How often do you water change if nutrients controlled and you dose?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

In the water column or in the sand bed and/or on the rocks? Because what if you're vacuuming your sand bed and blowing off your rocks frequently for maintenance?

I meant dissolved in the water, but I know a lot of folks also take out solids when they water change, I never did that, but its a fine plan.

 

[Duncan62]

Let me throw a little more curve into the mix.

What if you're dosing everything that needs to be replenished including trace elements. Then what? Are water changes just a waste of time and money at that point?

Yes

 

[LPS Bum]

10% weekly. Works well for me.

Doesn’t take more than 20 min. Gives me a chance to clean the glass, siphon out some detritus, get the sand bed cleaned up and change out the carbon.

 

[X-37B]

12g's a month on my 120.
I run a carx and dose trace.

 

[Jcascioli]

5 gal per day in my 220 ( AWC preformed by DOS)
My fuge and skimmer bottom out the nutes so I dose neophos and neonitro to desired levels. B-ionic 2 part plus Mg.
my DT is almost all SPS and everything is happy and growing well. I have a recirculating vacuum the runs through a mesh sock when ditritus builds in the sump. That’s it

 

[EakTheFreak]

I suppose I just have to heavy of a hand with feeding. I will never understand how people have to add phosphate or nitrate to a tank.

I utilize the following for nutrient control:
- GFO in media controller (Small amount)
- Protein skimmer rated for 20 gallons higher than my tank
- Dose 5 ML of NoPox to hold nutrients in place
- Grow Fern Caluerapa in Refugium and have tons of live rock plus ceramic media balls in bottom of refugium

Phosphate - .05 - .07
Nitrates - 5-10 PPM

 

[ceaver]

Same answer.

No amount of dosing can deal with accumulating organics and inorganics.

And what are the different ways one can test for these accumulations?

 

[sghera64]

Vacuum the sand in the DT and remove detritus from bare bottom frag tank and sumps. Sometimes I change water just to see the positive difference the next day in LPS and anemones.

 

[Totroc3]

I dose All for Reef and I do 20% water changes every 7-10 days since I tend to feed my fish quite a bit.

 

[SWherrey]

So I dose two part ATI Essentials Pro, Nitrates and Phosphates but I still do a 10% WC weekly. Should I even be doing water changes? I run a refugium as well with skimmer and if I don’t dose nutrients they bottom out… I have a mixed reef but mainly sps

 

[rtparty]

1-2x a year at most.

 

[Sean Clark]

1-2x a year at most.

Yeah I'm up

 

[gbroadbridge]

Basically the title, if your nutrient levels are controlled by refugium and skimmer. You dose 2 part or something similiar, for the corals needs. For people in this situation how frequently are you still doing water changes?

10% a week, every week

 

[Bruce Burnett]

300 gallon system never did water change in 6 years. New 100 gallon display one 20% water change during first 6 months. Now doing 20% once a month when I pull skimmer to clean and change carbon. Removing detritus from sump. Between my diamond goby, three conch and a bunch of other snails, my sandbed is as white as new.

 

[gbroadbridge]

Let me throw a little more curve into the mix.

What if you're dosing everything that needs to be replenished including trace elements. Then what? Are water changes just a waste of time and money at that point?

No, because contaminants such as heavy metals can build up until eventually you have problem.

Water changes remove stuff, as well as adding stuff.

 

[brmc1985]

Thanks for the answers, defintly not trying to start an argument! I was just curious because in my past tanks were low tech with tap water and no dosing. I noticed that even if I skipped water changes for a couple weeks - month I didn't really notice an issue. Now trying a more high tech tank where I as going to dose two part and aim for mostly sps I was curious how religious other people are about their water changes.

TM All for Reef and no water changes.

 

[UltraKelius]

I do 10% weekly despite dosing everything! It’s gotta be nicer for the coral, and it’s such a small amount that it doesn’t knock things out of whack at all- alk, mag, calcium remains stable.

 

[Spieg]

About 20-25% WC once every 6 months when I vacuum half of the sand bed (maybe a little more if I have to use tank water to setup a QT).

 

[DarkReefer]

This is an interesting thread.
As someone that's about to start auto dosing carbonate + trace, magnesium + trace, Calcium + trace and potentially even some nitraphos.. It's interesting to read how often people are changing.

Currently I'm doing about a 15% water change weekly only my (approx) 250L system, only running a skimmer/roller filter.
I've had issues with phosphates etc for a while and my alk and mag swinging a bit so getting the doser to stabilise things. I have a fairly heavy bioload with the fish and corals I think.

Will likely continue the above trend initially but once I get things stabilised, I may look to try and extend the time between changes where possible.

 

[Koty]

100g mostly LPS with refuge, dose AF 123+, slow flow GFO\GAC reactor, bioplastic reactor, and filter wool for physical filtration. I found the last one to be key in keeping nitrate and phosphate where I want them and so is replaced every 1-2 weeks. My fish are fed a lot. I keep nitrate at 5 ±2 ppm and phosphate at 0.02 ± 0.02, KH at 9.0 ± 0.1. I try to avoid water changes. On average I do 15-20% about once every 4 months. I work hard to match the salinity as accurately as I can using the TM hydrometer. TBH some of my corals look great and some less: