.

In my opinion, water changes for the express purpose of raising or maintaining alkalinity, magnesium or calcium are woefully inefficient. Test kits are very accurate, very available and very cheap. Quality additives are also widely available and are also very affordable (even BRS's new Cadillac line of supplements only costs $7 for an entire gallon of supplement). It's very easy to test and know with a good amount of certainty what your tank's chemistry is doing, and dose to make it do what you want. I just can't see why dumping so much water down the drain to avoid dosing a few mLs of additives is a good plan. But, to each his own.

 

[Sallstrom]

We do no water changes just for the sake of changing water in our tanks at work. In some systems have sand pressure filters and backwash then ~ once a week, and fill up with new saltwater. If I think the sand needs to be vacuumed, that's a small WC. But otherwise we don't do WC. We use Tritons ICP tests and adjust the parameters we can to their set points. To maintain KH, Ca, Mg etc we use Core7 and calcium reactors.
This has worked well for us for 4 years now.
I could add that most of our tanks are larger ones.

/ David

 

[Daltrey]

I dose Triton Core 7 and plan to only do partial water changes every few months on my 160. Mostly it will be when I vacuum my sand bed.

 

[Tony Thompson]

Really interesting to see this discussion. Please bare with me while I try and get my head around the maths.. Can you totally overcome depletion of a given element within the water mixture by changing only a percentage of the total water mix?. Unless you change 100% of the total mix?. The diagram posted by @Randy Holmes-Farley demonstrates this perfectly with regards Alkalinity, but could be applied to any substance that undergoes continual depletion.

You can only slow down the drop in overall percentage of a given substance that is being depleted, compared to not doing any changes at all. If you keep changing only 10% then eventually you will be left with practically 10% of what was in the original mix. Obviously this could be over a very long time, and depends on the amount you change.

This works both ways , you can not remove 100% of a given substance by changing only a percentage of the whole water mix. You would have to find a way to remove only that substance.

Have you all fallen a sleep by now, ha ha. Sorry .

IME, the use of water changes is used to slow down this depletion and to dilute any unwanted elements that were not in the original mix. Either caused by contamination, interaction or waste.

Maybe this is one of the factors behind what is sometimes referred to as old tank syndrome. A depletion of positive elements and a buildup of negative elements over an extended period. That's a whole other discussion, don`t` worry I won`t` go there.

In conclusion. you may want to just skip to this bit.

IMO. using an accurate measurement to define which elements are in fact out of proportion and adding only those elements within that proportion is the only way I can see how a relative equilibrium can be achieved. Or complete a 100% water change. which does not seem practical in a standard reef tank, but is one regularly used by pico reef enthusiasts like myself.

 

[estebanb450]

I rarely do water changes. I'm keeping the big 3 in ideal range and dosing trace elements. Everything looks good at the moment.

What kind of trace elements. Only reason I wanted to do small water changes was to replenish trace Elements.

 

[Dan I]

I dose Red Sea color program. You have a lot of others to choose from as well. Brightwell Aquatics, Seachem, Tropic Marin, and much more to choose from.

 

[estebanb450]

I also run the Red Sea do you test the colors to see which ones you use I went off brs they said 1 mil each color to 50ml of brs 2 part used

 

[Sherman]

I am following this thread.
I also not doing water change for 15 months already.
So far everything ok.

 

[jordimex]

@FelipeReefer

 

[reeferdon]

Yeahs I'm riding this train, it seem to be a mixed feeling with this topic. But the results shows the difference.

 

[reeferdon]

I think wc will refresh the tank and dosing will help keep it stable. Me 2 cent

 

[erk]

I think it is interesting that this topic keeps coming up. I don't quite understand why it keeps coming up though. It becomes cost prohibitive once you reach large water volumes. Nano and pico tanks would be alright. Makes more sense to do WCs on them than run dosing. As size increases, dosing, whether kalkwasser, two part, multi-part, becomes more cost effective. Eventually you reach a volume where calcium reactors are more cost effective.

You could setup an AWC, but again, this has it's own set of failure modes. Honestly, I'd rather a two part solution dumped into my tank than an overflowing system that can lead to damaged flooring, walls, and possible electric fires. Also, a two part solution setup is far less complicated than an AWC since you have to plumb holding tanks and drains.

Therefore any answer is based primarily on water volume and consumption rates. There are other factors that may influence decisions, but they are minor compared to the other two.

 

[jduong916]

I didn't know the intention of water changes was to replace elements, I thought it was to remove junk from the tank. I replace elements by dosing the big three and keeping a huge fuge with miracle mud (maybe the mud replaces trace elements, maybe not, but thats what they claim lol).

If you never change water where does all the waste go, I haven't wrapped my head around that piece of the triton system yet. The argument is that you add what is needed, but how do you remove what you dont want, such as fish waste, uneaten fish food, metal build up and whatever else accumulates in an old tank.

I try to change 1 to 3 buckets (120 gallon tank) a week depending on my mood. Basically I vacuum what what i can from the bottom. I totally vacuum the sump once a year to remove the massive amount of detritus that builds up over time. I couldnt imagine going years without doing this especially without using filter socks.