Doesnt Believe in Water Changes PHOTOS!!

i will find out at much as i can and let you all know!! I dont really keep track on what he does haha

 

Good discussion as always with you. I like to pick stuff apart. I like to be clear about what is being said and qualify or quantify information given. But in the end here we are... we do our reading, we have our debates... then we actually have to apply that knowledge, observe what is happening and see what actually works FOR US.

I do feel on this subject the door is so wide open to why a tank with no water changes is good or bad to one that does... might not have anything to do with WCs... just might be the owner is lazy and has poor maintenance. *** Not at all saying those that don't do WCs are lazy... Pickupman is a good example of a strong group in this hobby that take great care of their systems with the "less is more" approach and have good results because they have good husbandry habits.

I did daily WCs and thought I could probably do half as much. Can't say it was good, just that it didn't hurt and it was a small price to pay for a bit of insurance so to speak. But I did know why I was doing it, and I did know why I didn't need to do more, and why I could do less.

 

I can agree with your friend, i stopped doing water changes every 2 weeks, and moved it back to every 2 months i do a 3g water change, which is the same i used to do every two weeks. The tank looked better at its 5th week without a water change its looked in a while.

 

Pickupman66
My answer: YES IT CAN BE DONE, but you must do it right and it must be an old established tank that was set out that way. I am working on these methods today. while I am having some issues currently, i am starting to feel they are due to the new ways of doing things.


To which 'New ways' are you referring, personally if someone kept a tank in that good of condition for ten years, I want to learn more about the 'Old was'...

 

The tank looks pretty nice, but I think if he put some more care into it and did water changes it would look better. Also, I cant telly if this is because of the picture quality, but some of the corals look bleached. Does he dose? If not how does the tank get calcium after the coral uses it up? Especially with the clam in there I would think the tank would eat up a pretty good amount of calcium.

 

+1 m2434

 

KISS.

now I am trying the bio pellets, GFO, Calcium Reactor, Metal Halides. only teh Halides were really beign used when I started that tank. between 2006 and 2010 was when it was at its peak.

My old tank had none of these. heck, it didnt have a skimmer.

 

Honestly, that tank the OP posted is softie predominant, with the exception of the clam and monti and an acro or two I may have missed, I didn´t see much else that would consume calcium, magnesium and alkalinity, for example.

So, if your friends adds calcium or not additives to keep them in good shape, that´s good, if not, it will eventually cause problems IMO.

I´m not free of guilt with this issue, as I have neglected my own 55g aquarium for the last 6 months, with the exception of a 10 gallon water change 2 weeks ago. I have skimmer, fuge with chaeto tons of LR and 1 mangrove. I run gfo plus carbon on a BRS dual reactor that has been clogged for the last 2 weeks and 1 mangrove that I have no idea why is still alive, but it is.
I´ve had a cyano bloom for the last 3 to 4 months due to some pumps failing on me after adding a wavemaker like the ones that come in the nano. My pumps were not compatible with the constant "on/off" they went through with the wavemaker.

I was also dosing calcium, mg and alk with a doser, that has been unplugged for the last 2 months.

Yesterday I bought 2 pumps and added them in there. Flow is better, corals are now re-adjusting but they´re looking brownish and I´ve lost a couple of them. I am now determined to get back to it and re-set everything with the doser, etc. I did not do water changes almost for the whole time I was dosing because I was too lazy to calculate and add stuff to the freshly made salt water. And to make things more interesting, the last time I measured my levels, they were half of whatever they needed to be, except the salinity, everything else (cal, alk, mg, phosphate and even nitrate were off) The tank is still alive, the fish are doing well, but I do not like my tank in the condition it is.

Whether this was caused by my negligence (Im inclined to believe that it was) or by a possible mini cycle or a swing in the parameters, I do not know. As my friend Mike said last night, it just needs a little TLC to get past this, and I need a little more routine maintenance for the pumps, filters, and equipment in general.

To conclude, I think it can be done with a softie tank, but for acros and harder to keep corals, a balanced stable level is better. Regardless of how this is achieved, through water changes or dosing, if you have sps´s, something will eventually need a re-fill or the browning of corals will start to happen, like it did to me.

 

i 100% agree...yeah the corals are big and show size but his acans are bland and frogspawns as well... waterchanges would help alot with his colors....also could be just the camera as well...

but colors are not so hot except for that deep water acro he has that doesnt look bad...