Does anybody here not do water changes?

Wow. Sounds dangerous. There's junk in your water/rock/sand that can only be removed by water changes.

I used to be a "top off only" guy with my previous 75 gallon that I had about 15 years ago, but it was just a ticking time bomb waiting for some catalyst to make it crash.

Why would you not want to do water changes? Even once a month is better than nothing...

OK. I've said my peace. We'll see what others come back with.

 

You said with no 'regular water changes'. Can you be a little more specific as to what you're thinking?

 

Thanks for the clarification...I didn't think you were advocating no WC's :0) You might get some input from RC and R2R in their large tank forums... I've talked to a few people who have large systems (+1,000g) Some have auto water changes that cycle the changes throughtout the day, some topoff with some salt in the topoff water due to salt creep, some does with trace elements, etc....all because their systems are so large and heavily stocked that the demand is so great, they dose varied and heavily (at least the normal reefer thinks so). Some are near the Ocean/Gulf and actually use that watery.....

 

i went 9 months without doing a water change to see what it would be like and the benifits/issues, i had to dose alk,cal, mag on a daily/by-daily,weekly schedule and everything looked great. i used topoff water to maintain proper SG. i wanted to go a full 12mos and check it there but had to change the water because of a bad powerhead that leaked voltage into the tank and caused a war amongst the corals.

just wanting to get some expirences to see if there ever was a time in my life that i couldnt perform a WC per illness or vacation or something thru work how long i could actually go.

 

I rarely do them either. I run a scrubber, skimmer, GFO, carbon sometimes and bio pellets. I have about 400G total volume.

 

There's a guy in Europe who developed his own 'system'.. Based around minimal water changes and a dosing schedule... Pretty awesome tank.

I can see how this could be good, but also bad..

In my experience, tanks seem a bit more stable not doing water changes (at least weekly) but I'm sure there's things we're not testing for that could equate to too much or too little over time.

 

I'm trying to remember who it was, don't know if he's in the club anymore or not, there was a guy in Marion who had a 120(?) gallon connected to a fuge behind the wall, I recall he said he only did water changes once every 4 months, his tank was indeed awesome. Seen a few other tanks like it as well and I think the common factor besides dosing/reactors was non-weekly water changes..

As far as the potassium goes, look into the Zeovit material, they have quite a bit written up about it. It's kinda of a required thing with their system iirc..
I myself have used the Red Sea test kits for Mg, Potassium, and I think it's strontium, but beware, the potassium test kits are tedious. It literally takes about 20-30 minutes iirc to do the potassium test. Well worth it though to have a ballpark figure of where the numbers are.