lundi 21 septembre 2015

How much time is "big tank" maintenance?

We have a fairly large tank at work (250g display, 50g sump) and the current caretaker is leaving for somewhere between a year and forever.

I've helped a lot with the tank, especially livestock selection, aesthetics, etc, but I don't really do any of the "work" I guess. You know, just the fun stuff. But because I've been around since the beginning, I feel a bit of a connection to the tank and would like to see it well taken care of.

The downside is the time investment. A lot of it I could do during work hours (esp feeding/testing/dosing), but there are some seasons when I'm working 60+ hours at work and can't justify taking a few hours to work on the tank. And I have two young kids at home and a wife who would rather I be at home helping out than investing more hours at work.

I just run a small 20g tank, no sump, no skimmer, no nothing. Two fish, some corals, and a 2g water change once a week. I've set it up intentionally to be super low maintenance. About an hour a week, can be less if I'm really in it to win it.

The "big tank" has a skimmer, runs carbon, biopellets, and phosban. It's set up to overflow into two filter socks that sit over a decent amount of liverock, then flows over a separator into where the skimmer and chemical filtration sit.

The current guy says he spends a few hours a week on it. He does a 30g water change weekly, though it's just water--he doesn't touch the sand (I vacuum my sand each week, so that's different for me), and other than that he just empties the skimmer, tops off the chemical tumblers, and keeps water in the top-off reservoir.

I guess my questions are these:
How long do you put in when maintaining a large tank?
If you were running this tank, are there things you'd put in/pull out?
Are there ways to make the tank lower maintenance?
If I'm running a skimmer and carbon/phosban/biopellets, does a water change do much more than adding in depleted elements, or is it still pretty essential?

Other details:
2xVortech (not sure if 40 or 60, but there's plenty of power there), 3xRadion XR30W Pro (set @85% power), with ReefLink.

Tank is 6' long and 30" tall, not sure its depth exactly.

Current stock: Yellow tang, kole tang, couple of sandsifting gobies, tailspot blenny, 5ish blue chromis, two clowns, royal gramma, handful of emerald crabs, couple of strawberry crabs, and a bunch of snails.

Coral is almost all hard, mostly SPS, some zoas here and there.

Any thoughts, dissenting opinions, arguments, agreements, and so forth are welcome. I'd love a variety of opinion.


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