Two months no water changes. (1 Viewer)

[SeaAggie]

Howdy,

115g display, 25g sump, 200 lbs live rock, caulerpa taxifolia, 70 snails, 30 hermits, four chromis, two ocellaris, one Salarias fasciatus and various inverts, cnidarians.

No water changes as of yet.

My chemistry is as follows: 1.024 specific gravity, pH 8.0, with no detectible NH3, NO2, NO3, PO4.

Trace elements: Ca2+ 400-500, dKH 13+, Mg >1300 ppm, S 900.

I add two cups instant ocean and one teaspoon each of: Kent turbo calcium, Kent Coral Builder (KH supplement), magnesium sulphate, with 5-7 gallons of top-off R/O water each week.

All the critters are happy and eat extremely well.

I feed a lot of home made, frozen food. Mainly mixtures of seaweed, algae and shellfish.

Shrimp are successfully winning the campaign against the aiptasia anemone.

Crabs can eat a jumbo shrimp in 6-8 hours and the nitrosomona can keep the NH3 at nil.

Is this normal? Is my bio-load low enough to avoid a spike in phosphate for over two months?

-SeaAggie

 

[Copingsaw]

I've heard of people going a lot longer than that without water changes. I don't think it is wise to go too long without a water change but as long as your parameters are good, I wouldn't lose any sleep.

You say you are adding instant ocean every week with your top-off. If your not doing water changes, that means that your salinity should be slowly increasing as salt does not evaporate out of the tank.

 

[reeftopia]

Definitly would check salinity by a second method. if your adding salt to topoff your raising salinity.

 

[Ostentum]

I would check your alk also. 13 you should definitely be seeing negative effects, it would be hard to notice though since there are no corals in your tank. Fish and most inverts can handle a slow change up to those level. No need to dose mg, ca or alk to a tank that he no usage other than crabs and corraline.

 

[SeaAggie]

@ Copingsaw and Reeftopia: My protein skimmer pulls around 2 gallons a week out of the tank. I add the salt to maintain salinity lost through skimmer. My specific gravity is VERY stabile. I realize this is quite a lot for a protein skimmer to remove. My goal was to see if I could reduce the need for water changes through removing more water with the skimmer. It skims into a 3 gallon container which makes it easy to keep up with. The skimmer I am using is for a much larger tank.

@ Ostentum: I dose the Mg, Ca and alk to maintain levels. I'd imagine that the inverts and calcareous algae are using up these trace elements. I test for trace elements religiously.

I'm a Marine Science major at Texas A&M and chemistry is my passion. The reason I built the tank was to play with the chemistry, the fish are just an afterthought.

So 13 is on the high side of the alkalinity? My test kit recommends 8-12. I guess I can quit dosing alk and see how fast it drops.

I'd like to add some soft coral and some anemone in the future.

Thanks for the insight ya'll.

-SeaAggie

 

[picoreefer]

I too am a sea aggie, I'm a marb. If you just want to throw some fish in to look at Galveston blennies and warty anemones, they are free and plentiful.

 

[reeftopia]

Basically your doing a water change just in weekly small numbers, which to me is the way to do it. smaller change less stress.

 

[Ostentum]

@ Copingsaw and Reeftopia: My protein skimmer pulls around 2 gallons a week out of the tank. I add the salt to maintain salinity lost through skimmer. My specific gravity is VERY stabile. I realize this is quite a lot for a protein skimmer to remove. My goal was to see if I could reduce the need for water changes through removing more water with the skimmer. It skims into a 3 gallon container which makes it easy to keep up with. The skimmer I am using is for a much larger tank.

@ Ostentum: I dose the Mg, Ca and alk to maintain levels. I'd imagine that the inverts and calcareous algae are using up these trace elements. I test for trace elements religiously.

I'm a Marine Science major at Texas A&M and chemistry is my passion. The reason I built the tank was to play with the chemistry, the fish are just an afterthought.

So 13 is on the high side of the alkalinity? My test kit recommends 8-12. I guess I can quit dosing alk and see how fast it drops.

I'd like to add some soft coral and some anemone in the future.

Thanks for the insight ya'll.

-SeaAggie

Are you testing weekly while your dosing? I dont really agree with that 8-12 range, thats a safe range but when it swings out of those two ranges you get lots of problems really quick. Stability is the key with any tank, yes you can have swings and it will be fine, but when you start experimenting when caring for a living thing, I have issues with that. How about reading about all the studys that have been done on water chemistry. I was a Chemistry major till my senior year and never did I think about running experiments on living animals, but at the end of the day its your money and your tank. Also if you were to stick pretty much any coral in a tank with 13 alk it would be gone in a day. Also with minimal bioload and a new tank, your alk and Ca can be replenished through water changes. you are not going to use enough to justify dosing like you are currently doing. My full blown SPS tank barely uses 75 ppm of calcium a week, which is like a drop from 450-375, both in the acceptable range, now alk on the other hand drops 2 dkh a day if I were to take my reactor offline. My tank could handle a drop like that but if I were to dose on or two times and bring it back up 1/2 of the stuff in my tank would die.

 

[SeaAggie]

You didn't really answer my question Ostentum. You just flamed me for adding one tsp each of calcium, coral builder and MgSO4.

I'm not experimenting. I'm following the directions on the Kent products. ACTUALLY, I add a little less than half of what they suggest. (I realize that these companies tend to tell aquarists to add more than they need in order to sell more product.)

Furthermore, I've read plenty concerning water chemistry in classes such as Oceanography, Organic Chemistry and Chemical Oceanography, as well as on my own through various webpages, forums and books. I'm not the proverbial kid with an ant farm and a magnifying glass.

The mushrooms, soft corals and other cnidarians that came on the live rock I've purchased are all doing just fine.

I test my water 3 times a week for myriad parameters.

If you're going to be rude, just save your text for someone else. I was asking a serious question, not asking for a lecture in ethics.

My original question was answered in good form by reeftopia. Thank you for your input.

-SeaAggie

 

[Ostentum]

No I flamed you for saying that you set up the aquarium to "Play" with the water chemistry, which I read as experimenting with livestock. And I did state that you dont need to dose anything with your bioload let your waterchanges replenish. Adding Ca, ALk and Mg without much usage is only going to raise your paras and throw off your water chemistry and put your livestock at risk.