Water Changes

Suzy, I did a water change about every two - three months. I would change about 10 - 15% of the water and watch my inhabitants go through the biggest stress of their lives. I e-mailed Eric Hugo Borneman with that same question. He said that I should not stress everybody out so bad, that I could do a 5 gal water change every two weeks on my 54 gal. tank (that is too easy, that would be MORE than enough in terms of both controlling nutrients, providing the important calcium and carbonate components, and way more than enough in terms of trace and minor elements. So I did it and you would not believe the difference.

If you are considering just using your evaporated water as a water change. You are not exporting the nasty stuff and replaceing it with good clean stuff. There needs to be a replacement of old with new.


Edited by John Fletcher

Suzy,
I do not do water changes at all. Haven't done one in over a year and my tank is thriving. I do believe you do need to get the bad stuff out and for that I use protien skimming and a very high grade of carbon called chemi-pure. You can find more info here: http://www.boydenterprisesonline.com/chemipure.html
I also use an ecosystem type of sump that I built.

Edited by KeoDog

Suzy wrote: So 2 questions: Why do water changes, and how often? I know Mark does like daily changes 'cause you're adding green water, right? What about the top off water we're adding? With the fans on , I need to replace like a gallon a day Does that count, 'cause I'm not actually removing anything....?.

Why? Major and minor elements are being depleted from your tank water. You can try to maintain these elements by direct addition of these elements (Ca, Alk, Mg, Sr, I, B, and a myriad of other small players), or you can try to maintain them by doing water changes. It's hard to keep up with Ca/Alk doing just water changes, but the other elements can be kept closer to artificial seawater levels this way because they are depleted so slowly. The other reason is to remove compounds that may be released by tank inhabitants that may be toxic/irritant to other inhabitants. Some people swear by water changes, others do them very infrequent. I personally try to do a 10-25% change every month (actually, like Mark, I add about a pint per day of home grown phyto and remove a pint of tank water... so I'm doing small daily water changes too). Also, watch your tank, it will tell you if there's something "wrong". The first step to fixing the problem can, and often is, doing a water change.

No, your make-up water does not count as a water change.

Instant Ocean's Tom Frakes, himself a Ph.D.biologist as I recall, did a scientifically controlled study many years ago and it was reported in the literature. He found that 10% per month was the best frequency. Of course all the salt companies were in favor of this, but realistically it makes total sense for our closed systems.

I once tried an 18 month "no water change - no additives experiment" and found that the coral stopped growing and even regressed and that KH got so low that hermits couldn't live because they couldn't build exoskeletons. Sadly, I gave away a cherished four inch long Six-Line Wrasse, before I discovered the cause of hermit crab mortality.

It's neat for Keodog to say that he doesn't do water changes, but I'm suspecting that he is adding elements to make up for what's being used up.

A successful hobbyist, who also had a store for a while, believed that water changes were actually a better and cheaper form of replenishing elements, which made additives unnecessary. He was breeding clowns and selling his own propagated coral including hard coral and feather duster worms!

My opinion: Change 10% every 5 - 8 weeks

Something many people don't realize is that newly mixed saltwater is caustic...it burns. So mix the water and aerate it for a few hours or even a day before adding it. That will probably eliminate the stress mentioned by John Fletcher above.

Kevin, I'm guessing you're not a fan of ionicly balanced additives? how come?

Kevin, I'm thinking we were on the same page. I have every test kit invented and actually use every once in while and it seems with my additions of Kent crap everything stays OK. I even got that kalkwasser thing going. And nitrate seems controlled with the calerpa growing again and the DSB. Do you think we're ok not exporting and importing the stuff we can't test for? I'm going to just do 10% every other week for a while....