Never testing or dosing tank ?

flchamp89 · Oct 19, 2019

90 percent soft coral but I don't test. It's not something I'd recommend. IDK why but fresh or salt I never have. I do feel I have very good maintenance though.

K95ranger · Oct 19, 2019

I have a mixed reef tank. Hammers, torch, frogspan, monti's, acans, chalice, mushrooms, bubble tip anemones, maxi mini, blastos, and a feather duster and my tank stays stable between water changes. I have even gone three weeks and once a whole month due to a vacation with no real change in parameters. I normally do 20% change every two weeks. I dont test as much as I did due to the parameters no flucuating significantly. So it is possible but dependant each setup.

Retro Reefer · Oct 19, 2019

Wouldn’t suggest it for SPS or more demanding corals but I ran this tank for 13 years and didn’t even own a test kit just water changes and Kalkwasser

Reesj · Oct 19, 2019

Well I have
2 Brain corals,
2green bta,
1 green hammer colony,
1 perple Ghonipora colony,
1 Green Dot Acropora colony.
Also got 2 small frags of zoa and a green star polyp.

So I do have 2 corals a bit difficult to keep. But I don't mind my corals growing slowly.

Drew Hitt · Oct 19, 2019

Ran this 40 for 4 yrs no testing... any time I dosed anything it seemed to have a negative impact so I gave up. Just water change every week to 10 days about 10 gallons.

Drew Hitt · Oct 19, 2019

Drew Hitt said:
Ran this 40 for 4 yrs no testing... any time I dosed anything it seemed to have a negative impact so I gave up. Just water change every week to 10 days about 10 gallons.

Mostly LPS some softies and maybe 1 SPS

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 19, 2019

C. Eymann said:
Many of my old clients had mostly LPS/softies and a 10-15% w/c once a week was enough to maintain close to NSW levels, grated it all depends on demand as well as salt you are using.

If using a salt with elevated levels like red sea coral pro, and committing to at least 10% a week, You will probably at least keep the levels acceptable. Not ideal, esp for a tank with large demand, but most Lps will tolerate a swing in alk/cal just fine.

You can only offset about 0.5 dKH per week this way. That’s very low demand.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 19, 2019

K95ranger said:
I have a mixed reef tank. Hammers, torch, frogspan, monti's, acans, chalice, mushrooms, bubble tip anemones, maxi mini, blastos, and a feather duster and my tank stays stable between water changes. I have even gone three weeks and once a whole month due to a vacation with no real change in parameters. I normally do 20% change every two weeks. I dont test as much as I did due to the parameters no flucuating significantly. So it is possible but dependant each setup.

At what dKH? My guess is the alk is low, which greatly lowers demand and slows coral growth a lot.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 19, 2019

Retro Reefer said:
Wouldn’t suggest it for SPS or more demanding corals but I ran this tank for 13 years and didn’t even own a test kit just water changes and Kalkwasser

That’s pretty much what I did for many years. Just watched pH to make sure the limewater was dosing properly.