10 Minutes a day to keep your water perfect

[googoomas]

Sounds like you should go back to the daily changes. I might try this for a while and see how it goes

[Genj]

Not knowing anything, other than I'm curious... could over doing the water change schedule make the corals more sensitive to lower quality water/conditions much like people being held in a sterile environment while young and thus making their immune systems weak? Do corals even have an immune response? Not that it would matter in this case. More like, would the corals become accustomed to having a particular amount of minerals/elements, and then if a change is introduced a negative would occur. Much like light acclimation?

 

Sorry, all stupid questions, but just my gut telling me to ask so I can learn.

[reefer916]

Not knowing anything, other than I'm curious... could over doing the water change schedule make the corals more sensitive to lower quality water/conditions much like people being held in a sterile environment while young and thus making their immune systems weak? Do corals even have an immune response? Not that it would matter in this case. More like, would the corals become accustomed to having a particular amount of minerals/elements, and then if a change is introduced a negative would occur. Much like light acclimation?

 

Sorry, all stupid questions, but just my gut telling me to ask so I can learn.

 

It's not a stupid question and to be honest I'm not sure if corals have an actual immune system. However, I do believe they become accustomed to certain conditions. I believe that the reduction in water quality has a effect on light penetration. I did notice a slight change in the water clarity. There are always subtle changes with corals when we change their conditions. All of the corals react differently to changes in lighting, flow, alk, salinity,temp etc. Also, I noticed it depends on where the corals are collected or what conditions they came from when you get them from other reefer or lfs's. It's weird because I've also tested different alk conditions from 8-11 and each coral reacts differently. Obviously, the changes were done slowly over a few weeks, but most of my corals like the alk at 9.5-10. However, my ORA Blue Iris hates it and the polyps will pull back. For example, I just picked up a nice frag of LE Your Reef Strawberry Shortcake acro. My tank conditions are virtually the same as Your Reef, except for the lighting. My piece lost some of its color, but has much better polyp extension and faster growth. It's interesting because we just have to get used to our systems. There really isn't an exact science and what works for others doesn't work for everyone. They do get used to certain conditions and some corals will have a positive reaction to change and others will have the opposite. The nice thing about the regular daily water changes is that you know the additional trace elements are being replenished at the same rate. I don't know if I actually answered your question though..lol

[Genj]

Well you did and didn't.. which in the case most of the time when talking about corals. *grin* I'm so curious because my LFS, who has been in the business for 30 years is so laid back about it. They aren't perfect, but they have tanks where the SPS is literally growing out of the top of the tank. SPS frags that they trim off their show tanks are put into the frag tanks for sale, and I have watched them triple in size from 2" to 6" in a little over a month.

 

With my Solana being so near completion and my RO/DI unit now installed and producing, I'd like to figure out my own schedule and make it habit before I start stocking like a mad man. I'm certainly at 1 time a week; however, I'm thinking I might step it up and do 2-3 gallon changes the days after feeding.

[reefer916]

Well you did and didn't.. which in the case most of the time when talking about corals. *grin* I'm so curious because my LFS, who has been in the business for 30 years is so laid back about it. They aren't perfect, but they have tanks where the SPS is literally growing out of the top of the tank. SPS frags that they trim off their show tanks are put into the frag tanks for sale, and I have watched them triple in size from 2" to 6" in a little over a month.

 

With my Solana being so near completion and my RO/DI unit now installed and producing, I'd like to figure out my own schedule and make it habit before I start stocking like a mad man. I'm certainly at 1 time a week; however, I'm thinking I might step it up and do 2-3 gallon changes the days after feeding.

 

I work about 5 min. From 3 LFS's and 2 of them have some nice setups. I usually swing by a few days a week. Their large systems get awesome growth, but I can't seem to get those growth rates in my nano. I think its because its over stocked with corals. The daily water changes and dosing 2-parts isn't enough to keep up with consumption. I have over 50 sps pieces, acans, chalices, zoas, palys. At least 70 pieces crammed into that little thing. I'd love to get 2-6" of growth in a month,but most of them are known slow growers.

 

I'd just mess around with different schedules to find one that fits your needs. The Solana's are nice tanks.How do you like yours?

[micnole]

reefer916 thankyou for putting up this thred, I have a 2.5 gallon reef. The aquarium did great for over a year untill 2 months ago when I had my first kid and was not able to give the tank the TLC I ushally gave it. I had a crash, I lost all my acros, a few montiporas and my oxipora and had a dianoflagence bloom. I was ready to take it down untill I remembered brandon429, that was doing 100% water changes. I have been doing 100% water changes weekly for over a month, and the aquarium looks amazing compared to what it was. The corals that survived are doing great, the dino are almost compleatly gone and my pigmy neon goby is fat and more active than ever. If it was not for the 100% water changes I dont think the tank would had made survived. Thankyou reefer916 for the post, more people should try this. And thankyou brandon429, if it was not for you, I would never have tryed to keep a pico reef.

[reefer916]

reefer916 thankyou for putting up this thred, I have a 2.5 gallon reef. The aquarium did great for over a year untill 2 months ago when I had my first kid and was not able to give the tank the TLC I ushally gave it. I had a crash, I lost all my acros, a few montiporas and my oxipora and had a dianoflagence bloom. I was ready to take it down untill I remembered brandon429, that was doing 100% water changes. I have been doing 100% water changes weekly for over a month, and the aquarium looks amazing compared to what it was. The corals that survived are doing great, the dino are almost compleatly gone and my pigmy neon goby is fat and more active than ever. If it was not for the 100% water changes I dont think the tank would had made survived. Thankyou reefer916 for the post, more people should try this. And thankyou brandon429, if it was not for you, I would never have tryed to keep a pico reef.

 

Hey micnole,

 

I'm glad it's working for you as well and I definitely understand how hard it is to keep up with our tanks with kids. I have a 3 year old and 21 month old now, but they help me do my small daily water changes. They help me put the salt in my Brute can, when mixing and hold the siphoning tube during the water changes. We have our routine when I get home from work and sometimes they help me pick out some of the corals:) It's a great hobby to have with kids because they learn oceanography, chemistry, and biology, which I believe will help them later in life. Keep us posted on your tank and congrats on the baby..

 

Chris

[Genj]

Chris, I'm in the same boat. My 5 year old has more stuffed animal fish than the LFS it seems. My younger one just goes nuts when the clowns swim up to him, and even more nuts when I feed the tank and the nass snails rise up out of the sand! hah!

 

As far as the tank goes, not sure! I'm still waiting on a custom item to be finished before taking delivery. The tank is at the LFS along with a custom hood they built for me. Everyone says it's very nice, and the look of it at the store empty is impressive on its own.

[reefer916]

Chris, I'm in the same boat. My 5 year old has more stuffed animal fish than the LFS it seems. My younger one just goes nuts when the clowns swim up to him, and even more nuts when I feed the tank and the nass snails rise up out of the sand! hah!

 

As far as the tank goes, not sure! I'm still waiting on a custom item to be finished before taking delivery. The tank is at the LFS along with a custom hood they built for me. Everyone says it's very nice, and the look of it at the store empty is impressive on its own.

 

That's awesome!!! Kid's are great and I would have never gotten into this hobby if my wife didn't twist my arm to get my son a 12 gallon before his first birthday. Now, she's created a monster because I work so close to some nice LFS's. Just picked up a Tyree LE Bubble Gum Monster frag 3 eyes and it's over an inch for $40 and 5 polyp Candy Apple Red frag for $25 from Your Reef. John was getting ready to head out to Reefapolooza and had several hundred frags laying around. The first thing my oldest did when I got home was say "Daddy more corals for our fishtank. Cool what'd you get..lol" It was cute and my wife couldn't say anything about it..lol

 

Post some pics once you get your tank because I'm getting the itch to upgrade:)

 

Chris

[Mr. Microscope]

Cool! Just read through the thread. I'm gonna take the dive next week. On my 3 gallon pico, I normally do a 35% WC on Friday before I leave work (tank's in the office). Every time I do this, I notice that the corals react a little. Breaking up the same amount over five days will be a breeze and will be much gentler on tank life. Talk about the perfect solution for picos! I can just do this with a few tupperwears and won't even need to turn off my pumps. No more hose or big shadoo at the end of the week. I'll post results in a few months, good and/or bad. I'm also interested to see what the disadvantages are for this method. 'Seems pretty solid.

[evanski]

Reefer916,

 

Hello from just down the road. VERY nice tank. I am going to take the Brandon approach for my new 1G pico, doing 100% water changes once a week just after a heavy feeding. Have a look at my thread in the Pico tank section of the forums and let me know what you think.

 

I am down in your neck of the woods all the time and would not mind procuring a polyp or two...make it worth your while, as I brew my own beer!

 

Again, GREAT tank!

[reefer916]

Cool! Just read through the thread. I'm gonna take the dive next week. On my 3 gallon pico, I normally do a 35% WC on Friday before I leave work (tank's in the office). Every time I do this, I notice that the corals react a little. Breaking up the same amount over five days will be a breeze and will be much gentler on tank life. Talk about the perfect solution for picos! I can just do this with a few tupperwears and won't even need to turn off my pumps. No more hose or big shadoo at the end of the week. I'll post results in a few months, good and/or bad. I'm also interested to see what the disadvantages are for this method. 'Seems pretty solid.

 

Nice.. My tank is still recovering from the weekly water change experiment and I'm starting to get back into the daily routine again. It's like working out, once you stop it's hard to get back in the routine. However, there are definitely some noticable changes from daily to weekly.

 

I'm glad your trying it out and using a tupperware definitely makes it a lot more convenient and less messy too. Post your results in a few months and let us know what you find. I really wish I stuck with the daily water changes because I miss my Aztec Sundials and a few of my other corals because I had them since I started the tank. The sacrifices we make in the name of research..lol Good luck

 

Chris

[reefer916]

Reefer916,

 

Hello from just down the road. VERY nice tank. I am going to take the Brandon approach for my new 1G pico, doing 100% water changes once a week just after a heavy feeding. Have a look at my thread in the Pico tank section of the forums and let me know what you think.

 

I am down in your neck of the woods all the time and would not mind procuring a polyp or two...make it worth your while, as I brew my own beer!

 

Again, GREAT tank!

 

Your in Tahoe.. It's nice out there, but gets pretty cold during the winter and there aren't any LFS's.. Guess you have to come visit in the Roseville and Sacramento area. Anytime your interested in some palys let me know. Mine are still growing out because I haven't had a lot of time to frag lately. I've actually been transitioning to more chalices and sps lately. For some reason my zoas didn't react very well, when I tried weekly water changes. I'll never do that one again. It didn't work very well for me. It's weird because my LPS and SPS for the most part remained unaffected besides some of them lost color due to the increase of excess nutrients, but I lost several of my prized colonies and frags of zoas. I couldn't tell you if the sole reason was the different methods of water changes. I also changed my bulb to a Aquamaxx 14k 150 watt and that the light was too blue. Just switched the bulb to a Aqualine 20k and the corals are now coloring back up and the zoas are growing like mad.

 

Brandon is definitely the Pico guy and I'd take his advice. Just make sure to match the temp and salinity, when your doing the 100% water changes. Also, I know it gets freezing in Tahoe during the winter, so if your house isn't kept in the 70's you could shock your corals if exposed to cold air for too long. The nice thing about doing small daily water changes is that it keeps a majority of the corals in their accustomed tank temps. The top tier of my corals do get exposed to the temps in my house, but I try to do my water changes when the lights are on and to keep my house temp in the low 70's. I'd try different methods to figure out what works best for you. I know the small daily works best in my 24 gallon. I do weekly in my 12 gallon because all I have in there is a clown, LR, LS, and some macro right now. My 95 gallon gets a 20-30% water change every 2-3 weeks. So every system is different depending on what you want to accomplish with it.

 

Let me know when you come down the hill and I could hook you up with some zoas.

 

Chris

[evanski]

Reefer916 ygpm

[ReefDreams]

I'm thinking about doing a 10% water change every 2 days

 

Do you think it would be too much?

 

total volume 45g (minus the rock and everything perhaps 40g

water change volume 4.2g

[reefer916]

I'm thinking about doing a 10% water change every 2 days

 

Do you think it would be too much?

 

total volume 45g (minus the rock and everything perhaps 40g

water change volume 4.2g

 

Nope, it'll be fine. I've been doing 2 gallons on about 16 gallons of water volume daily.

[d9hp]

Not meaning to drag up this thread again but I'm subscribing to the notion that this would in fact keep your tank near perfect as long as the system you develop for the change is legitimate.

 

I am doing 2-3 changes per week now (I don't have time to do daily ones despite the limited time required) and I am already seeing notable improvements. I am able to feed my corals now (oyster feast and zooplankton) along with daily fish feedings. I wet skim pretty heavily and things are going great. It really only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. I just put a towel down and put my two 5 gallon buckets on that. One has 1-2 gallons of mixed SW to 1.025 exactly kept at 80.0 degrees exactly and the other is empty. Bingo.

 

I will update again in the coming months. Anyone doing a subset of the 'daily' change like this and also seeing improvements?

 

I realize this probably can't be kept up forever but I would also imagine that as the tank matures (it's only two months old) that it will become more capable of handling some of the extra nutrients itself. Is this backwards thinking?

[reefer916]

Not meaning to drag up this thread again but I'm subscribing to the notion that this would in fact keep your tank near perfect as long as the system you develop for the change is legitimate.

 

I am doing 2-3 changes per week now (I don't have time to do daily ones despite the limited time required) and I am already seeing notable improvements. I am able to feed my corals now (oyster feast and zooplankton) along with daily fish feedings. I wet skim pretty heavily and things are going great. It really only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. I just put a towel down and put my two 5 gallon buckets on that. One has 1-2 gallons of mixed SW to 1.025 exactly kept at 80.0 degrees exactly and the other is empty. Bingo.

 

I will update again in the coming months. Anyone doing a subset of the 'daily' change like this and also seeing improvements?

 

I realize this probably can't be kept up forever but I would also imagine that as the tank matures (it's only two months old) that it will become more capable of handling some of the extra nutrients itself. Is this backwards thinking?

 

I'm glad to see that your getting results, which in my experience and many others has been the case. I still haven't had anyone run into issues yet by doing the daily water changes. I'd be lying to everyone if I said that I never miss a day of water changes, but I do a minimum of 3 water changes a week and if I miss a day I just do a little larger one the next. Generally I'll do a 3 gallon water change if I miss a day.

 

I agree with you that once your tank is mature it'll have the beneficial bacteria and other filter feeders in your system that will help stabilize it. I just picked up a Tunze 9002 skimmer and installed it two days ago because I also have very little time these days. I've got a wife, two kids, and work a lot, so if I could get my system to where I only need to do 3 water changes a week I"m golden. I also noticed that I get very little skimmate right now with the skimmer. It's probably due to the less organics from the water changes building up in my system. I believe you should try the 3 water changes a week because I"ve never heard anyone say that they did too many water changes. It's usually the opposite.

[reefer916]

Here's an updated FTS from my tank. I didn't have time to clean the glass, so don't mind the little algae build up. I did make a few scape changes over the last several month and ended up moving most of my zoas to another tank or sold them. I did lose a few nice colonies of Aztec Sundials and Tubbs Blues to bad bulbs and starfish. I also decided to move all of my wild acros to my 95 gallon, so this tank is full of lineaged corals. The sps are anywhere from a few weeks in my tank to maybe 6 months. All started off as small frags or mini colonies and are growing or have grown. Obviously, there are plenty of them that need to grow:) Let me know what you guys think.

 

 

 

Left side view.

 

Thanks

Chris

[reefer916]

Just picked up a bunch of chalices over the weekend and the guy didn't ever feed them, so I've been feeding mysis nightly to the colonies. I also feed phyto, oyster, and rotifeast. I have noticed a difference in adding my skimmer a few weeks ago, but doing that with the water changes is awesome. It's allowing me to fatten up my chalices without compromising water quality. The chalices need to color up due to a little neglect, but I got a Bazooka Joe colony, Mummy Eye, Eye Tyrant, and added a colony of YR Fire Polyp and ATL Raspberry Blue Tip Prostada. The Raspberry is now my favorite sps next to my Ice Fire enchinata. The larger colonies went into my 95 gallon. Anyways, here's a few pics.

 

[Mr. Microscope]

I joined the club a few weeks ago. So far so good.

[reefer916]

I joined the club a few weeks ago. So far so good.

 

Glad it's working out for you so far and keep us posted.

 

We're going to see how well the daily water change theory works in a few weeks. I'm thinking about upgrading my 24 AP to a 34 gallon Solano, so I will be transferring all of my livestock over to the new tank. I plan on doing daily 3-5 gallon water changes off the get go to make sure I don't have any spikes. I'd hate to lose any of my corals. It should be fine because I've transferred and moved my tanks before, but it's always nerve racking:) I'll post results as they go, as long as the wife doesn't kill the tank upgrade idea..

[d9hp]

Just picked up a bunch of chalices over the weekend and the guy didn't ever feed them, so I've been feeding mysis nightly to the colonies. I also feed phyto, oyster, and rotifeast.

 

I just started doing the oyster feast thing. I can only add a single drop or I get patches of cyano. Even with the water changes.

 

I'm switching to D-D H2Ocean (today) and the next two weeks my goal is to do 10: 1-2 gallon water changes.

 

I joined the club a few weeks ago. So far so good.

 

Update again soon please. Always interesting to see results with this method.

[reefer916]

I just started doing the oyster feast thing. I can only add a single drop or I get patches of cyano. Even with the water changes.

 

I'm switching to D-D H2Ocean (today) and the next two weeks my goal is to do 10: 1-2 gallon water changes.

 

 

Update again soon please. Always interesting to see results with this method.

 

I get patches of cyano here and there from the overfeeding of my tank. I've noticed a huge decrease, when I do my water changes an hour after I feed. That way the corals have adequate time to eat, but I pull out a lot of the excess food before it breaksdown into unwanted phospates or nitrates. I also noticed that the cyano has a direct correlation to how much amino acids I dose. For the most part I just suck the stuff up during my water changes. As long as there's only a little on my sand I'm ok with that.

 

 

Just make sure when your switching salts that it's gradual. I switched from Reef Crystals to Red Sea Coral Pro without mixing the batches gradually and I shocked a few of my corals. The alk is about 2 points difference between the two salts. I was an idiot that day and decided to do a 50% water change. I'm now back to RC's. Even with the small water changes I'd still check to make sure the alk is the same or similar and do a gradual change to be safe. Have you checked your RO/DI water source? I bought my own after I checked my LFS's RO water with a TDS meter. I've seen a huge reduction in nuisance cyano and algae after getting my own system that has a 0 TDS reading. The LFS was something like 34...

[d9hp]

Just make sure when your switching salts that it's gradual. I switched from Reef Crystals to Red Sea Coral Pro without mixing the batches gradually and I shocked a few of my corals. The alk is about 2 points difference between the two salts. I was an idiot that day and decided to do a 50% water change. I'm now back to RC's. Even with the small water changes I'd still check to make sure the alk is the same or similar and do a gradual change to be safe. Have you checked your RO/DI water source? I bought my own after I checked my LFS's RO water with a TDS meter. I've seen a huge reduction in nuisance cyano and algae after getting my own system that has a 0 TDS reading. The LFS was something like 34...

 

I bought my own RO/DI unit after getting bad water about a month ago. Verified 0 TDS (I check with a meter every single time).

 

I am just going to change one gallon every day for a few days (at least try). There's no difference in doing that vs. changing two gallons that have been mixed 50% I wouldn't think.

 

I don't think it should be too much of an issue. Might have some pissed off corals for a few days but they'll like the change.