Randy Holmes-Farley
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My Tank Thread
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I don't understand why I would have to do water changes since I have such great filtration, a monster protein skimmer, reef matt, activated charcoal. The only thing I wanna make sure is I'm replenishing all the elements that come in my blue bucket. So what if I never did water changes, and instead, I use my roadie saltwater mix in the ATO?And just monitor specific gravity? IE replace evaporated water with salt mixed roadie water through the ATO. My own blue bucket ATO i.e. I take my ATO external unit and mix it with salt . As water evaporates and it takes up and replaces via ATO with my salt mix . And I just monitor the specific gravity and add or subtract rodi water as needed. as it turns out IFS owner told me he only does about a 5% weekly water change and he has the most beautiful coral tank I've ever ever seen That's what I did today . I water replaced my 51 gallon system with about 3 1/2 gallons of salt mix. Tank looked much nicer afterward.
Tanks do not “need” water changes, but they can benefit from them.
Water Changes in Reef Aquaria by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
From it:
Conclusion
Water changes are a good way to help control certain processes that serve to drive reef aquarium water away from its starting purity. Some things build up in certain situations (organics, certain metals, sodium, chloride, nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, etc.), and some things become depleted (calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, strontium, silica, etc.). Water changes can serve to help correct these imbalances, and in some cases may be the best way to deal with them. Water changes of 15-30% per month (whether carried out once a month, daily or continuously) have been shown in the graphs above to be useful in moderating the drift of these different seawater components from starting levels. For most reef aquaria, I recommend such changes as good aquarium husbandry. In general, the more the better, if carried out appropriately, and if the new salt water is of appropriate quality.
Calcium and alkalinity, being rapidly depleted in most reef aquaria, are not well controlled, or even significantly impacted by such small water changes. In order to maintain them with no other supplements, changes on the order of 30-50% PER DAY would be required. Nevertheless, that option may still be a good choice for very small aquaria, especially if the changes are slow and automatic.