I've had a reef tank for about 5 years. My current semi successful and sumped tank has been up for 2 years. I got into acros because of Randy from BRS. At first I wasn't big on water changes because I was using distilled and it was a pain in the ass.
then I got a rodi setup and wasn't big on water changes because I thought it was cool and "smart" to just run your parameters air tight. This taught me a lot about dosing, cause, effect, and testing. My parameters don't really shift at all. I'd achieved stability through a year of testing daily. I think everyone should do this at some point.
One day I decided if I'm going to do water changes at all, they should be substantial so that maybe it'll actually do something. This was also a pain in the ass because I don't have things set up too efficiently.
Recently, an older guy came by to buy some frags and pointed out that my tank is the percent size to just do a 5 gallon bucket weekly. (100ish gallons) I thought about that and decided maybe he's right, so I started doing it. So far so good. I can get it done in under 5 minutes, with my kids running around. Wife yelling at me for always working on the tank ect ect. Smooth sailing. Also, I'm noticing that I can glue a stick to a frag plug and in under 4 weeks they're all puddling.
it's healthy to change your mind on things, but you have to know when to listen and when to not. I there's a LOT of uneducated and mis informed info on the internet.
if you switch salts, change lights or lighting schedule, start and stop dosing extracurricular additives, change your parameters every time you see a BRS video or read a reef2reef post you're gonna have a bad time.
then I got a rodi setup and wasn't big on water changes because I thought it was cool and "smart" to just run your parameters air tight. This taught me a lot about dosing, cause, effect, and testing. My parameters don't really shift at all. I'd achieved stability through a year of testing daily. I think everyone should do this at some point.
One day I decided if I'm going to do water changes at all, they should be substantial so that maybe it'll actually do something. This was also a pain in the ass because I don't have things set up too efficiently.
Recently, an older guy came by to buy some frags and pointed out that my tank is the percent size to just do a 5 gallon bucket weekly. (100ish gallons) I thought about that and decided maybe he's right, so I started doing it. So far so good. I can get it done in under 5 minutes, with my kids running around. Wife yelling at me for always working on the tank ect ect. Smooth sailing. Also, I'm noticing that I can glue a stick to a frag plug and in under 4 weeks they're all puddling.
it's healthy to change your mind on things, but you have to know when to listen and when to not. I there's a LOT of uneducated and mis informed info on the internet.
if you switch salts, change lights or lighting schedule, start and stop dosing extracurricular additives, change your parameters every time you see a BRS video or read a reef2reef post you're gonna have a bad time.
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