If you have a reef ready tank with a built in overflow, make sure you check and clean your your down pipe breather tube regularly! (If you run a hang on the back overflow box, you’re insane)
I awoke at 2am this morning to the sound of a pump running dry and I ran down the hallway to my tank to find my sump running below half full. It turned out that the breather tube that vents air into the down pipe (see pic) was clogged so very little water was getting from my tank to my sump.
I quickly heated up some RO/DI in the microwave and poured it into the tube to clean out what was blocking the flow of air. 5 minutes later, everything is back to normal including my heart rate.
Checking downpipes and especially their breather vents is an essential part of tank maintenance and if you aren’t doing it regularly, add it to your routine to avoid overflows and a lost tank! Learn from my mistake and (almost) disaster!
I picked up a male Green Mandarin last week and to my delight, he paired right up with my female and they mated last night.
The mandarin’s mating dance is quite the sight to see as the male darts around the tank, looking for the female and when he finds her, the dance begins at the bottom of the tank and continues to the surface. Once on the surface, the dance is broken off and quickly begun again.
So in the spirit of Friday night, here are my mandarins mating in full HD:
When bulbs age, they lose their brightness, (called PAR) and their spectrum of color shifts. No matter how good your eyes are, you can’t see these changes.
So when you put in fresh bulbs, the new bulbs have more PAR and a different spectrum of colors.
Therefore, the MOST important thing you can do after you change your bulbs is to slowly ramp up your photo period (how long your lights are on in a day).
The first day after you change your bulbs, only leave them on for 2 hours, then every 4-5 days, add an hour, slowly building back up to your full photo period. If you see corals bleaching, or turning brown, slow down! Back off one hour and leave your lights there for a week, then add in an hour and see how your tank reacts.
(For you tank dabblers, I’ve seen fish hide all day when new bulbs are installed, so ramp up your photoperiod as well, but you can add 2 hours each day)
Why do corals react this way?
It is the reason that when you go to the beach for the first time in the summer, you burn. Your skin is not used to the bright sun, so unless you put on sunscreen, your skin burns. When you put in new bulbs that have a higher PAR rating, and a different color spectrum, your corals can’t handle the sudden exposure to this new light and they “burn” by bleaching, or turning brown.
For light bulbs in your tank, change them every 6 months, and then slowly ramp up your photo period.
Tank Dabblers: since you are running fish only tanks (better known as FOWLR): every year
Reef Enthusiasts: Every 6 months
Reef Junkies: Every 6 months
Here’s why:
As bulbs age, they loose their ability to penetrate the water down to our corals (called PAR). Bulbs also experience spectrum shifts as they age and since our corals need certain spectrums to grow, if that spectrum isn’t there then your corals don’t grow, they turn brown, or bleach and eventually die. (Spectrum shifts can also lead to nuisance algae issues)
Could you just wait until your corals tell you that your bulbs are shot? You could, but that’s like saying that you’ll change the oil in your car once it starts running poorly.
And unlike your car, corals take a long time to recover, so you’ll get to enjoy a nice brown tank until their recovery is complete. (Oh, and by then, it will probably time for another bulb change…)
By changing your bulbs every 6 months, you’ll be staying a head of a problem which can take months to recover from.
NOTE: there is one BIG secret that goes along with changing your bulbs every 6 months, and I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Waiting for your new saltwater tank to cycle can be a real P.I.T.A. For roughly a month when you first start your tank, you can’t put anything in your tank: no fish, certainly no corals, no invertebrates. So you get to stare at a dark, empty tank. Can you say BORING?
(Note: some people advocate adding damsel fish to help your tank cycle. Please don’t EVER do this as it is mean to the fish as they have to swim in toxic waste. Also, damsels get very aggressive and they are impossible to catch without tearing apart your tank).
To solve the new tank cycling problem, there are several products such as Brightwell Aquatic’s MicroBacter7, or SeaChem’s Stability that contain the bacteria your tank needs to fully cycle. Lots of people claim these bacteria-in-a-bottle products are snake oil since “bacteria can’t live in a bottle” or “you can’t speed up mother nature”.
I’m here to tell you that these products work and here is a graph of my 90 gallon tank when I was cycling it to prove it. For 2 weeks, I didn’t add any bacteria products to the tank and my cycle trudged along…slowly. Week 3 started and I couldn’t take staring at an empty tank anymore so I added Stability to my tank and 7 days later, my tank was cycled and ready for livestock.
(In the graph above, Nh3 is ammonia, NO2 is nitrites)
For $8, I recommend using Stability to help your tank cycle. The product worked great for me and if it doesn’t pan out for you, you’re out $8 and your tank will continue to cycle anyways. Minimal risk, huge potential reward.
TIP: Buy Stability (or MacroBacter7) from the largest retailer you can find. Why? Since this product contains bacteria, the shorter time it’s been on the shelves, the better. A large retailer will turn these products over quickly, helping to ensure that they are fresh.
In the saltwater tank world, bigger is better. Everyone has heard that a bigger tank is easier to keep stable, so therefore you have more success with your tank. Your fish live longer, don’t get sick as often and your corals do better.
I cannot stress this fact enough. Starting a saltwater tank as a tank dabbler, or reef enthusiast, get at least a 40 gallon tank. A 5 gallon tank might look like a great first tank, but you’ll have nightmare after nightmare dealing with the tank and you’ll quit the hobby. If you can’t afford a 40 gallon tank yet, save your money until you can. If you really want the tank, you’ll get the money together faster than you think.
AND…I assert that there is a piece of “bigger is better” that people are missing.
I see tank after tank with sumps that look like a shoe box containing a large city. The protein skimmer is on top of the phosphate reactor, which is crammed next to the return pump. With all the equipment crammed into the sump, there is little room to “go plus one“, it is hard to get skimmers cups off and on and removing your phosphate reactor to change your GFO and carbon is a chore. In other words, its a pain in the ass, so you most likely won’t do it and your tank will show it with algae outbreaks, sick fish and high nitrates and phosphates.
Instead of getting a small sump, choose the largest sump that fits under your stand. For example, my stand measures 42″ on the inside and my sump is 38″ long. I have room to work AND room to expand when I get bigger tank.
To recap:
40 gallon tank or better + biggest sump you can fit under your stand = foundation for success in the saltwater tank world.
One of the steps was to open your windows to let excess CO2 (carbon dioxide) in your house out and to let fresh 02 (oxygen) in. Here’s a graph of how my tank’s pH reacted to me opening the window in my tank room last week.
Open Window's Effect on pH
This morning I woke up to pH reading of a miserable 7.64. (Low pH – under 7.70 in your tank can lead to the stress and death of hard corals). Since I was pretty sure high CO2 levels were causing my low pH issues, I wanted to see just how bad the CO2 was in my house to check my theory.
So, I borrowed a CO2 meter from my friends @ Hydro Innovations and here’s what I found out:
Normal CO2 readings for indoor spaces is 350-1000 ppm (parts per million)
My tank room had a CO2 reading of 1854 ppm.
Ouch.
Global Warming on a mirco scale – my tank room!
There is the cause of my low pH issue. The excess CO2 in my house is getting absorbed into my tank, which is dropping my pH.
Since its now summer in southern Texas, I can’t open my windows anymore to flush out the CO2, so to solve my global warming issue, I’ll be adding plants to my fish room to suck up some CO2. I’m also getting my air conditioner checked as A/C units that aren’t pulling in enough fresh air from outside can lead to elevated CO2 levels inside your house.
(I’ve already tried running a CO2 scrubber, but I was spending $25/month in media for it, which was not cost effective at all.)
Look for a post in the future about my results in my local global warming battle!
Moving between tank personalities is not a matter of a skill set. You can be brand new into the hobby of saltwater tank keeping, and be a reef enthusiast. Likewise, you could have years of experience, and be a tank dabbler.
Why? Because your tank personality is not based on your skill set or knowledge.
Here’s an example. I have a friend who has almost 10 years of experience in the hobby, but he’s a tank dabbler because he travels a lot and doesn’t have lots of time to dedicate to his tank. His tank still looks good, but he knows he doesn’t have the time to be a reef enthusiast, so he’s firmly settled in the tank dabbler camp.
And, I have a friend who has only been in the hobby for 3 months and she’s a die hard reef enthusiast. When she has a free moment, she’s staring at her tank, or reading about the next fish she wants to get. Her skills and experience are increasing, but that doesn’t make her any closer to being a reef junkie though as she hasn’t built her life around her tank.
Your tank personality is more about your level of dedication to your tank vs. a skill set.
Read the tank personality report to find out more about tank personalities and how you can benefit from knowing your tank personality.
Running an Auto Top Off (ATO) is one of the easiest ways to keep your tank running smoothly. An ATO unit keeps a constant water level in your tank, which makes sure your protein skimmer runs correctly and keeps your salnity in check. The result: happier, healthier tank.
One of the common mistakes I see people make with ATO’s is that they spend WAY too much money on them. The biggest secret of ATOs is that you can get one rolling really cheap – so long as you aren’t a reef junkie.
Yes, there is nothing sexy about the autotopoff.com unit, but seriously, it is an ATO we are talking about here. It is going to sit in your sump, or in the back of your tank – you’re never going to see it. As long as it works (mine has worked great for the year I’ve had it), who cares what it looks like?
Now, if you are a reef junkie, you’ll want to opt for the Tunze Osmolator 3155 ($213) because you’ll be dazzled by the fact that there is no float switch involved, only a photovoltaic sensor. What does that mean for you? Bragging rights. You’ll get to say that vs. the autotopoff.com system which will let the water level drop about 1/8″ before the switch is engaged, your top off unit will activate with as little as a 1/16″ drop in water level.
But for the $148 you’d save by running an autotopoff.com unit, that’s a pretty penny you could use to pickup some rare SPS or chalices…
June 29, 2010 
Posted in Reef Enthusiast, Reef Junkie, Tank Dabbler 
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