When I first got started with reef tanks and saltwater fish tanks in general, every book, speaker, expert and author all referred to buffering capacity and total hardness and alkalinity and calcium hardness and dkh, and what …???? I was so confused at first.
I received a great question and thought I would share it with you along with my answer.
So here’s the question: What do you think is the simplest system to use for a reef tank?
I think I will make a video answer to this question and post it on the blog for others, because
keeping things simple is one of the most important things to learn in reef keeping, and yet also one
of the most challenging to accomplish. Again, great question.
Here’s my answer:
As for what is the simplest system for a reef tank, I would have to say it depends on three factors:
1) the size of the tank, how heavily it is stocked with small-polyped stony corals (SPS);
2) how much time (work) you want to spend per week maintaining it; and
3) how much effort you are willing to put into setting it up (installation)
So, of course, I am biased. I like larger systems that maximize stocking density and diversity of all kinds of corals and fishes. And I like to take my time setting it up so that it is as easy as possible to maintain (I’m lazy) and so that it is designed to prevent problems (this last one is one of my greatest talents).
If you are just getting started and your tank is less than 200 gallons, and not heavily stocked yet, you can get away with just doing water changes. A good quality reef salt will help maintain your pH, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium and all other levels, by simply doing frequent water changes. If water changes is your only method of maintaining water quality, then you will want to do roughly 50% or more per month, done weekly. So, for example, if you have a 100-gallon system, and you are doing 50% water change per month, then you could do one water change per week of 12.5 gallons. Thus after four weeks, you will have changed 50% of the system’s water. The down side to this approach is that you will go through more salt (higher cost) and it requires weekly water changes (more time). We maintained a 250-gallon reef tank (all soft corals) for many years with great success, using this approach. Because this system had great water movement and high flow rates (10x system volume/hr) and strong lighting (3 x 400w HQI metal halides 10,000K), strong protein skimming (ETS1400), stable water temperature (chiller), and it grew soft corals like crazy. It was very simple.
The Jaubert method is OK as long as your sand bed is deep enough and that you use a fine enough substrate, and as long as it can keep up with the calcium/magnesium demand of the corals in the system. I would say that the Jaubert method is best suited for systems that are not heavily stocked with fast-growing stony corals. Systems that are heavily stocked with the faster-growing small-polyped stony corals (SPS corals) will need a more aggressive dosing approach than the passive Jaubert method.
Another very simple way to help maintain calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity is by use of a fluidized bed sand filter that is filled with aragonite sand (0.5-2.0mm particle size I recommend Carribsea’s “Sea Floor Special Grade Reef Sand”). It is very cheap and very low maintenance and will help to maintain calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity. You will need to refill (top off) the fluidized sand filter about every 4-6 months as the substrate will dissolve over time. This is also a very efficient biological filter. Depending on the size of the fluidized sand filter (the bigger the better – you cannot over size it), this method is best suited for a higher stocking density of corals than with the method of just doing water changes.
Another very simple method is to use one of the liquid two-part products administered with a two-part dossier (usually also sold by the manufacturer of the liquid 2-part product). We have used the B-Ionic product (by ESV) with great success, along with their liquid 2-part dossier.
So when considering what is the simplest method for keeping or setting up a reef tank, remember the following factors:
1) the size of the tank, how heavily it is stocked with small-polyped stony corals (SPS);
2) how much time (work) you want to spend per week maintaining it; and
3) how much effort you are willing to put into setting it up (installation)
If you have a method you love for it’s simplicity, we’d love to hear about it. Post a comment and let us know what is working for you to keep things simple.
If you ask most people what words come to mind when they think of saltwater aquariums, most of them will eventually mention “complicated”, “difficult”, or “a lot of work”. And – yes – saltwater aquariums ARE inherently complicated. BUT, they don’t have to be difficult or overwhelming or “a lot of work”. What if it were simple, easy and fun? What if it could be this way for you?
Well, I am here to tell you it can be. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but if there is one thing I am good at, it is taking things that are inherently complex and making them simple. In fact, if you are going to be both successful at saltwater aquariums AND have fun doing it, you must learn to keep it simple or simplify.
When people ask me what does it take to make a great saltwater aquarium I tell them that it is as simple as this:
If you put stuff in, you have to take stuff out – otherwise you end up with pollution. Another way of saying it is that in order to prevent accumulation of bad stuff (nitrates, phosphates, organics, detritus, waste, etc.) you need to always be removing it. There are many ways to accomplish this, such as: water changes; activated carbon, protein skimmer, refugium w/ macro-algae, water changes, phosphate-removing media, etc..
Stop and just stare at your tank regularly – few skills are more crucial to a successful saltwater aquarium than observation. Observation is absolutely foundational to your success. And the good thing is it is really easy to do. Just stand and stare, and do it on a regular basis. You will learn more, discover more, prevent more problems and come up with more solutions by just getting quiet and still and just watching your tank.
Become a learning and reading maniac and ask lots of questions. Learn as much as you can about the animals you are keeping and have a strong sense of wonder – Whether it is animals or filtration equipment, it is vitally important that you learn as much as you can about them. Let’s face it, this part takes a while, and yet there is no way around it, unless you are going to hire someone to take care of your tank for you, which may be an option for you. You will need to learn about their life history, ecology, husbandry requirements and compatibility with other potential tank mates. And filtration equipment or life support equipment must be understood in order to select the right one and to operate it properly. So read as much as you can (books, magazines, online forums, blogs), join a local saltwater aquarium hobby club, attend seminars, workshops and lectures, and above all be open-minded. Know you can never know everything, and be willing to be contributed to. Be willing for the other guy to know more than you, so that you can learn something new (this alone has taken me very far).
Be consistent and keep a routine – There is no beating around the bush. Saltwater aquariums require consistent routine care, and if you skimp on your consistency or miss a day or a week here and there, it can come back to bite you. Tropical coral reef thrive with consistent conditions, and your saltwater aquarium is no different. You must be regular and consistent with your saltwater aquarium maintenance routine. I have seen amazing tanks whose only difference from mediocre ones was that their routine was amazingly thorough and consistent. The bottom line is that saltwater aquariums need regular attention.
Prevention, Prevention, Prevention – The saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is alive and well with keeping saltwater aquariums. To the degree that you focus on preventing problems with your saltwater aquarium, you will be more successful. This is an area I have been forced to become very good at as the owner of Gibbons Aquaria, Inc., a high-end custom saltwater aquarium design/installation/management company. With multiple customers and multiple tanks (most of which are more than several hundred gallons) my business and my customers cannot afford too many problems. And to be frank, saltwater aquariums require good problem solving skills. Even if you are wildly successful, you will still have your share of surprises, such as mechanical failures, leaks, disease outbreaks, animal aggression/mortality, etc.. All of these unpleasant things are going to happen to you eventually, no matter how good you are. The key is to prevent, minimize and respond to them so that they don’t cause big problems for you. In other words, if a pump stops working and you don’t even know it, you can lose your entire tank. Or even if you notice in time that the pump has stopped working but you don’t have a spare, you are in trouble. So prevent problems in the first place. Minimize them when they do happen. And then set yourself up with some kind of monitoring system to notify you so that you can respond when they do happen.
Be like a boyscout and be prepared – Preventing problems is one thing (and it’s absolutely huge), and being prepared for problems is different. If you can afford it, keep spares of as many critical life support components as possible (pumps, light bulbs for reef tanks, heater, etc.). Also, part of being prepared is making sure you know that problems are going to happen and design your aquarium setup to accommodate them. An example of this would be to make sure system fails “safe” in the event of a power failure. This means that your sump will not overflow or your system is capable of starting back up without you needing to be there when the power comes back on. Another example is to have your aquarium notify you of key life support failures when they happen by using a monitoring system (I love the Sensaphone 400 and Sensaphone 800).
Become a critical thinker and ask lots of “why” and “how” questions – It is vitally important that as you learn, that you actually understand what you are learning and why the thing you are learning is so. The opposite of this is like kids in school who just want the teacher to tell them what’s going to be on the exam. Just learning the answer won’t help you if you don’t actually understand why it is the answer. In fact, this failed approach leads to more problems whereby you are mystified and confused, but now with even more problems that you don’t understand.
Move lots of water – Proper water circulation can be almost magical in its beneficial impact on a saltwater aquarium. Here are some of the benefits of proper water circulation: helps keep detritus and other waste up in the water column so that it can be removed by filters; helps increase oxygen levels and reduce carbon dioxide, brings nutrients to corals and invertebrates, provides ideal respiration for all animals and plants, acts as a treadmill for fish to get exercise, allows for better density of coral skeletons, helps create more natural coral growth forms, increased coral growth rate, etc..
Lighting: The proper quantity and quality of light – Simply put, you need enough of the right type of light. One rule of thumb for reef aquariums with photosynthetic corals is to use 2.5-4 watts of lighting per gallon of aquarium. So if your tank is 70 gallons and you want to keep stony corals, you will want to be at the upper end – at 4 watts per gallon. So if we do the math: 4 watts x 70 gallons = 280 watts of lighting. A fish-only aquarium only requires enough lighting for aesthetic benefit - about 1/4 of the wattage per gallon.
Build it fail-safe – It is one thing for bad things to happen with your saltwater aquarium. But what if something bad happened (like a power failure) but no bad consequences came of it. This is what happens when you design and build your aquarium’s life support system to fail safe. For example, the aquariums I install and maintain can easily accommodate power failure, pump failure, leaks, overheating/cooling, and unwanted changes in water levels. All of these can happen without any negative consequences to the tank and its inhabitants, because it was built to fail safe.
Water quality rules: If you don’t have good water quality, nothing else you do will matter - Test the following water quality parameters once a week and graph your results so you can track trends over time (pH, salinity, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrates, and phosphates).
Disease is always present, so use a ultraviolet sterilizer - Since there is always disease in every aquarium all the time, use an ultraviolet sterilizer (U.V. sterilizer) to help prevent an outbreak. Your fish and corals can live happily with a chronic low level of parasites, as can we humans. But when stress levels increase in your aquarium (for whatever reason), disease can spread quickly and is difficult to get back under control once an outbreak occurs. Thus, a U.V. sterilizer prevents such a thing from happening and in my opinion is mandatory as part of your saltwater aquarium’s life support system
Prevent stress and you will significantly lessen the occurrence of disease, aggression and deaths. Just like in humans, stress is accumulative – even for fish and corals and other invertebrates.
If you plan on keeping a saltwater aquarium for any amount of time, whether it is a reef tank or a fish-only with live rock tank (FOWLR), you are likely to experience an outbreak of cyanobacteria and diatoms. Cyanobacteria or “Cyano” is also referred to as green slime algae (also comes in red and brown). As it’s name implies, Cyanobacteria covers rocks and sand with a thin slimy film. And while it is easily removed by siphoning, if the conditions that support it are not improved, then it will quickly return, unless you follow these steps.
Cyanobacteria and diatoms are brought on by the following factors:
- not sufficient coverage of rock with corals (corals and algae do compete, so tip the scales in your favor by stocking to cover 60% of your rock with corals).
Three products that work to treat the symptom (not the cause – see above) are as follows:
, which will eradicate the cyanobacteria (reef safe – we’ve used it in our service business for years)
Granular Ferric Oxide (removes phosphate and silicates) – we prefer Rowaphos, but there are other brands that work as well too. This is great for removing phosphate, although a bit expensive. Remember to focus on lessening the source of input of phosphate into your system (i.e. tapwater and foods). For tapwater we filter with RODI (target is zero TDS). As for the foods, we strongly recomment rinsing your frozen foods prior to feeding. You’d be amazed at the amount of gook (scientific term) that would otherwise go into your tank/system.
Doxicyclene hyclate – it has been years since I’ve used this for treating RTN (rapid tissue necrosis) in corals, but we also noticed that it was great for temporarily eradicating cyanobacteria. I say temporary, because this is just treating the symptom and not the cause. As long as the original cause (see above) is still there, the cyano will likely return.
If your type of saltwater tank is a fish-only with live rock (FOWLR), you are always going to have significantly higher phosphates, nitrates, silicates and organics to deal with than you would in a reef tank – even if you had the same number of fish in a reef tank. This is because in FOWLR tanks, there are no (or very few) corals, sponges, coraline algae, clams, filter feeders, etc. to help remove nutrients from the water.
So with a FOWLR tank, you will need to be more aggressive with use of carbon, GFO (granular ferric oxide – removes phosphate) and with the removal of detritus. I strongly recommend “storming the tank” at least twice a month (during normal/ideal conditions), but I would recommend doing it once a month in your current situation.
What I mean by “Storming the tank”, is putting a submersible powerhead pump on a stick/pipe and blast the rock to liberate detritus that has collected in the live rock. And then having some type of mechanical filtration in use to remove the detritus now that it is suspended in the water column.
To do this you can use a canister filter, D.E. filter (diatomacious earth), or even a small powerfilter (hang-on-the-side). Or if you don’t have any of these items, you can storm the tank with the powerhead and then siphon it off the surfact of the rock/sand as you do a large water change. With this method I recommend blasting with the powerhead twice during the water change, allowing it to settle out for siphoning between blasting.
So if you end up with an outbreak of cyanobacteria or diatoms in your reef tank or fish-only tank (FOWLR), consider yourself fortunate that it is just cyanobacteria and diatoms, which are relatively easy to get rid of, and not something more difficult like bryopsis or hair algae. And remember, you are better off preventing than reacting.
Since video is so much more effective for teaching (and more fun to make), I’ve also created a youtube channel for you to go check out.
Go check us out on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/SWAQSECRETS, and ask me your biggest question about reef tanks and saltwater aquariums, fish-only too, and I’ll answer it.
Video questions get preference, so fire up your video camera or iPhone and shoot a quick video of you asking your question. You can even show us what your questions is about, if it’s about something specific to your tank or a fish or coral or some life support equipment you have a question about.
When it comes to checking the salinity of your reef tank or fish-only tank, are are you using a hydrometer or a refractometer?
Well . . . which one? The reason I ask is that there is a big difference in accuracy between the two. Years ago I used to use hydrometers – you know the
plastic ones they used to give away with a bucket of salt. The scary thing was that if you bought five different plastic hydrometers, then you would get
five different readings. This wasn’t the case with the glass hydrometers, but they are just too easy to break, and my idea of fun reefkeeping is not cleaning
up broken glass.
Back to the plastic hydrometers – as long as you used the same one for your tank, and cleaned it often with vinegar or muriatic acid to keep minerals from giving you a false reading, you were fine. But still – this was a pain in the … well.. you know.
Now, we have the refractometer, which is much more accurate. And the prices have come way down in recent years. And not only are refractometers a lot more accurate, they are a lot more durable and easy to calibrate too.
Calibration was a strange process with the old plastic hydrometers. I remember having to write with a sharpie on the side of the hydrometer “reads 3ppt too low”, or “add 3ppt to reading”. This is no longer necessary.
If you don’t already have a refractometer, you can get one here.
I just uploaded a video on a secret tip on water quality testing you can use for your saltwater aquarium – one that few people do, but if you do it, it will make all the difference.
Click Here for the video. or just paste this into your browser http://swaqsecrets.evplayer.com/?seed=are-you-doing-this-with-your-water-quality
Let me know what you think and leave a comment or question below the video.
I just finished an audio interview (teleseminar) on bryopsis algae control with two friends of mine, who are both owners of their own high-end custom saltwater aquarium design/installation/maintenance businesses. Geoff Sampson (Aquatic Art Technologies) has been in business for over 12 years out of Connecticut, and does work all over the country. Al Leun (Aquatics By Design) has been in business for over 6 years and is now doing large public aquarium installations and consulting worldwide. In fact he just got back from a project in Russia – that’s right – Russia.
We got on the call to share our experience with bryopsis algae control methods that have worked for us, as well as what causes bryopsis algae outbreaks and how to prevent them. Bryopsis algae can be so difficult to deal with once you have it, and this is one way we can help you avoid this nightmarish algae and to get rid of it if you do get it in your system.
Here’s the link to the interview. You can play it here on the blog or you can download it to listen to later on your iPod.
Please post any questions or comments you have below and let us know your experience with bryopsis and what you did to treat it. And remember to share this on twitter and facebook.
Here is a great product, which we have been using with amazing results.
After using Rowaphos (phosphate removal media) on all our tanks, and it is definitely our favorite. If you want to go get it now, here’s the link, and yes it is my affiliate link. When you click on it, you will be taken to www.marinedepot.com, where you can buy Rowaphos. And I will receive a small affiliate commission for referring you. You’ll pay the same price, no matter whether you buy it through my affiliate link or you go straight to Marine Depot.
I like to buy it in the largest size 5kg bucket, as this is the cheapest (per kg). And let’s face it, the stuff ain’t cheap, but man does it work well, and quickly. If you are battling high phosphate levels or you have problematic hair algae growth, you need this product to lower your phosphate levels.
** One point of note – be sure you rinse the media thoroughly before putting it into use. The most effective way to use Rowaphos is in a media reactor or upweller. Our favorite one is by Precision Marine, as it is very well made and extremely durable and easy to use. Most of the media reactors out there are poorly made with thin/brittle materials. I don’t recommend it, but I have dropped the Precision Marine media reactor on the floor and it was unharmed. I don’t mind paying a little more for product if it is made really well.
If you’ve used either of these products, I’d love to hear your comments and questions. Just post your comment below and thanks for your putting in your two cents.
Here’s a quick video tip on water quality testing.
At the end of the video there’s a link to a free bonus we are offering to help you with your tank.
And please leave a comment and tell us your biggest challenge with testing your aquarium’s water quality. You never know – your question could be the feature of our next blog post.
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