Why do we do water changes so religiously if we can remove the nitrates?

[SMSREEF]

Lazy is spending your entire day on a reef forum and responding to posts that you find useless. (Hint : you and your pal).
I invited you to continue your discussion about the terribly designed product, on that thread, but seems like you are again, too lazy to do that.
And finally, this post is entirely valid because as you can see, there is no concrete answer my man.

Cant imagine how pathetic your career must be to not understand research .

 

[Pntbll687]

I didn't say I don't do water changes, just not to many. I feel too much new water is detrimental to tanks which is one reason new tanks always look lousy. If new water was really good why don't we change 100% of our water to fix problems?

I actually saw a video where they do a 95% water change on a tank in Australia as regular maintenance.

BUT the water change is done with natural sea water and not using a synthetic salt

 

[brandon429]

you can do it with synthetic salt we have a thread of about 36 pages of synthetic salt 100% water changes on reefs ranging 120 gallons to 1 gallon

any tank posting in our sand rinse thread, if you entered that thread we could do whatever we wanted to your sandbed plus a 100% water change and no the sensitive sps wouldn't die, its why we're out to 36 pages vs drummed out of town.

the reason we were doing those big water changes was to remedy messed up sandbeds for pages, we simply power cleaned back into compliance. one of the requirements is dont use the old filthy water, make all new. (we drop the lighting intensity the first several days after, hidden gem trick for bleach and stn control)


another reason for water changes: lemme see any sort of a work thread correcting bad sandbeds without ripping them clean.

 

[firmefatboy799]

im gonna start a build thread soon regarding this, I saw reef builders do a nano tank with fish and coral and no water change for a year and at the time I thought why not, I broke down my 10 gallon AIO and started a 30 AIO with 1/3 old rock structure from the 10 gallon, 1/3 with a big piece of purple rock from a lfs and the last 1/3 was mixed pieces from another lfs along with a bag of ceramic cubes from the 10 gallon take breakdown and a fresh bag of I think carib sea live sand, let the rock and sand cycle for about 2 weeks almost no diatoms and then added fish and corals to which I have yet to do a water change on since july, only media I use is a bag of chemi pure blue in one of the chambers, I dose tropic marin all for reef by eyeball around 6ml a day and the tank is going! even so with only 1 kessil a80 on a 12 hour cycle with maybe 4-6 hours at 100% I do have some hair algae growing on the back plastics but nothing crazy, I honestly think water changes are a sham unless you're crazy exact dosing with an apex type system and have annoying sps corals etc and even then,,, lps and softies and 1-4 fish with a decent cuc and you're golden

 

[Tired]

No, water changes are not a sham. If a tank is set up the right way to allow it, you can do very few water changes, but you should not do no water changes. Nor should anyone new to the hobby be encouraged to do no water changes.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

We do water changes so the industry can sell us salt...

 

[brandon429]

there are reef masters who can do it, they write cool articles and truly have amazing growth


and when I was a kid Bob Ross painted a tree literally in six seconds with a microbrush.

I have spent 35 years trying to replicate that, and can't.

there are some methods better for the masses, for a new reefer they are better off water changing, and in fact knowing how to do big water changes is critical, at times, if you want the best longevity. do the water changes to some degree.




dilution spoils everyone.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Man them Dallas stars suck.

GO LIGHTNING!!!!!!!!

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Lebron Traveled.

The only low IQs I see here are the people who still claim that water changes replace trace elements and then can't name said trace elements.

Salt mix makers cant even get alkalinity straight....and we're claiming they all standardize on strontium, boron, and unubtanium.

I do water changes never. Get your nutrient export under control and stop buying bags of over priced sodium chloride mixed with baking soda and sidewalk de-icer.

I keep my Unubtainium at 1314, is that not the correct ratio when combined with WTForous?

 

[Paul B]

I actually saw a video where they do a 95% water change on a tank in Australia as regular maintenance.

BUT the water change is done with natural sea water and not using a synthetic salt

You can change water constantly using NSW because that is not "new water" but real water.
ASW is fake water and new fake water is IMO not very healthy. But that is only an opinion and not a scientific fact.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

I am positive. I'm tired of seeing the same topic beaten to death. No one searches for previous threads on topics.

Maybe op didn’t find a thread that answered his questions properly. I also see many duplicate threads BUT I am ok with it more stuff to read on breaks at work

 

[living_tribunal]

I can’t wait for op to make the qt vs no qt thread next!!!

 

[Tired]

I find it hard to believe that "fake saltwater" is bad, seeing as how there are at least a few very nice reef aquariums running on fake saltwater.

 

[Spare time]

How often do you change your carbon?

Usually I do so every 3-4 weeks. I put the carbon in ro maybe once a week to remove bacterial films that might grow on it (not sure if this is effective but I do it anyway). However, I have tested the red sea carbon after a month and it still was working well.

 

[Karen00]

My 2 cents...

If you have a balanced tank where your export system gets rid of the excess nutrients like nitrates and your input is replacing what your bioload is consuming, your parameters are where you want them and your livestock is healthy then you probably have no need to do water changes ever.

If however you run a tank where you don't dose or aren't running extra water volume or don't have additional export methods like reactors, etc. or are running a high bioload then water changes are imperative to get rid of excess nutrients like nitrates and to replenish the nutrients that are consumed.

There are plenty of threads supporting both methods with equal success.

 

[sas226]

Ahhhh, you're the mp10 thread person. Lolol.

You weren't kidding.. just read that thread holy yikes. Also, used multiple Ecotech products over the years, never had an issue except one wetside seizing and they overnighted me a new one after a 5 minute phone call. Off topic but whatever.

 

[Doctorgori]

I tried the no change route but a $40 bucket of reef crystals is a very cheap piece of mind. I got a 210, I can’t swear I do regular water changes per se, but 10-20% every month or so has been working for me ...I get the logic of not changing water to a point, it is the holy grail but I’m not about to spend $30 per ICP test to avoid spending $40 on a bucket of salt.

 

[Paul B]

I find it hard to believe that "fake saltwater" is bad, seeing as how there are at least a few very nice reef aquariums running on fake saltwater.

I didn't say Bad. "bad" is a bad word. I said NSW is better. It's better because it is already aged millions of years. NSW has every mineral or element on Earth in it. Substances exuded by algae, metals, meteorites, volcanoes, bacteria, funguses, sponges, corals etc. ASW has chemicals, all dry that are mixed with water in the hope they become hydrated to the same composition as the real thing. It is not.
NSW is also loaded with bacteria and viruses, both good and bad in the exact proportions that they are supposed to be to keep each other in check.

My own reef ran the first 45 years with "mostly" asw and I had very few problems, but after it aged, I had no problems. Not even with diseases.

ASW is sterile. Sterile is not as good as "aged" which is why you would not have much luck putting corals in a tank with 100% new ASW. They would look horrible. But you could do that with NSW.

There are chemicals in NSW that we have no idea if they are used by organisms so they are not added to the mix. Most of them are trace elements that we can't or don't test for.

ASW becomes much better after it ages and if we keep changing to much of it, it will stress the fish but mostly the corals.

This is also the reason IMO that new tanks have so many problems with algae, cyano, ich, velvet etc.

My tank now, because I live next to the sea is all NSW. I have no algae, cyano, ich, velvet or any other problems and I would never quarantine as diseases are a non issue.

I have not had those problems for many years but I feel one reason for that is the age of my water.
Look at the disease forum, virtually all the problems and diseases are in new tanks. You rarely find any diseases or problems in tanks 10, 20, or 30 years old.

Most of us have to use ASW. I get it as I also had to use it. But when it is new, out of the box, it is a far cry from the real thing.
But I didn't say "bad"

 

[Greg Gdowski]

there are reef masters who can do it, they write cool articles and truly have amazing growth


and when I was a kid Bob Ross painted a tree literally in six seconds with a microbrush.

I have spent 35 years trying to replicate that, and can't.

there are some methods better for the masses, for a new reefer they are better off water changing, and in fact knowing how to do big water changes is critical, at times, if you want the best longevity. do the water changes to some degree.




dilution spoils everyone.

I'm not really going to disagree with that. There is truth to that. However, I will say that --- after years of doing water changes blindly -- the balling method of dosing is what brought me to the next level. It was not the actual balling method itself, but rather the mentality of really trying to understand the water chemistry and how it was changing. I think I would have understood the water change methodology better and how to implement it more efficiently -- if I had had a better handle on the chemistry. Ironically, the chemistry is simple chemistry, not rocket science. A lot of my early failures would have been easily overcome if I had just understood water chemistry. For what its worth, many of the pictures with huge amounts of coral that absorb nutrients are likely sucking up >1dkh/day of alkalinity. IMO you could accomplish that with water changes -- but you better be very healthy because it is going to be a lot of lifting almost on a daily basis. The real issue is that we all see pictures of these tanks -- and wish we had them. My tank has been absorbing 1dkh/day for over the last 2 years. Water changes alone would not cut it.

 

[brandon429]

The Dutch synthetic reefing posts are amazing for sure / no water change systems

how are those reefers handling solid waste? Surely they’re not deep sandbedding I can’t recall