Main Steps To A Heathy Reef/coral Tank

[Mopar32985]

Could someone please point me in the right direction on what i should be doing daily, weekly, monthly. This would be a great help any sugg. would be great

 

[SkiFletch]

Could someone please point me in the right direction on what i should be doing daily, weekly, monthly. This would be a great help any sugg. would be great

From the Nano section pay close attention to the maintenance threads

 

[Mopar32985]

so i guess my biggest problem was not doing water changes once a week. Now how about the adding of chemicals what kind is good to use what has worked for you guys. Also if you need me to list what i have tank filter and light wise let me know

 

[dixaisy930]

Are you referring to this other thread of your's?

Thread

 

[Great Lakes]

I am only half joking here.....

You should be doing everything
You should get completely consumed and engrossed by your tank.

Then when you reach the point where you believe you may have a psychotic problem, you have reached the Zen level.

Completely serious now.
Get a notebook, and use it.
For the first 4 to 6 weeks practice overkill on your testing.
Check your hardness, Ph, and salinity, plus temp readings all the time
Shoot for 20 readings a week. Take readings in the morning, at night before lights out, in the middle of the night when you get up to take a leak...etc. And most certainly before and after any water changes, treatments, additions and so forth.
All of our tanks differ in their reactions to our individual care of them. Keeping good notes and referring back to them will give you a good understanding on how the tank is affected by what you do or don't do.

I added a powerhead to a 90 gallon tank once and noticed my Ph level went up half a point the next day! I only knew this because I paid close attention to my tank.

You will be amazed at the questions you can answer for yourself when armed with a well recorded diary of your tank. Not that we aren't here to help each other with our questions and concerns, but I just love seeing fellow marine keepers reach the mad scietist level in the hobby..

GL

 

[Mopar32985]

sweet thanks man i will have to start doing that. But the answer im looking for i havent yet found. I want to know what kinda chemicals or additives your guys put in your tanks to help with the corals and with the purple corline alge i want the back of my tank coverd in it

 

[SkiFletch]

Then you'll need to keep your calcium at 400-450ppm and your alkalinity at 10-11dKH if you want good coraline growth. IF you want to know about dosing, you have to learn about reef chemistry. Because of ionic reactinos between calcium, bicarbonate (alkalinity), and magnesium at specific pH's blindly dosing without knowing the chemistry behind what youre doing will cause severe problems. To start off, water changes are all the dosing you'll need to do. after that, if your coral load gets very high you may need to dose cal, alk, and mg.

 

[Mopar32985]

Really so basically do the 10% water changes weekly and dont even worrie about adding in anything at alljust keep the ph where its supposed to be along with the salt levels

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, since they're all related, USUALLY if calk and alk are where they're supposed to be, pH will be right there with them. You should NEVER use pH up or pH down chemicals unless you want a tank full of dead livestock . Even buffers are unwise to use in reef systems as they mess with total alk and calc balance.

 

[Mopar32985]

o god really because i have always used the proper P.H. 8.2 mix. So i guess i should go out tonight and get a tester for cal. and alk. HaHa anything else im doing wrong or should i look out for( by the way thanks so much for your help)

 

[SkiFletch]

Glad I could help. You really only need to be concerned with pH when it drops below 8.0 or 7.9. Just as in freshwater, stable is more important than actual magnitude or value of pH. A tank that is 8.0 all day every day is healthier than one that swings from 8.0-8.4 within a days time... Now, SOME pH swing will happen from just before lights on to just before lights out because of the way plants and algae create nutrients. During the day when lights are on, algaes (including the zooxanthellae of corals) are fixing photons of light across membranes in their chloroplasts and storing electron energy. During the day no CO2 is used up so it can build up to normal stagnant levels. CO2 in liquid is acidic and lowers your pH. A pH of 7.9-8.1 at lights out isn't out of the question. Point being, it should be the same pH every day at the same time.

Then during the night, chloropasts stop fixing electron energy and use it to start gobbling up CO2 to make into glucose, sucrose, break down nitrate, all those other happy fixation reactions they do. When the algaes gobble up CO2 and use it, the water gets less acidic or more basic and the pH rises. A lights on pH of 8.2-8.4 is not uncommon. Again, point being, it should be the same pH every day at lights on.

Rather than blindly dosing with a pH 8.2 buffer, test your pH at lights on and lights off for a few days in a row and see what it does. You'll be surprised that it probably follows the trends I described.

The exception of course is if you run a sump with macro algae in a refugium in an opposing light cycle. So when your display lights are on, your sump lights are off and vice versa. This keeps your pH stable as the CO2 level will always be low (somebody is always dark and gobbling it up). Works wonders for me. My pH is betwen 8.1-8.0 between lights on and lights off in the main tank. I attribute this largely to my corals swelling and using calc/alk during the day, but thats another discussion entirely

 

[Mopar32985]

seriously man you are great cant thank you enough. so keep testing my ph and go out and get a tester for the alk and cal hope you dont mind all these questions

 

[SkiFletch]

Anytime. I only claim to have some experience, I'm not gospel. I also dont want to take away from the great advice by other members of this forum. Many of whom are more experienced than I. I've still got lots ot learn about the hobby, heck I almoast lost a coral yesterday to carelessness and lack of knowledge. We're all here to learn

 

[Mopar32985]

well heck compared to me you def know your stuff and you the only one that has really helped me so far and i greatly appreciate it. O yea and by the way i got two new corals yesterday. A purple tipped anenmie and a green star polup. HaHa i can spell at all

 

[SkiFletch]

GSP, great choice . Spreads like a weed and can survive thermonuclear attack. Just make sure it doesnt come in contact with stoney coral flesh as it can patch a sting

Purple tipped anemone, danger danger will robinson. Anemones are unfortunately NOT beginner livestock. Their captive success rates are poor and they are widely regarded as one of the most difficult pieces of livestock to care for next to perhaps goniopora or demanding SPS. The resons for the poor success rates are not well known, but much experience in both keeping and loosing them exhists among the hobby. If you can, I would suggest taking it back to your LFS for the time being although very few LFS' I know of will take back an anemone once purchased because they are so hard to keep alive. Since that may not be an option, I hope this helps.

General requirments of anemones:
-Mature tank, 1 year old prefferred, 6 months ABSOLOUTE BARE minimum

-Rock stable water chemistry. No fluctuations in chemical parameters. Any such fluctuations can lead to stress. Stress causes the anemone to expell its zooxanthellae symbionts much faster and more violently than a coral would. If it goes overboard (and they often do), the anemone is left with no symbiotic nutrients that it needs to survive. It slowly starves over a period of months and dies

-high light output. they tend to do better under metal halide lighting or some other source of lots of T5/PC lighting. anecdotal successes under T8s or VHO's exhist, but are few and far between.

-The right spot to land. You unfortunately cant control this. Anemones are picky and will move around the tank until they find a place where the light, substrate (rock, sand, crevasse, whatever), and flow are just right. IF they dont find this, they will keep moving, ultimately get stressed and well like I said, stress is bad for them

-good selection when purchasing. Healthy anemones which still have their zooxanthellae typically have brown tentacle bodies with sometimes colorful tips. 95% of the time, an anemone with a white or opaque body and tentacles has allready expelled its zooxanthellae and likely will not survive in captivity. I'm not sure what yours looks like, but I hope its healthy as I described

-drip acclimation. since water chemistry stability is so important, it makes sense that very slow drip acclimiation is used. again, failure to use drip acclimation can cause an expulsion event.

-fish compatability. dont select lazy fish which lay about the bottom of the tank. gobies and other types which like sleeping in rocks may find themselves unwitting meals to healthy anemones.


I hate having to post things like this and rain on people's prades so to speak, but its probably better you learned their care needs now than 6 months from now when its bleached, whithering away, and its too late to save it. I wish you the best of luck in caring for it if you do decide to do so (or if you're forced to by your LFS). If you are keeping it, post up some pictures and let us know if its found a spot it likes.