Auto water change REALLY?

[Heabel7]

Piggy back off of Revs water change question of the day. Many posted they do an auto water change and it takes no time at all. Have those auto water changers abandon reef husbandry? I always thought that during your water change it was time to turkey paste/blow the rocks off and vacuum out your detritus in all areas.

1. If your auto water changing when do you do this?

2.How do you do it, and when you do, how do you replace that water?

3.How long does it take you?

 

[homer1475]

While I don't do auto WC's yet(waiting on Versa's to be instock) I do do my WC through my sump and never touch the display.

With that said, I do once a month blow off my rocks, clean all my PH's and vacuum out my sandbed. While vacuuming my sandbed I simply place a filter sock in my sump and put the other end of my hose in the sock. It takes no water out of the tank, and I can do the entire sandbed in one go without having to replace any water.

EDIT:
Forgot the third part of your question.

It only takes me an additional hour ontop of the 10 minutes to do a WC.

 

[xiaoxiy]

Piggy back off of Revs water change question of the day. Many posted they do an auto water change and it takes no time at all. Have those auto water changers abandon reef husbandry? I always thought that during your water change it was time to turkey paste/blow the rocks off and vacuum out your detritus in all areas.

1. If your auto water changing when do you do this?

2.How do you do it, and when you do, how do you replace that water?

3.How long does it take you?

1) I occasionally (every 1-2 months) blow off the rocks or stir the sand bed and then run a filter floss pad for a day afterwards to remove any detritus I had stirred up. If my sump gets too much dirty, I take a baster and mix up the detritus in my sump and run a filter floss pad.

2) I don't change the water besides AWC (3.7% daily)

3) Takes approximately 5-10 minutes.

 

[Waters]

Piggy back off of Revs water change question of the day. Many posted they do an auto water change and it takes no time at all. Have those auto water changers abandon reef husbandry? I always thought that during your water change it was time to turkey paste/blow the rocks off and vacuum out your detritus in all areas.

1. If your auto water changing when do you do this?

2.How do you do it, and when you do, how do you replace that water?

3.How long does it take you?

I normally do this as needed. I just grab a turkey baster and blow the rocks off and stir the sand bed whenever necessary. Roughly once a month I still do a small manual water change just to suck up some detritus. Takes less than a half an hour. My AWC changes roughly 15% of my total water volume weekly.

 

[Dom]

Piggy back off of Revs water change question of the day. Many posted they do an auto water change and it takes no time at all. Have those auto water changers abandon reef husbandry?

Love this question...

In my view, the more we automate our tanks, the less in touch we are with them. The "set it and forget it approach" has the potential to be devastating to the tank as the early, subtle indicators to big problems go unnoticed until its too late.

There is a place for automation in the hobby. Lighting through automation to recreate the natural environment is an example. And can you imaging if you had to manually turn your heater on and off?

So yes, I think there is a place for automation in the hobby, but I think there should be limits.

 

[WVNed]

I think If you need to do that you don't have enough flow in your tank.
Here is a pic of the back corner of my tank. No piles of goo after more than a year of no vacuuming, stirring, blowing or ripping.

How about the other tank

Nope, it's okay too except for the eel excavations.

 

[ReefGrammie]

I am the auto water change! I am fascinated by the concept, though. I don't really have much room for another reservoir by the tank, so I'll probably just keep doing what I'm doing, which is changing 5 gallons once or twice a week in my 90-gallon tank. I do use a turkey baster and blow off the rocks a bit (especially where my clown has been slinging sand everywhere). My current system has been in place for 6 years and I tend to not bother the sand bed (I let the goby/pistol shrimp take care of that).

 

[xiaoxiy]

Love this question...

In my view, the more we automate our tanks, the less in touch we are with them. The "set it and forget it approach" has the potential to be devastating to the tank as the early, subtle indicators to big problems go unnoticed until its too late.

There is a place for automation in the hobby. Lighting through automation to recreate the natural environment is an example. And can you imaging if you had to manually turn your heater on and off?

So yes, I think there is a place for automation in the hobby, but I think there should be limits.

I have the opposite take on this. I find that the more automated my tank is, the more consistently my tank gets maintenance and the more stable it is too.

For example, AWCs have allowed my tank to have more consistent water changes with a busy schedule. Automated dosing keeps my parameters stable. Alkatronic has allowed me to consistently monitor alkalinity as a surrogate measure for tank growth and to make sure dkH never spikes or dips. Automatic feedings (fish food via pellets, phyto via EasyBooster, and coral food via EasySPS) give my inhabitants a constant food source throughout the day as well.

Not only has automating my tank made it more stable, I've also found that it's freed up a lot of time for me to inspect my livestock too.

 

[AZMSGT]

I run auto water changes and have good husbandry. (sounds like a T-shirt saying)

I blow off rockwork Tuesday and Friday. I leave all pumps on so allot of junk goes down into the overflow.
I vacuum the overflow and bare bottom every 2 weeks. This ends up being maybe 5-10 gallons of water removed from my 160g system. So I only need to add a little bit of water back in.

The big deal is the system isn’t seeing big water removal and addition events. While 10-20% at a time isn’t normally considered dramatic for water changes. I’m more stable with 2 gallons a day getting changed with a 5-7% change every two weeks.

 

[hockeyhead019]

Definitely going to be following along with the responses on this one. I read through the thread and was also suprised by the amount of replies that said they fully automate their water changes.

Personally I don't think it's an abandonment of reef husbandry but actually gives you more time to re-allocate to looking for signs that things go south. Now granted, this is based off of my own desire to just go stare at my reef and not just check up on it when I'm doing WCs.

 

[ca1ore]

Have those auto water changers abandon reef husbandry?

Of course not …. but the question was about water changes LOL. Takes me 15 minutes to recharge the new water barrel and empty the old …. then not a further minute spent for two weeks (once a year I have to swap out the peri tubing in the AWC pumps - that takes about 30 mins). I'm not OCD about detritus, plus I have a ton of flow and plenty of grazers so get no build up requiring various basting and vacuuming tasks. So zero time spent there. There are plenty of other husbandry tasks of course, like changing filter media, cleaning out skimmer, etc. But none of those are water changes either.

 

[Dom]

I have the opposite take on this. I find that the more automated my tank is, the more consistently my tank gets maintenance and the more stable it is too.

For example, AWCs have allowed my tank to have more consistent water changes with a busy schedule. Automated dosing keeps my parameters stable. Alkatronic has allowed me to consistently monitor alkalinity as a surrogate measure for tank growth and to make sure dkH never spikes or dips. Automatic feedings (fish food via pellets, phyto via EasyBooster, and coral food via EasySPS) give my inhabitants a constant food source throughout the day as well.

Not only has automating my tank made it more stable, I've also found that it's freed up a lot of time for me to inspect my livestock too.

Ok...

So with everything automated, you set it and forget it. One day later, your dosing equipment wigged out and dumped everything in its reservoir into the tank. But you don't come to check on the tank for another 6 days. Thats my point.

I've always said "stability is our friend". And yes, automation makes for greater stability. But I submit that a hands on approach will result in a stable tank as well.

 

[xiaoxiy]

Ok...

So with everything automated, you set it and forget it. One day later, your dosing equipment wigged out and dumped everything in its reservoir into the tank. But you don't come to check on the tank for another 6 days. Thats my point.

I've always said "stability is our friend". And yes, automation makes for greater stability. But I submit that a hands on approach will result in a stable tank as well.

While everything is automated, I regularly inspect the equipment and the tank. Automation =/= neglect.

There are multiple ways to reef, but automation has helped me to achieve this in a 6 month young tank despite a hectic work schedule.

 

[hart24601]

With this hobby, and most others, people can argue their point of view with just about anything. For example how can anyone keep in touch with their tank if they are not manually adding top off water every hour? You could have a catastrophic tank issue and if not at the tank every hour you wouldn’t notice it!

It’s not wrong, and if a person never missed an hour top off it might actually be better, but most would agree it isn’t needed, however it’s up the the person running the tank. If they feel they would neglect the tank with automation, then don’t automate!

I use AWC for years, even on freshwater tanks. The main reason is that it doesn’t forget to do it or get too busy and not have time. I can say that my tanks have gotten waterchange every week for years now. That wouldn’t have happened if I was doing manual changes, and the overall quantity would be smaller limited to 5g buckets.

For me this gives me more time to spend on other reef items and upkeep. I also have arthritis in my back so manual changes are extra unpleasant. Now this isn’t the case for everyone of course which is why it’s so great to have options.

 

[Greybeard]

I discontinued auto water changes after a clogged pump nearly wiped out my tank, but my manual water changes are quick... under 10 minutes. Enable WC mode, siphon from the tank to a pair of 10g containers, hit a button to pump it back into the sump, disable WC mode. Turn the pump off when water reaches normal level.

Wife and I dump the 2x 10g (8g, really, underfilled) into a gravel bed in the yard. Keeps the weeds from growing ;D

Bare bottom tank. Tunze 6105's run 100% for 3 minutes, 4 times a day. There's no need to manually blow off the rocks... believe me... plenty of movement going on. They run 20-40% the rest of the time.

What little (heavy) detritus doesn't end up in my filter sox, ends up swirling around the front of one of my rock islands. When I do my 10% weekly, I siphon it out.

 

[Midrats]

While everything is automated, I regularly inspect the equipment and the tank. Automation =/= neglect.

There are multiple ways to reef, but automation has helped me to achieve this in a 6 month young tank despite a hectic work schedule.

Two Stream 3s? What size tank is that?

 

[xiaoxiy]

Two Stream 3s? What size tank is that?

36x24x24!

 

[xiaoxiy]

I discontinued auto water changes after a clogged pump nearly wiped out my tank, but my manual water changes are quick... under 10 minutes. Enable WC mode, siphon from the tank to a pair of 10g containers, hit a button to pump it back into the sump, disable WC mode. Turn the pump off when water reaches normal level.

Wife and I dump the 2x 10g (8g, really, underfilled) into a gravel bed in the yard. Keeps the weeds from growing ;D

Bare bottom tank. Tunze 6105's run 100% for 3 minutes, 4 times a day. There's no need to manually blow off the rocks... believe me... plenty of movement going on. They run 20-40% the rest of the time.

What little (heavy) detritus doesn't end up in my filter sox, ends up swirling around the front of one of my rock islands. When I do my 10% weekly, I siphon it out.

Which one of your DOS lines ended up clogging?

 

[piranhaman00]

I should probably start doing water changes

 

[Greybeard]

Which one of your DOS lines ended up clogging?

Pump head pushing fresh mix salt water back to the sump got clogged. The pump pulling waste water from the sump was fine... and the ATO system did what it was designed to do, keep the sump full.

Salinity was 1.014 when I noticed. Was not a big deal, but it could have been a disaster.

Until Apex comes out with a RELIABLE salinity probe, I'll stick with manual water changes... and NO the current Apex salinity probe is NOT what I would call reliable.