Spotlight: Tanks of the Masters

[Myka]

Yeah, there are lots of methods that do little to no water changes. It all depends on what your expectations are.

[Dearth]

Originally Posted by Myka

Yeah, there are lots of methods that do little to no water changes. It all depends on what your expectations are.

Very true and well put

I've made no secret that I do a monthly water change and that I rarely test my water but I also did my homework per se I have purposely went with relatively easy corals to keep and hardy fish. My tank is a softie tank as I know I am not setup to take difficult coral or high maintenance fish.

The caveat to all the above is to do your homework and research endlessly because it is very easy to kill a tank with kindness or have a revolving door of dead coral and fish and algae up the yin yang.

It is easy to over tinker with your tank and not tinker enough and I know there are those that are annoyed to no end with me because I am laid back about water changes and maintenance but then again I have a well established tank what I do works for me and if it bothers them it's their problem not mine.

[corallivore]

I sometimes feel like early on, the hobby tricked me a bit.

The more $ you spend, the more pressure you are under to keep it all going.

There was a time, before mortgages and property taxes, that I enjoyed going out and spending the money, learning about all the new developments and technologies but the reality of life has moved the tank down my list of fiscal priorities.

I would definitely say I've had more impressive tanks in the past when I was a lot more involved but my rsm250 now is the best I've had as far as value in vs value out.

Maybe should start a thread for those of us who appreciate low maintenance systems to show off and compare.

[Dearth]

I think the mislead comes from when a new comer or inexperienced reefer hears or reads about a low maintenance system and that xx person runs xx parameters and does this or doesn't do that will not understand that in order to get where that person's tank is that person spent likely a couple of years getting their tank to that point hell mine took just over 2 years to get where I was happy with it and another year of fine tuning.

Unfortunately I think that is the misperceptions that newcomers don't hear or read about the trial and error and the time it took to get that system to where it was happy and might think that in a year or less they will have this awesome system. If that were only the case.....

[corallivore]

I sort of feel the opposite.

This hobby is made out to be WAY harder than it actually is.

Like every tank is supposed to be an ultra low nutrient sps quality system.

You don't HAVE to do a lot of the things that are marketed to reefers, especially new reefers.

I sort of feel like there is this kind of ill placed pride that comes from spending so much, testing like crazy and constantly tweaking equipment and parameters that many reefers are imbued with.

I think for some, that pride is really what the hobby is about...or at least that what it becomes about.

I have been really taken aback by how seemingly offended some reefers get at the idea that you can do just as well with less.

There is definitely some diminishing returns on the amount of time and money you put into a tank.

That being said, I wouldn't put any Tyree or reef raft or any but a few high end corals in my tank because I know they wouldn't last and if your end goal is to be able to keep the rarest or coral, especially with SPS, you are definitely committed to being more involved and having more equipment.

[Frogger]

It was this article that partly led me to try to raise my nitrates. Be careful when trying to raise your nitrates artificially because it can cause your phosphates to plummet which can lead to catastrophic results. You can go from poor colors (low nitrates) to stressed corals (dieback)

Most of these masters have had their tanks running for a long time and have a high bioload, they manage the algae problems with using a lot of algae eating animals, manual removal and by covering every inch of space with corals therefore not giving the algae a chance to take a strong foothold.

[DKoKoMan]

Good read. I have some take aways to implement on my tank moving forward.