kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[zhasan]

Originally Posted by kien

Thanks :-) It has seen better days but it's alright. Could be worse

This tank has seen all sorts of maintenance schedules over the past 3 years. When I started the tank I was quite religious with the upkeep and would clean the glass every other day and do weekly water changes. I also emptied my skimmer cup every two or three days and frequently made batches of Calcium, Alkalinity and home made fish food.

As time went on I started to get really busy with other things and the tank maintenance took a hit. Everything got pushed back and some chores got skipped The tank still hung in there but some of my more delicate corals started to go, sadly.

This past spring I ran into some equipment failures which completely demotivated me because I just didn't have time to fix or replace the equipment and so mostly all of my corals got nuked. My fish were all still fine though so I tweaked my maintenance down to the bare minium. 1. Filling my auto fish feeder, 2. refilling the auto top off reservoir, 3. Cleaning the skimmer cup every weekend. That's pretty much all I did for the past 7 months or so. All of my fish and invertebrates did just fine on just that schedule.

I guess the moral of the story (and the answer to your question is), it depends :-) That is, it depends how complex you want your system to be and how much time and effort you *want* to put in.

Sorry to hear about all your corals... So I'm assuming you had an almost fish only tank for the past 7 months? And personally I'm hoping to have a very simple reef setup and not give in to buy fish or corals that might cause me to spend an hour or two a day on the tank. I'm expecting 15 mins everyday together with couple of hours of detailed maintenance/cleaning on weekends. Hopefully that'll suffice!

Btw, thats a very nice looking stuffed tang there! How do you treat for ich? Do you quarantine or just give meds in the main tank?

[kien]

Originally Posted by zhasan

Sorry to hear about all your corals... So I'm assuming you had an almost fish only tank for the past 7 months? And personally I'm hoping to have a very simple reef setup and not give in to buy fish or corals that might cause me to spend an hour or two a day on the tank. I'm expecting 15 mins everyday together with couple of hours of detailed maintenance/cleaning on weekends. Hopefully that'll suffice!

Btw, thats a very nice looking stuffed tang there! How do you treat for ich? Do you quarantine or just give meds in the main tank?

Ya, it was mostly fish only for the past 8 months or so :-) Well, fish only with clams, a Goniopora and a yellow gorgonia.

You shouldn't need to spend 15mins a day on the tank. I've never had to spend 15mins a day on my tank. There is nothing that I do every day except maybe look at the tank. Every 2 to 3 days I run the magfloat across the glass to clean it. Every 4 to 6 days I empty the skimmer cup. Every 2 weeks I do a water change. Every month I replace media (GFO and Carbon).

On a random infrequent basis:
* I top up my auto-fish feeder.
* Feed frozen foods
* Give fish a sheet of nori.

Yearly: change light bulbs, clean out skimmer body and all pumps.

Ya the Powder Blue is a fatty. I think I treated for ich with meds like 8 years ago with my first saltwater tank. Since then I have never treated for ich, ever. In my experience what has worked better is to keep the fish healthy with frequent feedings and occasionally with garlic extract. I have had a Regal/Blue Tang for over 5 years that would occasionally get ich but would never spread to other fish or get out of control. It usually clears up. They normally get ich when they are stressed and their stress coat (slime) is not as thick as it normally is. Once they are destressed and built up their stress coat again they are better able to repel ich I find. So anyway, that REgal Tang that used to get ich ALL THE TIME doesn't get ich anymore. Now a days its the Powder Blue Tang that gets ich when he is stressed. But again, I don't treat him. I just feed him more garlic and more variety of foods like flake, pellets, red and green nori, mixed fish mesh so that he continues to eat A LOT. This helps to destress him so that he can build up his stress coat again.

Having said all that, if your fish is really ill and has ich then you definitely need to do something about it, like QT and treating. Not necessarily treating the ich but treating whatever is causing the ich. You know your fish is really ill if they are not eating. If they have ich and are still eating well then you can usually ride out the ich just fine. If they are not eating and are lethargic then they definitely need attention and possibly in a QT with meds.

Many times fish will get ich, will stop eating and then die and people think, oh, my fish got ich and died from ich. In my experience this isn't the case. Usually it is something else that you can't see that is making your fish sick causing them to be severely stressed, thus losing their protective slime coat, thus letting in ich and even more parasites. It's all downhill from there if they continue to stop eating.

And also, sometimes people see spots of ich on their fish and immediately have a knee jerk reaction and think, OH CRAP I need that fish out of there now and pump him full of meds! Often this knee jerk reaction is worse and dooms the fish :-(