Water Changes

[BBReefer]

I spoke with brother earlier today and was asking about his 125 gal saltwater tank. We got a discussion about water changes. He has not done a water change in over a 1 year. He has a sump, DSB and live rock. His tank also has some plate coral(i dont know what kind) that has grown like a weed. He also has a few fish. He did not run his skimmer during this time. Once the DSB and sump are removing the nitrates, is there any reaon to do water changes if there is no corals? If there were corals, would dosing make up for what the corals are taking out of the water? I do water changes and realize water changes remove nitrates and add back calcium and other trace elements.

Without a heavy bio-load, can our aquariums be self sufficient utilizing DSB, sump, refugium, ect..

[Timfish]

This is a very good question and I would expect would supply the research material for many thesis dissertaions. Marine ecosystems are VERY COMPLEX with literally hundreds and maybe thousands of different species interacting and are dynamic, that is to say there are constant fluctuations and cycles on daily, seasonally, yearly and almost ceertainly random periods. Imagine trying to solve a math problem with several hundred unkown variables . The discussion about have a system balanced and not needing water changes has been going on as long as I've been keeping salt and fresh water tanks ( 35+ years) and I expect will go on long after I've gone to the big reef tank in the sky . Some people are able to get away with not doing water changes and the chances of success are better than winning the lottery but it is a chancy proposition and I'm not going to do it. If someone is thinking of attempting it I would argue establishing a base line first by closely monitoring at the minimum pH, alk, calcium, nitrite and phosphate for several months. As long as these are having only minor changes on a weekly basis I can see an argument for not doing water changes but keep in mind there is still a lot of stuff we cannot test for and I'm not going to stop doing small weekly changes. Usually as waste products build up pH is going to start dropping indicating a build up of CO2 (I would point out it is possible to have well oxygenated water but also have high CO2 levels concurently, they do not necessarily operate inverse of each other) or a build up of organic acids. There should be changes with at least some of the other parameters I've mentioned but I haven't tried this to see myself what's going to happen first. Another risk in not doing water changes or checking parameters periodicly is corals and fish can over time adapt to conditions that will kill anything new added to the tank so what may look like a healthy tank really isn't.

As far protien skimming at best I've always been indifferent. My introduction to saltwater was a series of articles in TFH in 1986 that went through the steps of setting up a reef tank with an old fashion under gravel filter and crushed coral. The articles included pictures of a very beautiful reef tank with polyps, softies and LPS. It was also started the old school way with out any live rock and seeded with some gravel from another tank (I don't remember if ammonia chloride was used but it was common back then) Since then I've tried systems with PS and personnally found it was a unneccessary complication. Recently Ken Feldman has published some research (JasonJones posted a thread about it) showing the limitations of skimming. So while future research may show that a certain set of problems may develop as a tank ages if skimming is used and a different set of problems may have to be dealt with if skimming is not used I still see it as unnesessary.

[Michae52]

This hobby will only advance with people trying new and different techiques. By 86 the wet/dry Berlin method had been aound 5-6 years. A LFS friend of mine in Oklahoma City and I had already modified arcylic tanks with a wet/ dry system that had the return coming underneath the grid plate to provide more O2 to the gravel bed. The wet/dry took care of the NO3.

[+Grog]

This hobby will only advance with people trying new and different techiques.

Stuff like this is why I signed up on this forum. Instead of a, "Your doing it wrong" attitude, folks here seem to have more of a, "You may be onto something" attitude. Or a "that could work for you" attitude. KInda cool IMO.

[subsea]

http://www.inlandaquatics.com/

Morgan Lister maintains 40K gallons with no water changes. He has DSB over 24" and massive algae turf scrubbers. In reality he does partial water changes as he makes up for all the water removed in livestock shipments. His detrivore kits are first class as is IndoPacific SeaFarms.

[+o0zarkawater]

My first saltwater tank was a 10gal mixed reef I got from my brother because he went off to school. I did no research and just half-assed took care of it. I had it for over 2 years and topped off with distilled water whenever the water level got 1" below the top, and only did 2 water changes in those 2 years. The water changes were with distilled water and oceanic salt mixed in a jug, then dumped right into the tank while still cloudy. I never had a single fish or coral die. I had a remora nano skimmer on the tank, but it really didn't pull much out. I might have emptied the cup every couple months. I was a bad tank daddy.

These days on my 55gal I do a 5-10gal water change once a month, or whenever I can be bothered to mess with it. Not sure why though, it seems all my LPS 'puff' up more after a couple weeks without water changes. I guess I do it because I don't dose or test anything, and just want to hopefully replace any trace elements lost in the months time with whatever is in fresh saltwater.