No water changes

[fishdaddy3]

Has anybody ran a reef tank without doing water changes. I've ran into several people who claim that they do not do water changes they just top up evaporation. None of these folks had skimmers either. I bought a running aquarium with live rock from a lady who didn't know that I had experience with marine setups and before we sealed the deal she told me that it was important to not clean the sand or change any water. The rock was covered with nuisance algae. I did a 50 percent water change and washed the sand in the old tank water to get rid of all the dirt and stuff(the water was damn near cocoa) and 2 weeks later the algae was gone and then a month later every bit of exposed branch rock was covered with thick and bright purple coraline. the tank was about 5 years old. I just wanted to know what people on the board thought of "no water changes". I love water changes, everything looks new again.