Husbandry Gone Wild

[ZoWhat]

What comments do you have about this?

Trying to conserve waterchanges to only on an "as-needed basis" to correct an issue. Meaning no waterchange regiment.

I test no3, po4, calc, alk, mag every Sunday night.

Been doing this for about 3mos. Seeing how it plays out:

IMO...The two things that are required (via waterchange method or other methods) ....is to export NITRATES and PHOSPHATES

My Nitrate export: I have a skimmer, I change out my filter socks twice a week, I dose 20ml of 80proof vodka daily. My nitrates bounce btwn 0-2ppm

My Phosphate export: I use PhosphateRx that's lanthanum chloride and a bottle (I believe) has 1000 drops in it. A bottle cost ~ $25. I dose 100 drops every Sunday night. My Phosphate bounce btwn 0.2 to 0.5ppm. And a bottle lasts me 10 weeks. Heck of a lot cheaper than 25% water changes on a 240g system

Major/Minor elements: I have an ATO. I test my salinity 3 times a week. I aim for 1.025. About once a month my salinity will dip to 1.023 (due to heavy wet skimming) so I just throw in my sump a measured out portion of salt mix to get back up to 1.025. Adding salt mix recharges my major/minor elements. My calc/alk/mag always stay 450/9/1400. If a # gets low, i have pharmaceutical grade calcium chloride, magnesium to dose/adjust but that's occurs maybe every 6 weeks.

Bottomline: I probably only completely replace my total water volume of 240g over the course of random small "correcting-actions" maybe once a year. Meaning the whole 240g total water over a year is only turned over / replaced once.

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[Jfinn]

What comments do you have about this?

I've recently stumbled across some Husbandry that I'm personally putting into play and seeing how it plays out.

Trying to conserve waterchanges to only an as-needed basis to correct an issue.

Been doing this for about 3mos:

IMO...The two things that are required (via waterchange method) is to export are NITRATES and PHOSPHATES

My Nitrate export: I have a skimmer, I change out my filter socks twice a week, I dose 20ml of 80proof vodka daily. My nitrates bounce btwn 0-2ppm

My Phosphate export: I use PhosphateRx that's lanthanum chloride and a bottle (I believe) has 1000 drops in it. A bottle cost ~ $25. I dose 100 drops every Sunday night. My Phosphate bounce btwn 0.2 to 0.5ppm. And a bottle lasts me 10 weeks. Heck of a lot cheaper than 25% water changes

Major/Minor elements: I have an ATO. I test my salinity 3 times a week. I aim for 1.025. About once a month my salinity will dip to 1.023 so I just throw in my sump a measured out portion of salt mix to get back up to 1.025. Adding salt mix recharges my major/minor elements. My calc/alk/mag always stay 450/9/1400. If a # gets low, i have pharmaceutical grade calcium chloride, magnesium to dose/adjust but that's occurs maybe every 6 weeks.



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Interesting. I hope you can stick with the low maint approach.

Curious, what do you nitrates do when you don’t carbon dose? That seems much easier than a fuge ;-). What livestock are you keeping?

Also, I tried phosphate-e from Brightwell (equivalent to phosphate rx I think) but I lost a tuxedo urchin after a few doses. I learned afterward that starfish and urchins don’t do well with lanth chl.

Finally, the salt addition is something I’ve never heard as a method for maintaining chemistry. I have to imagine that will go awry at some point.

Best of luck though skimjim!

 

[ZoWhat]

Curious, what do you nitrates do when you don’t carbon dose? That seems much easier than a fuge ;-). What livestock are you keeping?

If I stop vodka carbon dosing (which I did once for 3 weeks) nitrates and algae goes CRAZY. I guess my reef is an ALCOHOLIC bc I've trained it to expect the vodka/ethanol coming daily.

Also, I tried phosphate-e from Brightwell (equivalent to phosphate rx I think) but I lost a tuxedo urchin after a few doses. I learned afterward that starfish and urchins don’t do well with lanth chl.

This is the first time hearing this. And it's great news bc I did have a breakout of Asterina stars that suddenly went away. Now I know why. I'm not concerned about inverts at all. I have ZERO snails, hermits, crabs, shrimp as a cleanup crew. I have tangs that pick at rocks constantly. I have a BARE BOTTOM tank and I have Vortechs that I schedule to blast flow 100% for 10mins twice a daily to get excess nutrients churned into the water column that then get filtered out by my socks. I have pretty dirty socks every 3rd day. Which tells me the socks are doing their job

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