First let me say I know there are many threads on this topic (and I feel like I have read through all of them)...
I wanted to get a fresh perspective on this from the community. As a newer reefer about to set up a 150G system... I'm thinking about design considerations to make water changes easier (or even setting up continuous water change). However, I don't like doing things just because people tell me to, and not understanding it, and I feel like that's the case for water changes. Here's my thoughts... And please call me out if I'm wrong I'm trying to learn. For clarity I'm talking about regularly scheduled weekly/monthly/continuous water changes, NOT water changes when something bad happens (those make clear sense to me).
If you're using it to rid something bad. By my calculations, if you have a toxic substance introduced in your tank all at once, even if you do a 20% monthly water change, after 6 months ~30% of that substance will remain... Takeaway is if something really bad gets introduced to your tank, regular water changes isn't necessarily going to meaningfully combat it. You're better off doing huge water changes over the course of 1-2 weeks when this occurs.
If you're using it for export. To me, what is regularly produced in a reef tank environment can be naturally exported, and if you rely on water changes from my perspective it will just lower the "base consumption/export rate" of your whole system.
If you're using it to replenish. Again, same as export, all that will do is lower the "base amount" of things you need to dose into your water, because it will be replenished by new SW regularly. I don't see this as a significant benefit, because you're still needing to dose things...
The biggest problem I have is that religious water changes almost seem inherently wasteful to me. You're blowing through salt, RODI water, setting up infrastructure for it, and also dumping what could be good water down the drain.
Takeaway for me is, unless I'm convinced otherwise, I'm only going to do "emergency water changes" when something goes bad. So what are your guys thoughts... And again sorry if there's a million threads on this topic ): I really wanted to get a fresh take.
I wanted to get a fresh perspective on this from the community. As a newer reefer about to set up a 150G system... I'm thinking about design considerations to make water changes easier (or even setting up continuous water change). However, I don't like doing things just because people tell me to, and not understanding it, and I feel like that's the case for water changes. Here's my thoughts... And please call me out if I'm wrong I'm trying to learn. For clarity I'm talking about regularly scheduled weekly/monthly/continuous water changes, NOT water changes when something bad happens (those make clear sense to me).
If you're using it to rid something bad. By my calculations, if you have a toxic substance introduced in your tank all at once, even if you do a 20% monthly water change, after 6 months ~30% of that substance will remain... Takeaway is if something really bad gets introduced to your tank, regular water changes isn't necessarily going to meaningfully combat it. You're better off doing huge water changes over the course of 1-2 weeks when this occurs.
If you're using it for export. To me, what is regularly produced in a reef tank environment can be naturally exported, and if you rely on water changes from my perspective it will just lower the "base consumption/export rate" of your whole system.
If you're using it to replenish. Again, same as export, all that will do is lower the "base amount" of things you need to dose into your water, because it will be replenished by new SW regularly. I don't see this as a significant benefit, because you're still needing to dose things...
The biggest problem I have is that religious water changes almost seem inherently wasteful to me. You're blowing through salt, RODI water, setting up infrastructure for it, and also dumping what could be good water down the drain.
Takeaway for me is, unless I'm convinced otherwise, I'm only going to do "emergency water changes" when something goes bad. So what are your guys thoughts... And again sorry if there's a million threads on this topic ): I really wanted to get a fresh take.