I am currently stuck offshore in the North Sea; where I work. I've been away from home for 3 months.

Can you all tell where this is going....

I have a 12gallon tank with live rock, zooas, a false perc, a yellow watchman goby and a spiky black urchin. My brother has been putting in ro/di water once a week to keep the salinity right, but he can't really handle the technicalities of a water change.

My tank has now gone without a water change for 3 and a bit months!!

Apparently all occupants are well, and eating well. It just shows to go; what was I worrying about water changing every week for!!??

Seriously though, i'll do a 20% and a de-algaeing when I get home soon!!

As long as he's feeding the tank very sparingly it'll be fine, I used to do water changes on my solana like maybe 4 times a year...

Without dosing you will be low on trace elements.

Unless you've got tons of SPS your sandbed contains a lot of trace elements that slowly and naturally dissolve into the water column. Won't be a lot, but with my 3-4 months between water changes I never had any issues. I had a few monti caps, zoanthids, LPS, etc... Just fed the tank lightly once a week

cool. off topic but i work in the north sea too.. (or was)

on topic what i do is premix about 30 gallons of water with a pump and a heater and leave for my wife while im away at work. she just does a few gallons twice a week.

I still only W/C at that interval, lol!! My 30g is going strong on the original water since I set it back up back in mid July. The temp tank all the livestock was in went with NO water change for 7 months straight, water was as prestine as can be. Nothing died, and anything that requires a bit of Ca was thriving. No chiller on the tank either, but the temps stayed good I guess, lol! Salinity also NEVER changed, as I tested it when I tore that temp tank down and it was the same as when I first set it up. Water changes are over-rated, no seriously they are!

I completly agree my tank hasnt had a wc in a while and it is running strong and everything looks great. just feed sparingly.

Also the less you put your hands in the tank, the better it'll look and be.

Phew, I was expecting a flaming! I opened the forum to get a feel for how others do their changes :-)

It just shows to go how it's easy to worry overly about these things!

Water changes regularly in the beginning, then as my tanks get established (and I get lazy) its every once in a blue moon

Same here. Well, not as far as to say every few months, but it's more like every few weeks. I've got SPS and LPS, but I just top-off every few days with RO, and dose with two-part. I don't have any fish and I target feed the LPS once every week or two, so there's not much to dirty the water.

Is this the "admit that you too get lazy and forget to do water changes anonymous thread"?

I'm guilty as well.

I try to do weekly changes...but when I get lazy and let it slide to 3 or so weeks between, I have to admit the tank still looks good.

I put my hands in the tank all the time

What exactly is the bad thing about putting my hands in the tank? If I wash them thoroughly before putting them in the tank will that help?

Have yet to miss my weekly water change

Seeing as you wash your hands before putting them into the tank, you're putting trace elements of the soap into your tank. Soap is not good for a tank.

I rinse thoroughly too

He means the less you mess with everything the "happier" it will be. Not literally putting hands in tank...

During my renovations I had my tank covered with plastic sheets to keep dust and debris out. The renovations lasted 5 months. When i cleaned the tank walls and scraped all the algae and the dust settled my tank looked better than ever. I slowly started my water changes after the renos were over and slowly increased from 5% a week to 15%. Tank still looks good even though i mess around with it a lot... and i know i shouldnt. The big thing was that i didnt have sps in the tank at that time.

Actually I meant both. Not washing, you putyour hands coated in your body oils in the tank which isn't good for the tank health over the long run if you put them in daily. Washing them, like said can intorduce traces of the soap you use into the tank.

Oh thats true. I thought you were going more with a reefing proverb haha

Hasnt it been proven that waterchanges greatly increase water quality? i dont understand why you would do one every 1-2 months regularly if its been proven...........

I like doing water changes. I want to make sure my tank has the trace elements it needs. So are you saying it isn't good to eat a burger and fries and then put my hands in the tank? The fish swim off if I ate burger king but come up and suck my fingers if I am Mcdonalds.

Same here. especially that super trace elements that cant be tested for.

Please show where it's been proven? I know of a tank going on 5½ years without a single W/C ever that has the most prestine water I've seen in a tank. If everything including the fish and inverts in it are still alive, then W/C's aren't the ultimate secret to a healthy tank and are really just optional. That aside, don't touch (as in put your hands or any part of your body) in your tank or W/C it for a month and I'll bet it'll look far better than it ever has. This happens everytime with mine and others I know, so W/C's is a poor excuse to say a tank is doing well. I'm going on 2 months no W/C's since setting my tank back up, and it's looking quite grand. Skimmers are the ultimate W/C, just saying! They pull the crap out of the water, and you replenish daily we fresh clean RO/DI water.

So I shouldn't dunk my head in the tank with a mask and snorkel anymore?

That's different, the extra bubbles and snorkle tube make the fish and corals feel better emotionally, it's like interacting with them like you would with a dog.

im putting my water up and taking a nap......im about a month over due ill get around to it....i need more RO anyway.....

So I shouldn't use old bath water for top offs? lol

I usually change 5gal out of my 36g tank every 2-3 weeks. I have an orange carnation coral that closes up when the water gets too old. Its my little indicator strip.

no, it hasn't.

first, define "water quality"

then, let's see the experiment.

my 29g used to get neglected and it didnt get water changes sometimes for months to practically years at a time -- all went well and everyone did fine. granted slower growth due to lack of trace elements, but all survived...

HTH



its always good to have an indicator... xenia and leathers work well usually for this... not surprised ur carnation tells u when its running low of iodine (my bed)

i havent changed my water in 3 months, my sps does better then my zoas...

its not that hard mixing salt water and getting it to around 1.024 if u have a refectometer. and letting it sit over night with a pump.

but i guess if your not remotely intrested in something the simpliest things seems hard.

if the water in the tank is already 'pristine', as phixion put it, and you do a water change, what exactly is the benefit?

water changes are golden to new tanks, or tanks that are having nutrient issues, or tanks that have had a specimen die. for healthy, established tanks, especially those using skimmers, refugiums and carbon or a combination of the three, all water changes really do is provide peace of mind.

that being said, you have to know the rules before you can break them.

Well put Jerem.

That said, my fresh new bucket of D-D salt almost seems pointless now... =/

Oh, that's why it didn't crash..

i would do a water change more often
but my water change buckets are dirty

Where were all you turds when i was getting flamed in beginner discussion when i thought 50-100% water changes per week for a nano was an absurd bandaid solution to nutrient export?!!! I totally believe that if you find a balance between feedings etc that less water changes are in order, but if you wish to have horrible habits you'll need lots of fresh water to compensate. I've been guilty of not doing a water change for months at a time and honestly nothing looked any worse for the wear. As for now i'm trying to stay on a strict 25% a week schedule but occasionally it doesn't happen and i skip a week or three, but hey a 5 month old baby and 4.5 year old will suck the ambition right out of ya!

you might be able to get away without water changes but then you have to dose. for nano tanks which what this site it, i think that dosing is pointless, why dose and then do water changes to reduce your nitrates and replenish trace elements at the same time. you kill 2 birds with one stone with water changes. i didnt know skimmers remove nitrates??? thought they just removed as much crap they could out of the water, not removing nitrates directly. neither does algae unless you remove it from your tank directly.

but all discussion aside show me a tank that never has water changes and one that does every week ( nano size) and we'll see which one is better and has better " water quality"

I do weekly, but am gonna try to go a month without so my tank can stabilize....I had a sps bleaching issue, then a section of rockwork collapsed, shattering a beautiful monti in the process

aftere restacking, the tank could def. use some "hands off" time to get right again....I dose two part daily and have an ATO, btw. very low bioload and I run a skimmer, and a BRS reactor with carbon and GFO.

Anyway, I met a guy with a 3 year old DIY cube...@ 50 gallons....all softies....under 10000k that looked like 6500k. it was the wierdest, most lush, jungle like thing I've ever seen...mushrooms, xenia, GSP, colts, leathers....all just exploding....and a single sailfin tang?! NO skimmer, an NO water changes....ever. Only new water was St. Louis, MO tap water....added to top-off...

this guy was about 70 years old, btw....he didnt want to hear any of my "learned from nano-reef" nonsense...everything I said seemed to insult him.

anyway, just thought Id share.

I agree about following the rules until you can safely break them, btw...

oh so thats how you do it, just throw your corals in there and let them just grow everywhere. i prefer an more organized tank rather than a jungle. anyone can do a jungle with time.

yeah...this tank was out of control...looked like the work of a madman. zero water changes in 3 years an no skimmer, he was a madman IMO.

his basement was all these wacked out tanks with flourecent strip lighting over them....really wierd. like a mad scientists basement with tanks everywhere...

I made sure I had a friend with me, I thought the guy was some jeffry dahmer type....but he had giant rubbermade tubs of the best live rock I've ever seen....for 4 a lb.

apparently, he set up tanks for old folks homes and stuff as a hobby....

me, I think every two weeks is a comfortable period in between changes....I'll push it to 3 or so, but then I feel guilty and change...I suspect this will continue to be the case.

That sounds like a perfect misconstrued statement there. Overlook the jungle and focus on results. I'm definitely an advocate of water changes but i think we tend to over complicate things and quite often

I think it depends on the tank. They are all different and have different needs. A new tank or a tank by a beginner should have water changes, but once your experienced and can set your tank up properly the tank may not need it.

My 5.5 gal has been set up for about 8 or 10 months, I do a water change when the snails tell me to...they stop eating. At first it was about twice a week, but sometimes it goes well for 2 months before I need to...I did my last water change about 6 weeks ago, and my water tested at 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and 0 nitrate yesterday, the calcium was a little low, but that's an easy fix.

Can you imagine tanks before they used live rock? or is that another deep discussion thread?

all i know is i have a 62G with about 80G volume of water. i change my water every 3 to 6 months. why? i go to school(9-4) then practice(4-5) then to work sometimes (530 or 630 to 1200) weekends i work in morning most of the time and at night i just am tired and lazy to mix 20-30G lol. and my sps and a whole other bunch of corals have grown out greatly. i had a tiny 1/4" frag of sps turn into a beautiful 5" diameter with about 12 branches in a couple of months. only thing i run is 2x250w 2x65w, octopus skimmer, cheato, and 2 k3's for flow and man some of my other corals look smexy!

I had a 6 gal that didn't see a water change for 4 months. Granted it only had some crushed coral and 3 Damsels. Then after my copper emergency I added the 2 clowns from my Cube and 2 hermits as well as my GSP and button in there while I scrubbed the main tank, and yet I still didn't change the water.

Then I upgraded the Tank to a 10 gal added the copper leaching rock in from the main and added 2 more gallons to the tank to top it off (does that count as a water change?) and yet all the parameters are 0. I also have not changed the filter media in it too, which dumbfounds me as I can't get the Main to go below .20 for nitrates using the same water/salt mixture source.

This is a case of "If it's not broken . . . "

All these no water change...do you guys have a skimmer? or no?

I would think that running a refugium and no skimmer would benefit you more than anything when it comes to infrequent water changes. The skimmer will pull out alot of good things as well as bad. In my new setup I will be running a fuge, some chemipure elite, and no skimmer. I will be doing water changes monthly to bi-monthly as that has always worked for me in the past. I also use an ato to keep my salinity in check, another key to reducing water change schedule.

What things are you refering to?? Definitely not Ca, alk, or Mg... Also skimmers pull out organic material, not necessarily trace elements, that's consumed by the tank inhabitants.