How Can Keeping A Saltwater Aquarium Be Easy?
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 at
2:40 am
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.
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