A year with no water changes

[Idaho-reefer]

I do not try to be a bad person , but you have , only one fish ?
How much you save , in salt.....$ 100 ?

That’s a good question

It’s not about saving money for salt, it’s partially to see if I could do it successfully, and In the past struggled with extremely low PO4 and no3, which regular water changes exasperated that problem. I wanted to keep those in check and measurable without having to dose stump killer etc

 

[Crustaceon]

In my system, the downside I see to water changes is doing them and reducing already low nutrients while also adding an element of instability. I run a calcium reactor filled with reborn media/neomag and dose kalk that has strontium and along with the food I add to the tank, I have to wonder if I even have a need to replenish trace elements. I have a decent stocking list in my 100 gallon reef as well and I struggle to keep nitrates above 2.5ppm. Po4 is always undetectable (chaeto grows like mad, so it’s there). I also feed four times a day with various pellets and frozen mysis/whole raw shrimp. I was running an algae turf scrubber and felt like it was too efficient and now run just the chaeto in my sump, a small skimmer a little carbon periodically and a weekly filter sock change for nutrient export.

Fishies:

2.5” niger trigger
2.5” sailfin tang
3” starry blenny
2” ocellaris pair
2” coris wrasse
2” coral beauty angelfish
2” saddle valentini puffer
1.5” sixline wrasse
1” 4-bar damsel

 

[Will Wohlers]

I'm 6 months in on no water changes on my 32 gallon nano cube. I use xport biobricks as well as heavy skimming. My tank is a year and a half. I use brs 2 part via a doser as well as red sea colors program. My tank is a mixed reef with majority acropora. I run a t5 hybrid with 2 hydra 26hds and 2 reefbrite actinic xhos. This pic is from its 1 year birthday. Everything has grown tremendously since. I firmly believe in water changes to help get the tank through its ugly stages in the first year then after that water changes only add to instability.

 

[markalot]

No water changes since I hurt my back 2 years ago. No problems. I dose MicroE from time to time, figure the food I feed adds everything else. Still low PO4 and NO3 even though I like to feed flake food. I did semi regular water changes when the tank was new, for the first year or so.

 

[HB AL]

I haven’t done one in 1.5 years, have 13 fish in a 92g mixed reef mostly sps, acros. This tank has been running for a little over 3 years all corals grown from small frags, just finished selling off a bunch of colonies and buying a lot of Acro frags. Here are some pics so people know I’m not just blowing smoke.