Testing water

[Sharkbait-huhaha]

Originally Posted by DKoKoMan

Just out of curiosity, how is your Saddle Valentini Puffer with your Torch & Hammers? I love these little buggers but I am worried they will nip everything to death

I'm one of the fortunate ones. He's my favourite fish as well, such a funny personality. I've had him for 2 years now. He does not nip on any corals. But I do not take a chance, and feed the tank 2-3 times a day. Keep him fed so he doesn't go looking for something to nip at!

[mseepman]

So as I indicated early in this thread my tank is great evidence on the importance of regular testing. I have redundancy for just about everything, including a whole home generator just for the tank and peripherals, but due to a power outage my doser switched off for some reason and my tank was gobbling a lot of ALK every day. My testing regime was once a month and so I didn't notice the ALK drop until it had gone down to 4. As Rich suggested I tried to fix it maybe a little too fast and with the coral deaths coming on strong, suddenly I was also fighting other issues caused by the deaths. Hair algae showed up (something i'd never had a speck of in 4 years). I was so focussed on the ALK issue that I failed to properly adjust the other two and further chaos ensued. I've lost most of my corals, some of which I couldn't even fit between my eurobrace without breaking them apart and my tank is 3' wide. Testing once or twice a week would have spared me a pretty crappy year in reefing and you can bet I do it now (at least alk).