Mattl22

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Garden city
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Is certainly be Interested in seeing my levels and if something was totally out of wack I'd probably try there supplements it's gonna come down to how much it costs I'd prefer a package deal like 6 months worth of testing and whatever supplements u need for a set price!!
 

Dan_P

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Connecticut
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Thanks for the link!

I recently started surveying "water changes" posts and found most people think they are replacing trace elements with water changes, only they are all doing it differently and all have no idea about what they need nor how fast elements are being depleted. I came away thinking water changes were a hit or miss venture. I could not see why so many people are sold on water changes. Ehsaw Daskti goes one step further and says not to do water changes because it is going in the opposite direction of what we should be striving for: stability. Interesting.

The notion that every tank is different is an important take home message from this presentation. Another is to learn about your tank and adjust it according to its needs not what somebody else is doing.

Ehsaw is a big fan of carbon and GFO I see.

The ICP service may help solve the trace element mystery. It might also stop a lot of water changes and without the feeling guity or anxiety we might ordinarily have.
 

REEFSTA

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bronx
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funny part is there will always be something new and supposedly better, ive seen a lot of tanks over the last decade lps and sps dominated tank's that were off the charts nice, they did water changes, used a calcium reactor and doses magnesium and nothing else, I truelly think we are trying to hard and over looking the simple

couldn't have said it any better my self
 
Location
Brooklyn, NY
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It is funny, I never think of water changes as primarily about trace element replenishment. I don't do them excessively like some do, but when I do them, I do them to reduce the buildup of stuff that my other filtration can't remove. I've also never noticed in the 20 years I've been reefing that a properly performed water change has had a destabilizing effect on a system. Seems much more frequent that it perks up a reef.
 

jackson6745

SPS KILLER
Location
NJ
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I try to keep an open mind to new techniques(but I still don't like led ;)). In my current tank I have moved away from my old school methodology heavy in + heavy out. I have reduced the amount of water changes to about 30% monthly. I still feed heavy, very heavy stocked with fish, but I rely on skimming and bacteria to keep my system clean. I feed 6 cubes of mysis daily, sometimes a comparable amount of LRS reef foods, along with flakes and pellets. So that's over 100 cubes of mysis monthly + all the other foods in a system of about 130gallons. My 36 gallon (2 18g changes) monthly water change cannot remove all this waste.

If you allow your system to mature biologically, and constantly challenge the bioload, your tank will process an unbelievable amount of waste. I've seen this many times in older established tanks, and now I see it in my tank that is a little less than a year old. The problem is while the tank is "maturing" you might get things like cyano, or diatom, and most reefers freak out doing larger water changes, gfo, carbon?. whatever. Allowing the system to deal with it naturally, producing enough beneficial bacteria, seems to be the long term fix. Once this is achieved color health and colors can be pretty amazing.

A couple very experienced reefers that i spoke to go 6-8 months with no water changes. Their corals seem to be very happy, and their SPS colors are excellent. I don't believe they dose trace elements or anything as complicated as triton, which opens my mind to the possibility that many of these trace minerals that we would be testing for have little impact on coral health? I'm not sure about this but it's just a suspicion that I will keep in mind as I learn more about the Triton method.

FWIW, in my current balance, I do see a small growth spurt in my SPS each time I do a water change. Not sure why but it happens every time.
 
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Location
lindenhurst,ny
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I think its a cool tool for us coral nuts .he made it sound like take the results light hearted and us them as a tool to get what u want out of your corals ,tinker with the addition of the missing or low trace elements and see if it helps out your corals .i would def use his service every few months .i really wish he would test a bunch of different salts and shoot out a report .seams like hes leaning on the tropic marine pro
 

tunicata

Tunicate Tamer
Location
Brooklyn, NY
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Has anyone seen an answer to the question of:
What impact does having the shipped vial sit in the tube for 3 to 4 days (more or less since I dont know the shipping method) have on the chemical make up of the water sample?

I ask because I know that there could be some changes at the chemical and elemental level that comes along with temperature variations or just how long something sits. From my experience working in a chem lab analyzing tylenol, we could see the structural changes in a carbon element occur within seconds!
 

duke62

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Well it takes 4 days to get my blood work back :) I'm not really sure how he ships his water samples. Charlie and I were talking and maybe he sends us packet. If you listened to his speech he says there's little to no change in the water sample when shipped or fresh sample. And Jackson this wasn't just about sps corals he talks about gonipora and trace elements could be the reason why we can't keep them alive along with other species of corals that are hard to keep
 
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Location
Brooklyn, NY
Rating - 97.4%
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I think the most likely plus for the hobby as a result of this is that we should be able to collect a ton of consistent data points on elements we have not previously been able to test. Then we might be able start seeing some correlations between high/low levels and actual husbandry of specific animals. Right now the assumption is that NSW levels are what should be strived for--which is a logical assumption, but we have no data to say what effect any of these minor elements has and whether it matters enough to care. It might turn out that traditional water changes come close enough for any practical purpose. It might turn out that they don't.
 

piranhapat

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Location
Westchester, N.Y
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Understanding Triton Method

Not to sure about this. Time will tell if this is a money pitch to
Test water and sell products. So as of now we only test 7% of our water. Yet we are successfully to a point. We are not testing 92% because Triton can test 99%.
Watch this video and make your own opinion of what you think;;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpbPGk15F90




try it now
 
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Sharkbait420

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Location
Nyc
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Water changes do more then just replace trace elements. Like prattreef said this can be useful as a research tool and to collect data from aquariums. I don't see many hobbyists using this until it has proven it's self and becomes very affordable.

NSW has different properties depending on where it is collected. Deep parts of the ocean has higher salinity levels then the surface of the water. I am sure the concentration of elements in the ocean vary by location. I don't see what is so revolutionary about the Triton method. They test your water which we had the capability to do for a while, it just wasn't marketed towards the aquarium trade and then they make their own version of Instant Ocean Reef accelerator.

If I was an investor and had the opportunity to invest in this I will pass. Is there any data on the accuracy of the tests?


Edit: I just finished watching the video. After watching it I am happy I went mountain biking and visited some cafes which embrace the new freedoms in Colorado instead of going to MANCA.
 
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