Why do waterchanges when you can dose?

[TeJ]

What do Pacific oysters do? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this. You mean the spiny oysters that I sometimes see pop up on liveaquaria?

Water changes are cheap and simple, 200 gallons worth of salt nowadays you can buy for $37 free shipping. I doing water changes, you take out the guesswork and replenish always what is needed without much testing. But in my case to balance out the deficiencies we have 70 Pacific oysters which purify most of the water in a 90 gallon volume setup, and water changes are every 3 days approximately 7 gallons. They say the proof is in the pudding check out the pictures.right now from 0 to 10 we are at a 9.5 in simulating the ocean conditions

Water changes are cheap and simple, 200 gallons worth of salt nowadays you can buy for $37 free shipping. I doing water changes, you take out the guesswork and replenish always what is needed without much testing. But in my case to balance out the deficiencies we have 70 Pacific oysters which purify most of the water in a 90 gallon volume setup, and water changes are every 3 days approximately 7 gallons. They say the proof is in the pudding check out the pictures.right now from 0 to 10 we are at a 9.5 in simulating the ocean conditions

 

[X-37B]

It's also the biggest consumer of those elements your corals need.........it's why the Triton method recommends an algae filter............you're locked in to buying trace elements that get sucked up much faster if you didn't have that as part of your export system.

Exactly. Thats why I do not run a fuge. I just use live rock and run a balanced system.
Po4 .02-.04
No3 1-2

 

[goldslinger]

I haven’t done a water change in 7 years. I use ESV B Ionic 2 part dosing and it keeps the important elements spot on according to the ICP test.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

What do Pacific oysters do? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this. You mean the spiny oysters that I sometimes see pop up on liveaquaria?

No the ones you eat, but I tried every brand under the sun as they say and the only ones that are Hardy is the brand called Azul Sol . At least for my corals which are one of the most delicate they must have some type of symbiotic relationship now.... hahaha. Because they definitely aren't dying and getting plump.

What do they do, they do exactly what our mechanical filtration does but naturally, keep in mind the water is purified but not 100% clean but the corals love it. I've said this in the past and I'll say it again from 0 to 10, 10 being ocean conditions, we are at a 9.5

 

[Greybeard]

The question, to me, isn't why do water changes, it's why _not_ do water changes?

My introduction to this hobby was Martin Moe's book, printed in 1982. He recommended regular water changes... along with an air driven under gravel filter and a 3" bed of crushed coral... Ok, so maybe it's a bit dated.

I've seen many tanks, fabulous to mediocre, and talked with many reefers, over many years. Seems to me that a conscientious, knowledgeable aquarist is the only common component of a successful reef. Aside from that, anything goes. I've seen beautiful reefs that use all sorts of methods and techniques that I've never tried.

Yes, you _can_ run a wondrous reef with near zero water changes.

But, IHMO, you're much more likely to have success if you DO regular water changes. Even systems like Triton STILL DO WATER CHANGES... they simply wait for something to go wrong before recommending one. Why wait?

In my experience, regular, 10% weekly water changes help keep a balanced, healthy reef. The practice, GREATLY improves chances of success.

I've got a mixing station that makes keeping a supply of new mix salt simple. Cost? I'm running Zeovit... believe me, the salt isn't a major cost factor Time? I'm using a 1" silicone hose to fill 2x 10g Rubbermaid trash cans once a week. Siphoning manually lets me target the detritus collection that naturally happens in a bare bottom, high flow tank. Takes me maybe 3 minutes to siphon out the water. Carry the buckets to a gravel area in the yard, where it serves to keep weeds from growing. Turn on my refill pump, takes another 2 minutes or so to run the sump back to it's normal water level...

So, maybe it takes 10 minutes, once a week. Cost, next to other reefing related expenses, is minimal. Its' a simple, inexpensive technique that GREATLY increases your chances of success.

Why not?

 

[Back where it all began]

All Triton.

Thanks, I appreciate your response.

 

[Iam_Mitch]

Thanks, I appreciate your response.

Sent in an ICP test today. We’ll see what needs to be dosed!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I run the Triton method. Dosing the big 3 which also include trace elements. Skimmer and refugium export nutrients. Just need a big enough refugium to grow your macro algae. Water changes are only done when ICP test says to.

And yet ICP can only measure inorganic elements, and not all of those at NSW levels. There will be plenty of organics accumulating in reef aquarium water.

Do those "need" to be removed, and are water changes the only or best way? I think the only way to answer that is to compare not changing water to changing water on the same system and see how the tank appears.

 

[ArizonaAquatics]

And yet ICP can only measure inorganic elements, and not all of those at NSW levels. There will be plenty of organics accumulating in reef aquarium water.

Do those "need" to be removed, and are water changes the only or best way? I think the only way to answer that is to compare not changing water to changing water on the same system and see how the tank appears.

This is a good point. There will always be something that we cannot measure in our aquariums. This is why I believe "limited" water change is more accurate than "no" water change since most of us will change our water eventually for some reason.

I'm all in favor of a good water change every once in a while, but I just do not feel frequent water changes are the best way to maintain a reef considering day-to-day coral consumption of elements. Especially on larger systems, performing water changes to keep everything balanced without worrying about the fluctuations in elements would be more hassle than simply dosing my tank daily and performing occasional water changes. And even then, when I do change the water I'm still testing my mixed saltwater to ensure it's as close to normal aquarium parameters as usual. At least in my case, water changes are more for removing what I cannot test for (or contaminants that show on ICP), versus replenishing what I can test for.

Thanks for mentioning this!

 

[Bradley C]

I have always depended on water changes.
You need to make water changes easy.
It’s easy to get a system to do auto water change. If your system is setup properly you can do water changes by pressing a button on an app.

Small daily automated water change are best for keeping your tank stable.

Auto top-off systems I am aware of, but auto water change units?

 

[Rich Klein]

JUST CURIOUS to why we have to do water changes when we can dose and use refugium to keep nitrates down? I do 10g every week on a 60g system, these darn 5 gallon buckets are getting annoying lol

I will always do some small weekly water changes when I vacuum my sand substrate.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

JUST CURIOUS to why we have to do water changes when we can dose and use refugium to keep nitrates down? I do 10g every week on a 60g system, these darn 5 gallon buckets are getting annoying lol

you mentioned the buckets are annoying, I can relate and I have a bad back so makes it worse. Anyway I setup an auto water changer I figure it out by weight how much salt so when the reservoir is empty I just put the salt in there and everything else is automatic I have water through an RO that fills a reservoir at one point. No carrying buckets at all. It's a no waste ro filtration and you just have to add DI resin and you're good to go.

 

[MartinWaite]

Water changes cause swings within water chemistry esp more so for those who leave it a week or more whick a lot of SPS Corals don't particularly like so unless your dosing as well as water changing you're system is likely to fail. I running an ATI system (similar to Triton) and a y thing I test fkr is spot on I test alk 4 times a day via Alkatronic and dose the big 3 off the results from the Alkatronic my Alkalinity never varies more than 0.1 over 3 days I dose automatically via alk test results via my Dosetronic which if I put a dozen clams in my tank will automatically adjust my dosing to suit the uptake and will also split the dose so it dosing the different amounts as used i.e. 20ml am 12ml lunch 5 ml night. I send off my ICP tests each month. Yes I top off salt water and water as required but you could class that the same as anything else I dose. But at least I'm not trying to kill myself trying to pull water about in my wheelchair each week while slowly poisoning my tank.

 

[Easy Reefing]

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Spoiler ... If you dose ... you HAVE TO change the water. PERIOD.

When you dose if you could possibly add calcium and carbonate in exactly one to one ratio (you can't) then you will still have to deal with the two elements that you can't test for rising in your tank ... sodium and chloride diluting out all of the other elements not related to NaCl. You have to correct this imbalance or you tank will crash. The more you dose the more pronounced this problem becomes. Many people try to work around this by getting bigger tanks. This just drags out the problem and eventually the larger tank will also succumb to the imbalance. Most people with large enough tanks usually don't last long enough in the hobby to truly see the effects of what they are doing. And even if they are in long term the length of time a large tank takes to become out of balance is significant enough for them to never really understand what causes their tanks to crash.

If you use other methods of calcium carbonate addition (kalkwasser, calcium reactor) then the only issues that you will face are as stated on the thread making infrequent or no water changes a possibility.

A rudimentary understanding of chemistry goes a VERY long way in this hobby. It helps shield you from ideas or products that might be very very harmful in the long run.

Before prodibio became so hard to get I think I went 4 years without a water change on a 300G SPS system packed to the gills. It wasn't until I decided to go back to traditional skimmer/water change when my nutrients became unpredictable...

I water change occasionally but even doing 100G water changes it doesn't seem to effect my nutrient levels as drastically as I think. 11 years into the hobby and I have yet to see these "amazing benefits" of changing water...in MY personal experiences water changes are not the consistent magic bullet and on large systems get expensive.

My current routine is 50G per month on my 300

 

[Timfish]

Because there's a lot of stuff that's manipulating the bacteria in a system that we can't test for. Dissolved Combined Neutral Sugars (DCNS) for one.

Coral and macroalgal exudates vary in neutral sugar composition and differentially enrich reef bacterioplankton lineages - PubMed

Increasing algal cover on tropical reefs worldwide may be maintained through feedbacks whereby algae outcompete coral by altering microbial activity. We hypothesized that algae and coral release compositionally distinct exudates that differentially alter bacterioplankton growth and community...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[HuduVudu]

Before prodibio became so hard to get I think I went 4 years without a water change on a 300G SPS system packed to the gills. It wasn't until I decided to go back to traditional skimmer/water change when my nutrients became unpredictable...

I water change occasionally but even doing 100G water changes it doesn't seem to effect my nutrient levels as drastically as I think. 11 years into the hobby and I have yet to see these "amazing benefits" of changing water...in MY personal experiences water changes are not the consistent magic bullet and on large systems get expensive.

My current routine is 50G per month on my 300

@2Wheelsonly did you even bother to read my post? Because your response did not address any of what I said in my post.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

@2Wheelsonly did you even bother to read my post? Because your response did not address any of what I said in my post.

yeah I read it, didn’t think I was being combative as I was just sharing my experience when not changing water in 4+ years back when I had a carbon routine I liked. Not sure why you’re worked up over anything I said. Relax guy it’s all good.you joined on June 2 and you’re already getting worked up over nothing. Sorry if I offended you (not my intention at all), was just adding to the discussion in general and quoted your post as you mentioned long term effects.

 

[MarineREEFpassion]

It's also the biggest consumer of those elements your corals need.........it's why the Triton method recommends an algae filter............you're locked in to buying trace elements that get sucked up much faster if you didn't have that as part of your export system.

Are you referring to Chaeto consuming the trace elements? Never had an issue in over a year of using it. My corals have thrived on Triton. Maybe it’s because I use a large Chaeto reactor, or just that the amount of trace used, if any is probably so minuscule to affect coral uptake. Maybe it would affect small bio cubes, Who knows lol. All I know is it works great on my 180g system.

 

[MarineREEFpassion]

yeah I read it, didn’t think I was being combative as I was just sharing my experience when not changing water in 4+ years back when I had a carbon routine I liked. Not sure why you’re worked up over anything I said. Relax guy it’s all good.you joined on June 2 and you’re already getting worked up over nothing. Sorry if I offended you (not my intention at all), was just adding to the discussion in general and quoted your post as you mentioned long term effects.

You handled that better than I think most would have lol. I enjoyed reading your take on it!