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Cultivated Reef

No water change Reefing


Sherman

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Anyone here practise no water change here?

Like to share your success or failure here.

 

Triton, DSR and Farmer TY seems quite successful

Please share your experience

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Polarcollision

I went 6 months without a water change. The coral have always looked fine and I'm careful about replenishing trace elements. It would be interesting to send off to Triton some day.

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On 2/21/2017 at 0:43 PM, Polarcollision said:

I went 6 months without a water change. The coral have always looked fine and I'm careful about replenishing trace elements. It would be interesting to send off to Triton some day.

You 6 months no water ,just top up trace elements? You never do any measurement ?

On 2/21/2017 at 0:50 PM, Clown79 said:

I've never done it myself. After 2 weeks without one,  I can see a decline in my tank but others have had success with the method.

You notice there is decline in your tank after no water change for 2 weeks?

What decline you observe?

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I have only done it with my 85.  I plan on experimenting with my 25 though.  The only water changes were from drip acclimating corals and fish and that was an insignificant amount.  I saw a decline in my corals and dosed aquavitro fuel as well as two part dosing (seachem) and the tank had spectacular growth and color.  I was also running a skimmer, purigen and carbon.  

I never did a water change in the year it was running.

 

I plan on doing the same with this tank and it will be interesting to see if the smaller water volume plays a significant factor or not. I probably will have to do waterchanges though since this tank will have a larger proportional bio load than the 85.

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My observations have been:

 

Increase in nitrates and phos

Oil build up on surface

More algae

Corals don't look very good

Build up of detritus on rocks and in sand

 

I personally would never go the no waterchange route 

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Seems relatively easy, provided you are better at limiting your livestock choices than 90% of all nano-reefers out there. ;)  Self included.  I like shrimp, crabs & tiny fish and way too many of 'em.

 

On the times my family and I have gone off on 1+ week trips and just left the petsitter with some buffered top-off water I've always come home to most of the  LPS corals looking more inflated and just generally "happier" than if I'm doing the usual bi-weekly water changes, but I've always attributed this to the "no hands in tank" effect.  This has gotten better as I've gotten better about choosing salt mixes that more closely match the desired parameters of the tank - only took 4+ years and the bulk of NanoSapien's ye-olde reef thread to hammer that one home.

 

But I HATE testing parameters... and all the no-change methods seem to be based on a hobbyist loving them some titration or having a near-dealer/junky relationship with a water test service.  Scoop, mix, pour - repeat 'til everything's happy is more my speed.

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flatlandreefer

What's the point, water changes take 10 minutes even if you only do them less frequently?  I think you would struggle with a new system without doing water changes and trace elements would deplete at some point because unless you are dosing all of them there is nothing to replenish them.  Also if you have any bio load your sand bed and rockwork would become a detritus sink over time. 

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Done correctly, it can be pulled off. You'd have to implement some pretty aggressive nutrient export and keep up on your major and trace elements. It's probably easier to do on a large tank.

 

That being said, water changes are pretty easy on nanos and the easiest way to correct issues on small tanks. 

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6 minutes ago, lkoechle said:

@pokerdobe omg do you have a shiba puppy???  I love shibas.  They arent a good fit for us right now, but some day...

 

Why yes, yes I do. They're fun little stinkers. Here he is judging me at the tender age of just 9 weeks. 

bGv2Rmh.jpg?1

 

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2 minutes ago, pokerdobe said:

 

Why yes, yes I do. They're fun little stinkers. Here he is judging me at the tender age of just 9 weeks. 

bGv2Rmh.jpg?1

 

BAAAAAAWWWW so cute!

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13 hours ago, lkoechle said:

I have only done it with my 85.  I plan on experimenting with my 25 though.  The only water changes were from drip acclimating corals and fish and that was an insignificant amount.  I saw a decline in my corals and dosed seachem vibrance as well as two part dosing (seachem) and the tank had spectacular growth and color.  I was also running a skimmer, purigen and carbon.  

I never did a water change in the year it was running.

 

I plan on doing the same with this tank and it will be interesting to see if the smaller water volume plays a significant factor or not. I probably will have to do waterchanges though since this tank will have a larger proportional bio load than the 85.

Look like you are doing great on big tank. Do you measure what you dose?

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No water changes ever in either of my two tanks IM25 and IM10. Going on about 8 months. LPS and Softies only with two RBTAs. Auto Top off with RODI. I did water changes weekly before I had started using a macro reactor and had tons of algae issues but since running a phosban 150 converted into a macro algae reactor I have had no excess nutrient issues and have never since done water changes. Have to harvest macro once a month.

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9 hours ago, Sherman said:

Look like you are doing great on big tank. Do you measure what you dose?

Only calc, mag, and alk once every couple weeks to make sure thse doser is doing its job.

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Polarcollision
On 2/22/2017 at 1:19 AM, Sherman said:

You 6 months no water ,just top up trace elements? You never do any measurement ?

You notice there is decline in your tank after no water change for 2 weeks?

What decline you observe?

I have dosing buttoned down to a fine art. This is one reason why it works -- the tank is actually more stable than if I were changing water once a week. Alk does not ever swing more than 0.25 dKh. I test Alk, Ca, Mg, N03 and P04 1x per week unless things look good. Additionally, I add trace elements to the appropriate major element dosing container. Nitrates are always around 0.5 or 1. I believe it is because my skimmer is always running and I use sugar-fine sand so there are magnitudes more surface area for bacteria to process nitrates and phosphates. cleanup crew is 1 emerald crab, 5-6 stomatella snails, 1 blue tuxedo urchin. periodically I'll add the sea hare from the 8 gallon. 7 fish are fed 2 cubes of mysis/day and a chunk of Ova. Mostly sps and zoas.

 

By the theory and by the results, everything is working well. However I have never sent my water off to Triton for testing to see if anything needs to be adjusted. I'm curious and will probably do that this year.

 

On 2/22/2017 at 6:49 AM, flatlandreefer said:

What's the point, water changes take 10 minutes even if you only do them less frequently?  I think you would struggle with a new system without doing water changes and trace elements would deplete at some point because unless you are dosing all of them there is nothing to replenish them.  Also if you have any bio load your sand bed and rockwork would become a detritus sink over time. 

I would definitely not suggest stopping water changes with the meaning that declining water quality is OK. It only works if other safeguards are put in place. There is no magical potion that lets acros live in poor water quality. :-)

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2 hours ago, Polarcollision said:

I have dosing buttoned down to a fine art. This is one reason why it works -- the tank is actually more stable than if I were changing water once a week. Alk does not ever swing more than 0.25 dKh. I test Alk, Ca, Mg, N03 and P04 1x per week unless things look good. Additionally, I add trace elements to the appropriate major element dosing container. Nitrates are always around 0.5 or 1. I believe it is because my skimmer is always running and I use sugar-fine sand so there are magnitudes more surface area for bacteria to process nitrates and phosphates. cleanup crew is 1 emerald crab, 5-6 stomatella snails, 1 blue tuxedo urchin. periodically I'll add the sea hare from the 8 gallon. 7 fish are fed 2 cubes of mysis/day and a chunk of Ova. Mostly sps and zoas.

 

By the theory and by the results, everything is working well. However I have never sent my water off to Triton for testing to see if anything needs to be adjusted. I'm curious and will probably do that this year.

I'm assuming you're talking about your 24?  Gorgeous tank. What are you using to replace trace elements?  I agree with you that I felt not doing water changes with adequate nutrient export let my 85 be more stable. I only dosed seachem reef plus and I tried aquavitro fuel (seachem's "fancy" version of reef plus) but I felt reef plus gave better results.  This was in an 85 though, so it was pretty stable.  I want to do the same thing with this new 25 though so I'm interested to know what you're doing.

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I think if you grow mostly zoa and softies and easy corals then its okay,  you can go without a water change for along time .

But I can tell you that if you do corals like SPS and dont do water change, you wont see light at the end of the tunnel.

For SPS, a successful reef means good color.

 

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jedimasterben

I think I've done one water change (75ish percent IIRC) on my current tank, and my previous tanks have had very very few. It takes both extreme nutrient export AND import to succeed, as using various high quality goods will supply pretty much every trace element one would need. Most people with large, older tanks do very few water changes and the corals don't care. It is sometimes out of laziness, but also simply because water changes aren't the miracle cure they're made out to be unless they are very large (50+%) and frequent to make up for poor filtration.

 

TL:DR get quality skimmers, employ chemical filtration and change it often, feed a variety of high quality foods, and you will see the "need" for water changes slip away with time.

 

 

Edit: the main thing is don't get complacent. Keep up on equipment maintenance and have some backups for when shit hits the fan, test at least monthly for cal, alk, and mag (more often for SPS tanks or if you make any changes to the system, such as adding several corals or adjusting dosing), and if you notice a problem, fix it sooner rather than later.

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22 hours ago, Najay343 said:

No water changes ever in either of my two tanks IM25 and IM10. Going on about 8 months. LPS and Softies only with two RBTAs. Auto Top off with RODI. I did water changes weekly before I had started using a macro reactor and had tons of algae issues but since running a phosban 150 converted into a macro algae reactor I have had no excess nutrient issues and have never since done water changes. Have to harvest macro once a month.

Hi Najay,

Nice to hear you has successfully remove water change after implementing macro algae reactor.

What is this macro algae reactor?

Is it the same as Santa Monica ATS?

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14 hours ago, lkoechle said:

Only calc, mag, and alk once every couple weeks to make sure thse doser is doing its job.

You only measure CA, ALK and Mag. 

What about Strontium,Potassium,Iodine?

You don't measure ? Just dose? Or no need to dose?

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8 hours ago, Polarcollision said:

I have dosing buttoned down to a fine art. This is one reason why it works -- the tank is actually more stable than if I were changing water once a week. Alk does not ever swing more than 0.25 dKh. I test Alk, Ca, Mg, N03 and P04 1x per week unless things look good. Additionally, I add trace elements to the appropriate major element dosing container. Nitrates are always around 0.5 or 1. I believe it is because my skimmer is always running and I use sugar-fine sand so there are magnitudes more surface area for bacteria to process nitrates and phosphates. cleanup crew is 1 emerald crab, 5-6 stomatella snails, 1 blue tuxedo urchin. periodically I'll add the sea hare from the 8 gallon. 7 fish are fed 2 cubes of mysis/day and a chunk of Ova. Mostly sps and zoas.

 

By the theory and by the results, everything is working well. However I have never sent my water off to Triton for testing to see if anything needs to be adjusted. I'm curious and will probably do that this year.

 

I would definitely not suggest stopping water changes with the meaning that declining water quality is OK. It only works if other safeguards are put in place. There is no magical potion that lets acros live in poor water quality. :-)

Thank You for sharing your receipt.

So just test the Alk,Ca,Mg,PO4 and NO3.

Need good export equipment like skimmer and cleaning crew.

 

Beside trace do you dose strontium,potasium and iodine.?

And do you test them ?

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7 hours ago, pokerdobe said:

If you want to check out a tank that hasn't had a water change in over 3-4 years, check out AcroFarmerTy on Reef2Reef. I've gotten from frags from him and probably my hardiest frags. 

Thank You pokerdobe. 

I saw his thread. Power tank.

 

Too bad I from the East. (Singapore) Otherwise I will also get fraq from him

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