10 gallon nano reef, no water changes

[xM3THODx]

1 hour ago, caleb.barger1 said:

 

What are your nitrates at? 

I don't know where my phosphate or nitrate levels are today. Last time I checked was earlier this year and phosphate was .07 and nitrate 2. 

[caleb.barger1]

I think I'll probably do a 3 gallon water change today. I'll post more numbers and pics maybe 🙂

[Clown79]

Testing nutrients can be helpful. If they are too low, doing larger waterchanges can strip the tank when the goal would be to achieve a balance of good nutrients.

 

It can also help when nutrients is too high and we incorporate larger waterchanges, more waterchanges, or adding phos reducers. 

 

The only thing I test weekly is alk, the rest is on as a need to basis/monthly. I tested less as the tank matured.

[mcarroll]

4 hours ago, caleb.barger1 said:

This is very informative, thank you! My tank is almost a year old now. You dont think its old enough to be stable? Obviously not I guess because of my readings, and we can't say anything for sure until I pick up the other test kits. 

It's unlikely that it has matured in any significant way yet unless you started with totally good live rock and had really good luck with everything along the way....then maybe.  But it doesn't sound like it from the thread so far....and in most cases I wouldn't expect stability in that short a time.

 

In most cases a tank's first year will be full of disturbances. 

 

Everything from setting up the system and stocking the tank, to making natural mistakes.  So the tank may have very little chance to mature and stabilize.

 

Once you are able to start being more hands-off with the tank because nutrient levels and algae growth are stable, there are no more animals to add, none to remove, your feeding routines are down pat, maintenance routine is down pat, etc, then it'll start coming into its own and stabilizing for real.

 

You and the tank both have to get there though.  😉 

[caleb.barger1]

I did a 3 gallon water change last night. This morning my nitrates are at 60ppm calc is 440 ppm still and amonia is looking in between 0ppm and 0.25 but it's not quite there. I'm running out again to find a Alk test and Phosphate tests later today.

 

So all in all my nitrates dropped 20 ppm from about 3 gallons changed and replaced carbon and added a fluval amonia remover pouch into my HOB filter. 

[FlytheWMark]

23 hours ago, caleb.barger1 said:

I did a 3 gallon water change last night. This morning my nitrates are at 60ppm calc is 440 ppm still and amonia is looking in between 0ppm and 0.25 but it's not quite there. I'm running out again to find a Alk test and Phosphate tests later today.

 

So all in all my nitrates dropped 20 ppm from about 3 gallons changed and replaced carbon and added a fluval amonia remover pouch into my HOB filter. 

You shouldn't have any ammonia in that tank.  If so then that's a red flag...

[caleb.barger1]

32 minutes ago, FlytheWMark said:

You shouldn't have any ammonia in that tank.  If so then that's a red flag...

It really looked like 0ppm to me, but 0ppm and 0.25ppm is close in color. Fyi it's a cheap API test kit. 🤷‍♂️

[Clown79]

49 minutes ago, caleb.barger1 said:

It really looked like 0ppm to me, but 0ppm and 0.25ppm is close in color. Fyi it's a cheap API test kit. 🤷‍♂️

0 looks yellow, 0.25 is green. There is a noticeable difference.

Checking under natural light is best. Any other light messes up the colour to our eyes.

[Poison Dart Frog]

Fascinating thread. I bet some intuitive people could just do tank maintenance solely based on how healthy the inhabitants look and be successful. Kind of like the OP has been doing.

 

Also, it seems odd that water changes would cause an algae outbreak. Are you using tap water? Water changes and scrubbing algae off the rocks with a toothbrush right before I siphon has been by far the biggest help controlling hair algae. 

 

Another thing... the biospira seems to work so well for some people. My girlfriend used it on her 10 gallon and added a fish immediately, then waited a couple weeks before stocking more. She has been able to add fish and corals at a faster rate than me and has had almost none of the algae problems that I've had. She also tests the water a lot more often than I have and everything seems to always be stable despite the fact that she is feeding reef roids several times a week. I feed really sparingly, trying to target feed the shrimp and fish and no specific coral food and my nitrates stay about 20 with regular water changes (at most every 7 days but often sooner). Her tanks nitrates read about 10 with changing 1 gallon of water each week.

[mcarroll]

40 minutes ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

Another thing... the biospira seems to work so well for some people. My girlfriend used it on her 10 gallon and added a fish immediately, then waited a couple weeks before stocking more.

It seems like a lot of folks use it but don't follow the directions on the bottle.

 

[Poison Dart Frog]

11 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

It seems like a lot of folks use it but don't follow the directions on the bottle.

 

She may have waited a bit longer than 2 weeks to add more livestock but I know she added a fish to her new tank right after putting in the biospira. That was months ago but I do remember her letting the filter run overnight on the newly set up tank and the next day adding a clownfish and biospira (which I believe the directions said to do). 

[caleb.barger1]

58 minutes ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

Fascinating thread. I bet some intuitive people could just do tank maintenance solely based on how healthy the inhabitants look and be successful. Kind of like the OP has been doing.

 

Also, it seems odd that water changes would cause an algae outbreak. Are you using tap water? Water changes and scrubbing algae off the rocks with a toothbrush right before I siphon has been by far the biggest help controlling hair algae. 

 

Another thing... the biospira seems to work so well for some people. My girlfriend used it on her 10 gallon and added a fish immediately, then waited a couple weeks before stocking more. She has been able to add fish and corals at a faster rate than me and has had almost none of the algae problems that I've had. She also tests the water a lot more often than I have and everything seems to always be stable despite the fact that she is feeding reef roids several times a week. I feed really sparingly, trying to target feed the shrimp and fish and no specific coral food and my nitrates stay about 20 with regular water changes (at most every 7 days but often sooner). Her tanks nitrates read about 10 with changing 1 gallon of water each week.

I've been using water Petco sells in a 5 gallon box. It claims it's as natural as you can get... I've been topping off with distilled water. My corals dont seem to stress it.

[Poison Dart Frog]

Just now, caleb.barger1 said:

I've been using water Petco sells in a 5 gallon box. It claims it's as natural as you can get... I've been topping off with distilled water. My corals dont seem to stress it.

That's exactly what I've been doing too. For smaller tanks it is just so easy. 

[caleb.barger1]

1 minute ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

That's exactly what I've been doing too. For smaller tanks it is just so easy. 

That and my LFS is 45 mins away besides petco... 

[mcarroll]

8 minutes ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

She may have waited a bit longer than 2 weeks to add more livestock but I know she added a fish to her new tank right after putting in the biospira. That was months ago but I do remember her letting the filter run overnight on the newly set up tank and the next day adding a clownfish and biospira (which I believe the directions said to do). 

Right. I'll bet that she followed the directions. 👍

[caleb.barger1]

5 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

Right. I'll bet that she followed the directions. 👍

I added 2 clownfish within 2 or 3 hours of adding biospira, then added zoas a week later and started noticing new growth within another week. Granted I started out with the boxed ocean water from Petco, im not sure if that played a big part with my success or not.

[Seadragon]

1 hour ago, caleb.barger1 said:

I added 2 clownfish within 2 or 3 hours of adding biospira, then added zoas a week later and started noticing new growth within another week. Granted I started out with the boxed ocean water from Petco, im not sure if that played a big part with my success or not.

 

I didn't realize that other people also use the 5 gallon boxes of Imagitarium Pacific Ocean Water.  I always assumed everyone is just mixing their own water.  I like the idea of natural sea water that has been filtered, sanitized, and pH balanced.  I was reading one post of someone that used unfiltered ocean water and they now have all sorts of algae problems and nasty critters in their tank.

[Clown79]

4 minutes ago, Seadragon said:

 

I didn't realize that other people also use the 5 gallon boxes of Imagitarium Pacific Ocean Water.  I always assumed everyone is just mixing their own water.  I like the idea of natural sea water that has been filtered, sanitized, and pH balanced.  I was reading one post of someone that used unfiltered ocean water and they now have all sorts of algae problems and nasty critters in their tank.

It can be handy but you have to monitor the parameters because some have had issues with low alk.

 

Taking water from the ocean can be problematic, especially depending on collection location as there are pollutants, nutrient, parasites, that you are introducing into your tank.

[mcarroll]

On 10/1/2019 at 4:07 PM, Clown79 said:

It can be handy but you have to monitor the parameters because some have had issues with low alk.

 

Taking water from the ocean can be problematic, especially depending on collection location as there are pollutants, nutrient, parasites, that you are introducing into your tank.

That is not untrue at all.

 

However it's also not untrue that PaulB has been self-harvesting water for his tank out of the Long Island area (he does know the good places) forever and a day without issues.

 

Plus using ocean water is a well-established practice in some areas, such as Scripps pier seawater tap. 

 

There'a a great chance that the bottled water in stores is from here or another place like it.  (It would be nice to know specifically where if you were using it....but I would probably trust it even if I couldn't find out.)

[Tired]

My question would be, why? Are water changes really enough of a hassle that you want to avoid them entirely, or is it out of curiosity and a desire to see if you can do it? 

 

[mcarroll]

On 10/1/2019 at 4:03 PM, Seadragon said:

I was reading one post of someone that used unfiltered ocean water and they now have all sorts of algae problems and nasty critters in their tank.

You can find one post from one person that says just about anything....no exaggeration.

 

Just to make the point, here are some threads that will tell you how great it is to dose bleach into your reef. 

(Appologies to the authors, but I don't think reef advice gets much loonier than that.)

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/using-bleach-naclo-in-a-reef-tank.296459/

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2647432

 

You have to have strong willpower to simply disregard the threads and stories which you can't make heads or tails of -- whether they sounds compelling or crazy. 

 

"If you can't understand it, you really shouldn't do it to your reef tank." -- Me.  😉 

 

 

If you're curious on the use of unfiltered seawater, look up @Paul B's threads on his 40+ year old reef tank. 

 

If you believe that one post about seawater you mentioned, then how many times in 40 years should unfiltered seawater have crashed Paul's reef?  But nothing like that has happened in all that time.  😉 

 

So like I said, don't do something like this if you can't figure out why it works for some people.  But that doesn't mean it can't work for anyone or that everyone will have "bad luck" with it because it seems like one person did.  (Luck was never involved.)

[Tired]

The Monterey Bay aquarium uses seawater in their exhibits, for obvious reasons. Most of it is filtered (primarily to remove jellyfish and whatnot), but at night, they let water that's largely unfiltered into their big kelp exhibit. It's part of what lets their kelp grow so well. There's a baffle to keep out fish and large things, but they get all kinds of fun little anemones and creatures, and it's great for the filter-feeders because of all the plankton.

 

If ocean water caused algae problems and "nasty critters", the ocean would be overrun. Note that the ocean is not, in fact, solid algae, and contains many healthy (or formerly healthy) coral reefs, which live on, guess what, unfiltered ocean water. You'll get algae problems and overpopulations of microfauna if your care isn't very good. Granted, seawater will bring in spores and plankton, and some of those spores and plankton may be things you don't want, but that's what live rock has anyway. You'll also get lots of neutral and good things in it. If you're worried, just filter it through a couple layers of cheesecloth (and dump the cheesecloth contents back into the ocean), and you should get just about all the creatures out. At that point, though, you may as well just use a quality salt mix. 

[Paul B]

Paul B

 

I have been using NSW right from the ocean in my reef for 48 years and counting. I used to only use a little of it because I didn't live close enough to the sea but now that it is 90 yards from my house I use only NSW.
I usually filter out floating stuff like chopped up seaweed, jellyfish. sand etc. But it is fine just the way it is.

I also used bleach, "Clorox" to be exact in my reef a few times many years ago. In those days I would put in one cup of Regular Clorox to 50 gallons of water to kill any parasites, worms, sea gulls etc. That I didn't want. (After I removed the fish) That was in the 70s when I would occasionally lose fish to parasites because I didn't know better, now parasites are not a concern so I have no need to do that.

But the first squid eggs were hatched in captivity in bleach treated water. That bleached water is still in my tank as it has never been fully emptied.

I didn't invent the bleach thing, it was "Robert Straughn" The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping.
I don't use bleach now for anything except to whiten my unmentionables.

[mcarroll]

7 hours ago, Paul B said:

I didn't invent the bleach thing, it was "Robert Straughn" The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping.
I don't use bleach now for anything except to whiten my unmentionables.

Read right past that part.....p146-148 in "The Salt-Water Aquarium in the Home".

 

Worth noting to the bleachers in the crowd that even in that book it was called "...an interesting field experiment in treating large aquariums...for parasite and bacteria control when nothing else [...] works."  Not something that was ever "normal" and he appears to have been under no delusion that it was somehow good for a reef.  😄 

 

Notably he also recommends using a microscope in the same section with pretty nice instructions!

 

Mine's a 4th Edition copy.......great book!  I still appreciate getting the reference to it from you!

[caleb.barger1]

Soooo, we might be finally seeing signs telling me to drop my nitrates back down but I want to see if you guys think this hammer coral looks normal. It was previously one head, obviously now its 2 BUT its not fully extended like it used to be after it split. I tested my water yesterday and had nitrates at 40ppm. My calc and alk both are in the green, so my guess is this is either normal after a fresh split, or I just need to stop seeing how much slacking I can get away with and just change the water Haha. (The aptasia just showed up a day or 2 ago, so I dont think its bothering the hammer. I just haven't gotten to removing it.)

*note: I just moved it up higher with more lighting and slightly more flow about a week and a half ago. It seemed to like the flow and light because its seemed to "inflate" more.