No water changes ?

[nereefpat]

Unfortunately now 50 gallons of water is $82.

You could switch to making your own with Instant Ocean mix. Amazon has it for 12$ for 50 gallons, or about 24 cents per gallon.

 

[Arego]

It's not hard, you just need to be dedicated to a process. Proportional food in as well as exporting out. Monitor cal/alk and use limewater/kalkwasser or whatever additive. The hardest part for me was simply just doing it and sticking with it. A while later I'm sorry I didn't do it years ago.

 

[ReefDoc Sr]

Nope, I am sticking to water changes. Every time I changed water, everything looks better and I feel better lol

Doing WC is out ot he question. When I started in his hobby nearly 60 years ago we hauled natural seawater. No my hips, knees and shoulders are all shot. Carrying even two gallons of water would be very painful.
I had a 50 gal. and a 75 gal that no water changes in 7+ yeaars. That is until a few weeks back when a 35 our power failure wiped me out completely, I had 14 or 15 Rose Bulb anemones, all wiped out. I am restarting the 75 gal but everything HOB is like the refugium. My son and daughter were afraid I would get down to work on the sump and might not be able to get back up. L am studying how to do it better. I was dosing by hand daily two part and once or twice a month testing and added magnesium. I dosed once a week Seachem Trace.
I run a 1/4 in. water line around the room to get freshwater to my ATOs.. In the reservoir I ran a Poly Filter 25/7 particularly for heavy metals. Seemed to work fairly well.
I had several colonies of BirdsNest. However, a couple of weeks before the power failure they were working on the city lines and flushed a bunch of dirty water into our drinking water essentially killing all by SPS.
Now the plan is no SPS except for a Monty.Just LPS and softies.
No water changes. No RO/DI either In my 80's and starting over - again!!