Hey, all my wet and salty friends! I could really use whatever tips, tricks, advice, recommendations, best practices, etc. that anyone can offer to help put my reef tank on cruise control. Almost two months ago, during a vacation to the USVI, my passion for my reef tank was reignited after a 3+ year hiatus. Since then, my OCD has been on overdrive trying to get my tank back up to spec.
Unfortunately, my wife is starting to get really annoyed with the amount of time, effort, money, and attention I've been putting into my tank. I don't blame her, and I actually agree that I've been a bit too attentive to my tank lately at the detriment of attention paid to my family. With the warmer weather finally arriving in the Chicagoland area, summer break starting in a couple weeks for my kids, and our family's desire to make this summer all about getting out and about enjoying nature, I need to find ways to reduce the amount of time and maintenance my tank requires.
As many of you may know from other threads, I've been battling with high nitrates lately. Most all of my other water parameters are finally (roughly) coming into line, but my nitrates have been up over 100 ppm. After serious thinking and contemplating and remembering with my brain thingy (getting harder to do with age), I'm fairly certain of the cause of the high nitrates, and I'm hoping those will eventually, naturally, and with as little intervention as possible start working their way down to acceptable levels. After thinking back over actions I've taken over the past month, I think I've narrowed the source of the high nitrates down to simple overfeeding a couple weeks back. There was nearly a whole week when I was feeding a full cube of frozen mysis plus a couple good squirts of bottled plankton every day. I only have one clownfish, a couple dozen snails/hermit crabs, and a couple handfuls of softie/LPS corals in my tank. Way too much food for way too few mouths. I've done several 20% water changes, added a chaeto refugium, brought my protein skimmer back online (had stopped using it several years ago due to overflowing issues), and added a large bag of Seachem Matrix in my sump. The NO4 levels appear to be on their way down, just not very quickly.
I've received several recommendations in other threads to remove the almost 10-year-old sand bed from my DT. Until this morning, I was planning to do just that. After my wife's complaints this morning that I've been too focused on my tank lately and not attentive enough to her and my daughters, I've decided to forego removing the sand bed for now. I understand this may be a detrimental decision in the long run, but I unfortunately cannot find the time in the next several months for such a monumental maintenance project. For now, I'm going to keep the sand bed and just hope that leaving it undisturbed will prevent any "huge" issues for the immediate future.
In my efforts to reduce the time and maintenance needs of my tank, here are steps I have already taken:
1. I have *FINALLY* installed a true automatic top-off unit!!! A week ago, I ordered/received/installed a Tunze Osmolator 3155 ATO. Now all I have to do is make up a 5-gallon bucket of RO/DI once a week and pour it into my reservoir. I used to have a 5-gallon bucket gravity-fed ATO, but that thing was not consistent or reliable at all. Even when I thought I had everything set up correctly and sealed off airtight, that thing would still leak the entire contents of the bucket within a few hours dumping a boatload of FW into my sump. I'm so happy with the Tunze now, and I wish I would have gotten it years ago!
2. I've switched over to the Triton Method and am using the Core7 base elements for dosing. I'm still trying to dial everything in as far as my dosing regimen, but I'm confident that once I get it tweaked, I should be good to go. I've gone Triton in order to reduce the volume and frequency of water changes. Not that my 55g DT and 30g sump required that much volume in the way of WCs, but it was annoying my wife to see me hauling out all my equipment every week to make up the fresh SW and perform the WC. So, I'm hoping the Triton Method will allow me to cut way back on WCs. Now my only issue is trying to find a way to streamline the dosing regimen.
3. I replaced my old lighting system with (2) 48" Fluval Sea, Marine, & Reef v3.0 LED lighting fixtures. These 3.0 fixtures are Bluetooth capable and let me set up, control, and program my lighting cycle on my iPhone. Now that it's set up, it runs automatically.
4. I started my protein skimmer back up. It's a Reef Octopus BH1000 HOB skimmer. Yeah, I know it's not a big, super-powered skimmer, but I have a very low stocking level in my tank (1 fish, some CUC, and some corals). Per the manufacturer, with low stocking levels, the skimmer is rated for up to 100 gallons. I only have around 60 gallons net water volume. I have performed a couple mods on it to make it skim better (venturi mod and pinwheel mod). Also, I installed a drain line on the collection cup that runs to a 2-gallon container. So, I don't have to spend 15-20 minutes every few days trying to reach around the backside of my tank and wriggle the cup out to empty it.
5. I installed a chaeto refugium in my sump to help uptake and export nutrients. Right now, I only have a Mars Aqua 24W LED Grow Light in a reflector lighting it on a cycle opposite my DT. The growth of the chaeto has not been phenomenal, but it is growing. I am trying to decide if I should upgrade to one of those 100W, 200W, or 300W LED grow lights you can get on Amazon for relatively cheap. My only concern is that bright of light might be too much. I'll let the 24W bulb keep going for now and see how it works out over time.
6. For now, I am intentionally keeping my stocking levels very low. The main reason is that I have a 10 year old clownfish that has allegedly killed every other fish I have ever added to my tank. I do not wish to waste any more money on fish until this clownfish has swam out to the great blue yonder. Also, I have always been more interested in the micro-life in a reef tank than the fish. I'd rather add corals and inverts.
7. I'm sticking with mostly softies and LPS in this tank. I don't have any desire to go crazy with an SPS-heavy tank that would end up requiring sophisticated and expensive lighting/monitoring/controlling/dosing systems. I have one small frag of an unknown green encrusting SPS. Everything else is GSP, Euphyllia, Xenia, Kenya tree, Toadstool leather, mushrooms, and zoas.
And here are things I would *like* to do, but they most likely will not happen:
8. Probably the thing I would most like to do to further automate/reduce maintenance is to get a dosing system for my Triton Core7 elements. I mean, it technically doesn't take too much time and effort to dose my Core7 elements every night, especially with the relatively low volume of water I have in my system. However, if I could automate it, that's one fewer task I have to perform on a daily basis. Plus, an automatic dosing system could dose much more precisely and consistently than I can. Unfortunately, automatic dosing systems seem to be pretty pricey, especially given the sum of money I've already spent in a very short amount of time trying to get my reef tank back inline. My wife is not very keen on me spending much more now.
9. And speaking of pricey, automated systems, I would love, Love, LOVE to get a wireless Apex system with the pH, salinity, and temperature probes. I would love to automate the monitoring/controlling of those specs and be able to view them from anywhere in the world and receive automatic notifications if anything is out of whack. Unfortunately, such an Apex system is a huge spend and too much for me to try and slip past my wife.
Anyway, after all this typing on my part, and all the reading on your part (thanks, by the way), does anyone have any input on tips, tricks, best practices to further reduce the time and effort required to maintain a reef tank? I would love to be able to put this thing on cruise control as much as possible, but I have limited funds to make anything fancy happen. So, inexpensive and easy-to-implement suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Robb
