No water changes for past year

[Smithcinema]

This site helped me a lot over the last 2 years of my 90 gal reef tank but what I learned is follow advice but learn yourself too ! I use 2 do a 20 percent water change weekly I was tiered of the work so I was going to sell my $5000 tank after a year my wife was yelling at me saying I told u so !! I took a trip to my lfs and he gave me some great advice ( being I purchased 100 percent online) he said if u have no nitrates why u changing water ?? He made me buy a bio pelet reactor and a bottle of trace elements and he said try it out and keep testing and see how it goes ! Well it's been a year now plus I sold my rodi 2 and only use tap water for my auto top off and tank has never looked better fish are huge all my soft corals multiplied my sps are huge no more cano or red algae yes I have top equipment but every 2 weeks I clean fluval pads and every month change Purgen and chemi pure and I finally love my tank 0 work !!!!!!!!! My levels are perfect no nitrates,phosphates alk and calcium is perfect but I due add bionic every week !!!!!!

 

[Gregcoyote]

This site helped me a lot over the last 2 years of my 90 gal reef tank but what I learned is follow advice but learn yourself too ! I use 2 do a 20 percent water change weekly I was tiered of the work so I was going to sell my $5000 tank after a year my wife was yelling at me saying I told u so !! I took a trip to my lfs and he gave me some great advice ( being I purchased 100 percent online) he said if u have no nitrates why u changing water ?? He made me buy a bio pelet reactor and a bottle of trace elements and he said try it out and keep testing and see how it goes ! Well it's been a year now plus I sold my rodi 2 and only use tap water for my auto top off and tank has never looked better fish are huge all my soft corals multiplied my sps are huge no more cano or red algae yes I have top equipment but every 2 weeks I clean fluval pads and every month change Purgen and chemi pure and I finally love my tank 0 work !!!!!!!!! My levels are perfect no nitrates,phosphates alk and calcium is perfect but I due add bionic every week !!!!!!

I too went for a few years without water changes. If you do as you suggested it is possible. But topping off with tap water is not a good idea as evaporation concentrates the metals and other nasties in tap water. Your Purigen and Chemipure is trying to counter that, but at some point it will fall apart. I am happy everything is going good for you right now, but cannot stand behind your advice on this one IMO. It isn't just nitrogen that can take you down.

 

[z_dano]

Hmmm, I never have nitrates either. How often do you dose things like your trace elements? I'm very interested...

 

[Wy Renegade]

It might be worthwhile to look into a phenomenon know as Old Tank Syndrome if you're considering something along this line. The potential long term ramifications could cause some major issues down the road.

 

[Gregcoyote]

That's what happened to me. Tank started to be too acidic. Had to add buffer all the time. Now I only do a 10% change each month and that has worked long term. I use a dosing pump and add Kent Essential Elements.

 

[z_dano]

I've been doing 10% weekly maybe scaling it back to bi-weekly wouldn't hurt. I don't want to hijack this thread so I'm done.