think about it man, your filters can trap only so much crud, if you dont have a skimmer where is that crap gonna go? Into the sand bed and hopefully eaten up by whatever, but those whatevers need to poo too. Youre always going to have waste collecting so think of it like taking a shower, you have a filter for the water but you dont change that filter, you just add fresh water to compensate for evaporated water, but in the long run if youre not removing the crud from the water, youre bathing in dirty water......if you have fish or corals that you paid a lot of money for, do you want them in dirty water?
What's your water change schedule?
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think about it man, your filters can trap only so much crud, if you dont have a skimmer where is that crap gonna go? Into the sand bed and hopefully eaten up by whatever, but those whatevers need to poo too. Youre always going to have waste collecting so think of it like taking a shower, you have a filter for the water but you dont change that filter, you just add fresh water to compensate for evaporated water, but in the long run if youre not removing the crud from the water, youre bathing in dirty water......if you have fish or corals that you paid a lot of money for, do you want them in dirty water?
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The answer is going to depend on several things... When you say "parameters are stable" how many and what parameters are you actually measuring?
Calcium, Alkalinity, pH, Magnesium, Nitrate, -trite, Ammonia, Phosphate, Dissolved Oxygen, Iodine or Iodide, Salinity, etc (that is all I got off the top of my head I might be missing one or more)
A Fish Only tank will be much less sensitive than Reef tanks of course to the above listed Parameters. However I hate to see people with "just a fish only tank" who let it go for long periods and the stupid Nitrate is thru the roof. End up with Tangs and Angels with terrible looking Head and Lateral Line Erosion (HLLE) Disease. It is really unfortunate. :boo:
So water changes are really important to remove toxins and waste from the system. Water changes are also important to replace minerals and constituents that are taken up from the water and used to build something by an animal or whatever in the tank.
By the way I am not coming down on you or anyone on water changes by any means. The link that I posted in my earlier post is great reading on the importance of water changes and what they do to benefit the tank. :thumbs:
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That's an excellent question. I measure salinity with a refractometer and top off with either ro or salt water depending on the salinity. I have an auto top off, but its currently offline until I figure out the salinity the top off water should be to keep my salinity relatively stable.
Again I don't know if me not doing weekly large scale water changes is a good policy. It's kind of like a personal experiment of sorts. I designed my setup with nutrient export as one of my main priorities to see if it was even possible to try and cut down or eliminate water changes. For the first 4 months after this tank was setup, I did do water changes because the nitrate level would exceed 20. After awhile though it stayed stable at around 15. It was at this point, around 6 months ago, that I stopped doing water changes and now its less than 10 and has been there for 3 months.
So... how did I go about doing this? It was planned and based on the wisdom and experience of many people much smarter than I. Essentially, I read up on how to export nutrients effectively and decided to use them all... One of the important things that I learned was to create one point source to collect detrius if possible. As such, my goal was to get all the detrius if possible to land up in the filter sock. I accomplished this by having a good amount of flow and physically lifting the rocks off the sand bed with an acrylic stand. This way no detrius collects near the rocks or gets wedged in and around a rockline. There is enough flow to throw anything on the sand bed back into the water column where it usually gets broken up further and eventually goes down to the sump. The display uses a shallow sand bed and is stirred up regularly so the majority of the detrius heads towards the filtersock in the sump.
Another important goal besides exporting solid nutrients is to attack the dissolved ones. Dissolved nutrients fall into two categories, either organic or inorganic. The skimmer only removes organic nutrients, and from what I've read it seems that wetter skimming more effecitvely removes nutrients. As you guys all know, the skimmer is the single most important exporter of organic phosphates and nitrates and every tank needs a good one.
Often times if you have a helluva skimmer, it seems that you won't have as high a concentration of inorganic nutrients. However, I think its prudent to have a system to remove those as well. So I read up on how to remove those and decided to use all those techniques as well.
I use various macro algaes and 20 mangroves plants in the refugium and I have it lit with a icecap 250w halide. I just got my a t5 kit for the refugium, because I want to keep my heat build up to a minimum. The refugium only receives filtered/skimmed water, so there is no nutrient build up there at all. It also has a deep sand bed. I'm sure that a DSB does a better job at denitrifying but even spots where there is just 1/2" of sand in my display, I see the signs of denitrification so the ssb is helping as well. I constantly run ferric oxide hydroxide for further inorganic phosphate control and carbon for just 5 days every month. I also have a mountain of extremely porous rock in the sump, but only filtered skimmed water hits that so there's no nutrient build up there either.
Perhaps I'm walking a thin line but so far so good... I'll be really sad if the tank crashes because its my favorite obsession... I have mostly lots of zoas, rbtas, some other sofites, clams, and a few lps and sps. Everything is healthy and growing quite well. I don't have any pest algae to speak of and have been target feeding some of the clean up crew to keep them alive. I also have a decent bioload and I feed the fish 2 times a day. Even though I don't do any official water changes, since I skim out around 1/4 - 1/3 gallon every 2 days or so, I am doing a water change of about 5 - 8 gallons a month on this 85 gallon tank. That's why I answered that it was constant.
Caveat: I still consider myself a noob to saltwater tanks... this is my first saltwater tank afterall. I value opinions and input based on experiences very highly. So if there's something I'm missing please do point it out for me. I'm still learning and perhaps this is a foolhardy move... So far it's working out alright... but we'll see... and I'll let you guys know how it plays out. I do not recommend following this path, since water changes are in fact the best way to keep your system humming... and I know that... I'm just crazy like that though. I basically did a ton of work to try and eliminate a lil bit of work... :lol2: . Oddly, I enjoyed wasting the time...
For those that care about parameters they are as such:
NO4 = 0
NO2 = 0
NO3 = <10
PO4 = 0
Ph = 8.1
Ca = 410
Mg = 1280
Salinity = 1.025
Temp = 79 +/- 1 degree
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Wow I wrote a book... I doubt anyone is going to bother reading all of that 
. The synopsis is simply that: I'm running a lil experiment to see if I can get by without water changes. So far so good... but please don't try this it takes a lot of time to setup correctly and its benefits are questionable.
Jin
. The synopsis is simply that: I'm running a lil experiment to see if I can get by without water changes. So far so good... but please don't try this it takes a lot of time to setup correctly and its benefits are questionable.Jin
I think "need" is a relative term in this case as well as many others. Will your fish and other livestock survive without water changes. Probably, but would they be happier, healthier and live longer with them. Probably. Since I haven't seen any data on doing no water changes versus water changes it is impossible to quantify my "probably", but I know the ocean has a way of rejuvinating itself that my small reef tank doesn't. Water changes while not critical to the health of my critters, probably does make them healthier over the long term.
wow....i actually read that whole thing.....pretty cool though....hope that works out for you.....
Lee....i understand everything you said and I do do water changes pretty much every couple of weeks, but lets face it.....there has to come a time for most everyone out there where for whatever reason you dont get around to doing your regular change (i.e - my month and 5 days)....I guess the better question would have been how you know when your tank is getting to that point of " I NEED A WATER CHANGE NOW." - other than a fish dying of course....I figure you could test for nitrites and obviously if they are high you change...but I tested my water 2 days ago and it was at zero.......
I guess what I am getting at is if my tank will stay healthy if I only change my water once a month or once every couple of months as opposed to every other week, I'd rather do less water changes than more.
Is there a way to actually say that changing every two weeks is THAT much better than 1x per month.
btw, should I change my shower water filter?
Lee....i understand everything you said and I do do water changes pretty much every couple of weeks, but lets face it.....there has to come a time for most everyone out there where for whatever reason you dont get around to doing your regular change (i.e - my month and 5 days)....I guess the better question would have been how you know when your tank is getting to that point of " I NEED A WATER CHANGE NOW." - other than a fish dying of course....I figure you could test for nitrites and obviously if they are high you change...but I tested my water 2 days ago and it was at zero.......
I guess what I am getting at is if my tank will stay healthy if I only change my water once a month or once every couple of months as opposed to every other week, I'd rather do less water changes than more.
Is there a way to actually say that changing every two weeks is THAT much better than 1x per month.
btw, should I change my shower water filter?
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Future... I did read your and the other posts. Interesting and I wish you luck. You did leave off Alkalinity test but I am sure that you test that as it is one of the basic couple tests so I am sure that you just omitted it from the typed list. All your numbers look good. I am just a little concerned that the organisms in the tank could be using something in the water that is not being replaced manually by proper dosing. I am not experienced enough in marine vertebrate and invertebrate biology/physiology to advise you what components could be removed from your system over time that could lead to problems. The link that I gave above authored by Randy Holmes Farley could better explain the importance of water changes in the addition of necessary depleted components and the reduction of increasing components (such as sulfate, etc)Sorry I dont have anything better to offer.
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Well my water was never crystal clear, nor was it yellow. I credit that with frequent usage of carbon. Regardless I had to do a water change a few weeks ago since the grape calerpa decided to go asexual. I've never gotten to witness this in person so I was amazed at how quickly it happens and it is most definately triggered by light. The refugium light went on and I happened to be pruning some other macros at the time... Right in front of my eyes the grape turned brown and the water in the fuge got cloudy... in a matter of seconds. I was able to turn off the water to the fuge and limit the contamination but the entire tank was slightly hazy. I pulled all the grape calurpa but even as I did so some were melting in my hands. Amazing how fast the change occurs... Anyways I did a water change and dumped in a ton of carbon for good measure.
I'm a huge fan of Randy so I did read that article. Thank you for posting it justonemoretank, I will be doing water changes every couple of months now for good measure.
I'm a huge fan of Randy so I did read that article. Thank you for posting it justonemoretank, I will be doing water changes every couple of months now for good measure.
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That is why I dont have any calerpa in my tank! I do not want it to freak out and release a bunch of toxins in the tank. There are too many other better Macros out there to risk it in my opinion. Future... Glad that you found the article useful.
Well kinda new here,. but with my other freshwater tanks I stick to a pretty strict ritual of every saturday changing about 5%. I plan on doing the same with my salt,. but it is a bit more difficult. Been trying to think up the best possible way to make it easier on myself. I still havent gotten the knack for mixing the salt and it taking less then a day to get the salinity right
