(mysterious music plays)
- [Ryan] Water changes, a hammer solution
to nutrient control
and reefing chemistry for ages.
Replacing poor quality polluted water
with new water on a regular basis just works,
but how valuable are they?
In terms of nutrient
or nitrate and phosphate control,
there's no question dilution does work
but exactly how effective is it
when I do a 10% water change?
Meaning, 90% of whatever was in there
is still in there.
And so if I had 10 parts
per million nitrate and I did a 10% water change
it probably just fell to nine parts per million,
and then you need to ask yourself, would I even
be able to measure that
with a common nitrate test kit?
And the answer is probably no.
It's also the most manual
and often most expensive method
of nutrient control
so just how valuable is it?
Well for me,
I would actually call it pretty valuable
and part of my overall approach,
and 10% weekly is what I recommend
to most people only second to
an auto water chain system,
the change of a small amount every day.
Not really because it's a solution to nitrate
and phosphate problems
because feeding infiltration seems to solve that.
But it's the buffer for all
those inevitable mistakes.
It's a buffer
for when you may not be testing
as often as you should,
or maybe if your approach is not to test it all.
It also catches things
that you can't test for.
Meaning nitrate and phosphate
we can fairly easily test for
but there's many things that
come in with additives
or foods that may pollute the tank and the water
but you can't test for them at all.
So, that dilution approach
or water change of removing the polluted water
replacing it with fresh water, just works.
Water changes also help you
catch a different type
of pollution or toxin that,
is not as easy to recognize.
Meaning things that are acutely toxic
that you put in your tank right now
you'll probably see immediately
and be able to attribute.
But there are other things that build up
over the course of years,
rather than weeks or months.
In that case, it's actually hard
to identify when they build up
or what you'd attribute them too.
So an approach to dilution,
actually just solves that altogether.
Water changes are also
a component that stages of reefing conversation
Meaning they might just matter a lot more upfront
on that first tank
or when you're setting up a brand new tank,
because there's just a catch-all
for all kinds of different mistakes
that you can make in the tank,
are also limited approaches
or less effective approaches to filtration
or even heavy-handed feeding
common with new tanks.
However, sometimes water changes
just matter a lot less
which is typical with older tanks,
more established four, five,
and six year plus tanks
they're just filled with coral.
Well there's often a lot
of biological uptake happening in the tanks,
but also sometimes that mentality
actually catches up as well.
There's occasional but ongoing
mortality is going in the tank,
and there really isn't an explanation why
a coral is kicking the bucket every three months.
Sometimes it's tied to an aging
or older mentality of things just die
which of course isn't true.
Something caused that animal to die in the tank
and water changes are often just
a useful buffer against the unknown.
So that's probably the biggest
thing to pick up today,
there's just a lot of unknowns
in reefing and how those things
accumulate over time even more so.
I mean we all have different sized tanks,
we have different export methods,
different water change schedules,
and we all use different additives
and different amounts of them,
and there's very little knowledge on the
prolonged impact of using them over many years.
And so part of that is just acknowledging
the unknown and then accounting for it,
produces predictably improves results
and water changes probably the
best way to do it.
That said water changes are not my favorite task,
and because of that, they can go
to the wayside over time.
So the biggest thing we can do
is just make them easier.
So one of the things you can do is
use something like a python
which makes it much easier to suck water
out of the tank and have it go directly
down the drain,
without having a mess on the floor.
You can also decide how you go about it,
meaning do I change out 30% once a month,
Just because it's easier to only
have to do this 12 times a year?
However, in that case, I'm getting the hose
out and I'm probably making a big mess.
Or is it easier just to do 10% once a week
where maybe it's only one or two buckets
and it's just really easy to do?
And then really is an auto water change system
Like the DOS from Neptune worth it?
Where now all I need to do is
fill up my bin with salt water and
maybe only change it or fill it
every month or two.
If you can implement an auto
water chain system on your tank,
it's probably not just the reason
why you're going to be doing water changes
consistently six months from now,
it's why are you going to be
doing them consistently six years from now
and why between here and there
you're probably going to run into
fewer issues along the way.
So the next big question
this series has been nearly
everything experienced and learned
about nutrition and nutrients,
the ocean and our reef tanks.
So what's next? The answer is
I don't know.
You'll have to subscribe and check out
our channel page to find out,
but there will be more.