Stability Question: How stable are you striving for?

[Maxx]

I'm not an SPS wizard like many here. In fact, I'm coming back into the hobby after a hiatus and have learned more about what I was doing wrong previously.
One of the things I had trouble with was keeping parameters stable. Which brings me to my questions:
How Stable are you striving for?
Is it necessary to keep all parameters rock solid or can there be some minor ups and downs?

I strive to keep my dKh at 8.6. However, I dont have enough bioload/consumption to warrant hooking up my dosing pumps yet so I dose daily by hand . Is it critical that my dKh stay rock solid at 8.6 or is it ok that it drops down to 8.2 daily and gets brought back up to 8.6 at night? If I'm trying to keep it above 7.0, is there a real difference to the corals if it's 8.6 or 8.2 on a daily basis (assuming it never drops below 8)?
Do you keep your NO3 and PO4 levels rock solid with no fluctuation either, or does that matter as much?
I know we strive to keep NO3 between 5-15 ppm, but does it matter if it fluctuates between 5 and 15 ppm?
I know we strive to keep PO4 between 0.04 ppm and 0.1 ppm...but does it matter if it fluctuates between the two?

I realize some parameters are not flexible such as temp and salinity. However, I'm very curious about minor fluctuations in dKh on a daily basis and on fluctuations in NO3 and PO4.
I dont want to chase numbers, I just want to know how far down the rabbit hole of stability I should be going?

 

[Ron Reefman]

I'll disagree with your premise that salinity and temp need to be rock solid.

My temp varies from 78 to 82 over a day or two all the time (we keep our house about 80 in the summer). And my salinity has varied from 1.024 to 1.027. I test it weekly, but I rarely pay much attention as long as it is in an acceptable range.

I test my alk one a week as well. I dose it to 9.5dKH and a week later it's down to 6.5 or 7.0 dKH. Then I dose it back up to 9.5dKH over just 5 minutes. No issues.

Stability is a very good thing, but less important than being in the proper range. And soft corals are more forgiving than lps which are more forgiving than sps.

 

[SeaDweller]

I try to keep things as stable as possible, but don’t really trip about daily fluctuations much. My temp can dip to 77 in the cooler months and gets no hotter than 81 with the help of a chiller. As for the big scary alk... mine drops 0.3 usually daily, but with summer, it can drop more (warmer, windows wide open maybe?) and I manually add baking soda to help with it (using CaRx Too). The other day I forgot to add some and it dropped to 6.0, from my usual 7.6. I then calculated and added 6 tsp, thinking it would put me to 7.2, and it probably did, but the next morning it was up to 8.0- a 2.0 dkh jump.


nothing died.

 

[najer]

Wet, salty and warm (there is a glass thermometer in there somewhere, couldn't find it), not a clue about anything else!

 

[Paul B]

I agree with Ron. Sometimes my salinity is so weak that I could keep kissing gouramies
I don't try to do that, it just happens.

Last week my tank almost overflowed and my salinity was 1.019. ;Meh Nothing happened.

It's the same with calcium and alk. It is nice to keep it stable, but I am not even close.
My corals don't seem to mind.

 

[Maxx]

So the consensus is that I'm going too far down the rabbithole.
Got it.

Thanks.

 

[Scorpius]

You guys aren't realizing that stability means not a particular set in stone set of ranges. It means if your dkh ranges from 7-8 or swings between 7-10 and that it consistently does this then both are stable. Its when you have a large deviation outside whats stable for your system is when you have issues. Also, if you are on either extremes of any parameters any little deviation can spell disaster.

 

[ReeferBean]

So the consensus is that I'm going too far down the rabbithole.
Got it.

Thanks.

Not that it's necessary, but why not strive for it? There are many really successful SPS keepers that strive for stability and keeping the numbers really tight. But some like to keep the larger variance so corals aren't as sensitive to small changes. Your going to get answers both ways on that. Find what works for you.

I don't let my alk swing more than .5 dkh. I shoot for 8.5 but there are times when it drops a little say to 8.2, or up a little say 8.7. I'm no expert. Calcium and Mag are less important. One thing I'd recommend if you tend to get lazy reefer syndrom, is get a Trident (I have one) , or a Alkatronic, or a KH Guardian, something that tests your alk automatically. It really helps finding the sweet spot, at least for me. I do have titration test kits, which I double check with at times, but with a click on the app, I can see where my alk is at any given time. I have small kids now so I don't have as much time as I used to have to tinker with my tank, so I prefer to spend more time enjoying it than working on it.