water change story

can someone clear up the water change story...

I have been reading conflicting explanations for the need of patrial water changes. I have not made a water change in the 3 months I have had my tank. A few weeks ago my PH dropped which I'm not sure if it was caused from the cycling process or the buffer is used up. (I'm still trying to grasp the whole buffering / chemistry of sea-water thing) It was recomended that I add a buffering solution to the water (Superbuffer-dKH) which seams to have stablized the PH it's been a week now. So back to the water change... are water changes still the norm out there, or is a Skimmer all that is needed?

 

Well...the 2 main ideas are that. One water changes are a good idea because its always nice to have some "fresh" salt water in there. Some people (i used to be one of these) did not believe in water changes because its better to keep the water chemistry the same...but this can be dengerous. Without water changes you are more likly to start seeing your tank water becoming greenish and not very nice. But hey i just do a 5 gal change each week...thats no big deal but already my water is clear

 

Do the changes... The skimmer removes stuff before it gets to be dangerous, but cannot replenish minerals, etc. No skimmer catches everything, so the poisons build up, slowly but surely...

 

Yup. Thats why I do regular 10% water changes

 

The main reason that you MUST do water changes is to keep the nitrates and phosphates low. If you are not running media to remove both, they will accumulate and eventually your complete ecosystem will fail. It is imperative that you do water changes for that matter. The skimmer cannot do everything to keep the water clean, you must change the water and add "fresh" water to replenish the old and also run media for both nuissance chemicals. Also, if you plan to just run media for nitrates and phosphates and not do water changes, you will exhaust the media quite fast and will have to replace it which will get costly.

 

Hmm...well on the subject of skimmers. I have the bakpak 2 which has some filter matrial...er bial bail...stuff looks like blue plastic confetti...well should i be cleaning this regularly? im scared to because if i even move it a bit...it shoots out into my tank

 

When you do a water change you are also
replenishing the minerals,etc.that are being
used up by your reef inhabitants .It also helps
keep your PH more consistent IMHO.

 

ok cool, let me ask another question, I understand that it is important to use RO/RI water for additions. So does this filtered water contain the menirials that the system needs ie calium or does the process of RO/RI remove the 'good' stuff as well as the bad?

 

Ususally no. RO water is basically good because its like tap water but...well...there nothing bad with it

 

The minerals,trace elements,etc. that I'm talking
about are in the salt mix.Everytime you do a water
change you are re-adding some of these elements
to your tank.