Reasons for Doing Water Changes?

[dz6t]

Yes, pristein supply 5 minute drive away.

If I were you, I will do continuous water change.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Why is that? What is the source of these elements?

I presume he means things elevated in the new salt water, but obviously elements can rise from many sources.

 

[dz6t]

A scientific way to use Triton testing should be:
1. Send in a sample for newly mixed water, this is your base line.
2. Send on sample in every three days for a month, you then can see which elements are consumed. Then you can calculate the consumption rate for each element.
3. Then adjust the dosing accord to the consumption rate.

Dosing accord to one test result vs natural sea water standard is not scientific. Assuming you actually be able to obtain all the element that are needed.
4. After you dose, continue to send in samples to monitor the dosing regiment.

Triton method may work well for them as they have the ICP machine on site.

 

[dz6t]

I presume he means things elevated in the new salt water, but obviously elements can rise from many sources.

I see, such as food sources?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I see, such as food sources?

Anything you add to the tank has trace elements in it, but yes, foods are a big source.

 

[rtparty]

While I can't and won't get into scientific reasons (above my pay grade), I've been in the hobby for close to 12 years. While that is short to some, it is miles ahead of a lot. I've learned a few things over that time.

1) No two tanks are the same. One may thrive on a certain system and another crash. Even if numbers "test" the same

2) The more I learn, the less I know.

3) There is a common denominator for most tanks that end up crashing, dying, being overrun, etc...and that's poor husbandry and it tends to start with lack of water changes. I see it time and time again and have for years. Does that mean water changes will make you successful? Of course not but I've never known a tank to crash because someone did regular water changes of 20-30% a month. Quite the opposite actually. I've watched numerous tanks be saved and thrive because they started water changes again.

Joe Yaiullo had a great talk about this. He called it LARS (Lazy butt Reefer Syndrome) and it was spot on IMO. If water changes keep one involved with their tank, they should be done.

 

[TbyZ]

Actually these three points are the reasons for frequent water change, as frequent as possible such as the continuously water change.

Continuous water change ?

LOL

 

[silvernblackr35]

Because it's easy to do and it does all 3 of those things you mentioned at the same time.

It definitely becomes less economical the larger your water volume but I still don't understand where water changes got a rap for being a hard thing to do, even if you don't have a fully automated system for it.

 

[TbyZ]

A scientific way to use Triton testing should be:
1. Send in a sample for newly mixed water, this is your base line.
2. Send on sample in every three days for a month, you then can see which elements are consumed. Then you can calculate the consumption rate for each element.
3. Then adjust the dosing accord to the consumption rate.

Dosing accord to one test result vs natural sea water standard is not scientific. Assuming you actually be able to obtain all the element that are needed.
4. After you dose, continue to send in samples to monitor the dosing regiment.

Triton method may work well for them as they have the ICP machine on site.

Its seems you are arguing against element supplementation & treating element supplementation & regular water changes as mutually exclusive.

Water changes cannot maintain element levels in a moderately stocked aquarium.

Nobody would seriously consider "continuous water changes", for good reasons!

Arguing that elevated element levels is a case against element supplementation, & a case for water changes is completely baseless - one example https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/marinepure-and-ceramic-media-with-triton-method.329078/

This leaves possibly toxic DOCs as the only reason for regular water changes, & I'm yet to see any evidence that activated carbon, purigen, skimming, bacteria, sponges & other cryptic organisms cannot deal with its removal or recycling.

 

[PiscesPower]

Water changes are still a great method of reducing high NO3 and PO4. In the cases where you have mass die off or accidentally make a mistake during feeding etc. No other method will reduce NO3 or PO4 as quickly.

Agree for emergencies. I always keep enough water made (not saltwater) to do a 25% change.

You could do balling dosing, dutch synthetic, triton, zeovit, etc to replenish trace elements, but in smaller tanks, probably sub 100 gals, it really isn't feasible. You are probably adding amounts that are difficult to measure accurately. So if you did decide to dose trace elements to avoid water changes, you'd probably be forced to do the occasional water change just to bring the element levels back into balance due to constant over dosing.
.

Not sure why you would assume constant overdosing. I am running a Triton system on a RSR 250 and don't find the dosage amounts, even the replacements after ICP testing, to be anything I can't manage with a dosing pump and some syringes (for small volume elements like Iodine I use a 1cc syringe)

 

[TbyZ]

Because it's easy to do and it does all 3 of those things you mentioned at the same time.

It definitely becomes less economical the larger your water volume but I still don't understand where water changes got a rap for being a hard thing to do, even if you don't have a fully automated system for it.

Doing regular water changes for 2 of those 3 things is not necessary.

Buying salt & equipment to mix it up in comes at an significant ongoing cost. The amount of water that needs to be processed by RODI can be huge in many cases & is a considerable consideration.

There's certainly nothing wrong with evaluating better methods, & many people run extremely spectacular systems without doing regular water changes.

 

[TbyZ]

Joe Yaiullo had a great talk about this. He called it LARS (Lazy *** Reefer Syndrome) and it was spot on IMO. If water changes keep one involved with their tank, they should be done.

LARS disease, & utilising other methods to negate the need for regular water changes, are mutually exclusive.

 

[TbyZ]

Sanjay Joshi’s Nano Reef Tank Breaks All The Rules (Video)

No skimmer. No carbon. No water changes.

His tank is full of softies, known for releasing toxins.

https://reefbuilders.com/2017/07/19/sanjay-joshis-nano-reef-tank-breaks-all-the-rules/

 

[TbyZ]

Glen F tank.

Softies, LPS, SPS, NPS

No water changes since 2004

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/glennfs-300-gallon-dsr-reef.138700/

 

[erk]

Not sure why you would assume constant overdosing. I am running a Triton system on a RSR 250 and don't find the dosage amounts, even the replacements after ICP testing, to be anything I can't manage with a dosing pump and some syringes (for small volume elements like Iodine I use a 1cc syringe)

Because it is difficult to consistently dose in small amounts with what we can afford as hobbyists. Not sure the brand of syringe you use, but there is a tolerance for such a device, not counting your ability to eyeball the liquid level in the syringe. If you used a mechanical pipette that is calibrated and tunable, that would be better. When working with micronutrients, even the smallest amount of overdosing causes a build up and in weeks to months, you can have an excess. Smaller water volumes will see a faster response to these excess nutrients than larger tanks. If I ran a large >100gal tank, I would definitely go with a method that allowed me to dose micronutrients and not have to do a water change. But I would never advocate the use of such methods for smaller tanks. Just too much room for error.

Edit: Also, dosing all those little bottles on a tank where a 5-10 gal water change would be enough seems like a lot of work compared to the water change itself. Not even considering the cost of the solutions. Buying in bulk might not be feasible due to life span of the nutrients, meaning you can't take advantage of price breaks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It is obvious that water changes are not "necessary" to have a nice reef tank.

The question is whether any given tank would benefit from them, which is often nearly impossible to answer with certainty.

A second question is what is entailed to keep such a tank, and whether it is the most suitable procedure for any given aquarist (time, cost, difficulty, etc.).

 

[ReefBeta]

I don't think there are much value on debating whether a tank could work with no water change, cause people proofed it work already. There are some other questions are more interesting to me.

1. Is no water change method have higher success rate or not? It's not about if there is successful examples, it's about percentage of success. Or from another perspective, is margin of error increase or decrease with these methods. Assuming higher margin of error, lower chance of failure.
2. Is this cheaper than just water change in terms of consumables? From the prices from triton method, it don't seem to be cheaper than salt price of 10% water change weekly. But more actual data is better.
3. Is it easier/cheaper to implement, both as initial implementation and ongoing effort? Water change is straightforward to do, no need to dancing around numbers. But ongoing effort will be pretty high if you do it with 5 gallon bucket. The ongoing effort can be reduced a lot by plumbing design to enable easy water change, or even automated or continuous water changes, but the initial implementation is harder/more expensive. For dosing, if dose manually daily, the effort could be a lot. If dosing automatically, is investment in decent doser higher or lower than that to automated water changes. Also what's the effort to tune it dosing amount, and the risk of mis-tuning.

I don't think there is overall clear winner. It's all about trade off according to each reefer's circumstances, and picking the one that best fit your situation. For me, I want it as simple as possible, I don't want to worry testing levels of trace elements and their dosing and adjustments. Weekly water change is the simplest way to achieve what I need and the cost and effort of doing it is ok to me. If I were to do no water change method, I see myself spending a lot more time and/or money on doing testing on all kinds of levels, and worrying about fixing them. Or being paranoid if I were not testing as much.

 

[dz6t]

Sanjay Joshi’s Nano Reef Tank Breaks All The Rules (Video)

No skimmer. No carbon. No water changes.

His tank is full of softies, known for releasing toxins.

https://reefbuilders.com/2017/07/19/sanjay-joshis-nano-reef-tank-breaks-all-the-rules/

Full of softies. That just explain why this tank works. Try to put an acro in it to see how long it can survive.
I have a friend with a tank full of Xenia, he does not do water change. Hack he has no fish because they were all dead. He does not even clean the front glass. Now that is a great success story for you.

 

[TbyZ]

UV sterilization & ozone sterilization are two more tools that can be utilised to control virulent water column bacteria & organic toxins.

 

[Bouncingsoul39]

I don't care to find the quote but Randy recently made a zinger of a comment regarding the whole Triton and NO water change nonsense. He said something along the line of "If you are running Triton, you ARE still doing water changes". Whats in those expensive white bottles? Water.