Ph and alk

Ive have been maintaining what appears to be a healthy nano reef for about 5 months now. I check my Ph and alk weekly and it never changes. as you get more experienced do you find yourself not checking the chemistry anymore? is the salt mixture calibrated to keep the Ph stable? I just feel like Im wasting tests cause I do nothing but change 10% of the tank water weekly in a 10 gal nano and the Ph stays at 8.3 to 8.5. alk is always normal. I dose calcium about once a week and keep a level of about 380 to 410 ppm.

what am I doing right? its driving me crazy!

or is it as a tank matures then the Ph will flucuate?

The salt mix, live rock, and sand (assuming it is coral based sand) all work to buffer the pH and keep it stable.

As long as the buffering is good don't worry too much about pH, it will stabilize around 8.2 and stay there. I very rarely check the pH on my FO tank because when I was paranoid like you I kept getting good numbers and just thinking I was lucky. Well it wasn't luck, it was the tank set-up.

Eventually u can learn to read your inhabitants. And dont need daily/weekly tests. You should be able to see that everything is fine and not have to test if a coral or somthing looks ####ed then test things to see whats happened.

right on, I assume a good sign a coral is ####ed, is if it doesnt open fully. thanks for the replies.

I didnt know that about attaching types of corals to the skull. but it does make sense.