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Why am I changing so much water?



I don't want to start a religious war, but I have an honest
question.  Why am I changing so much water every week?

I'm not doing it to remove nitrates (the way I would in any
non-plant tank).  I need to ADD more nitrates.  The nitrate
levels (ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate) are never detectable.

I'm not doing it to replace the buffer capacity.  The local
water has 8 degrees of KH and even 30-40 ppm of CO2
won't take it down to 7.0PH.  I wouldn't mind LOOSING
some buffer capacity.

I'm adding trace elements every day.

I could guess that I am trying to remove proteins, pheromones,
or other metabolites from the fish (or even from the plants),
or that I am trying to replace some trace elements that are not
in my mix (currently using Leaf Zone, and Red Sea's Flora Fe
and Flora Vit)

Does anybody actually know?  I get the impression we just
do it from habit, because everything says to do it, or maybe
because we have some experience where we stopped doing
it and bad things happened.  If so, I wouldn't mind hearing
about those.

Thanks,
Rod