Reef Builders - The Source for Reef Keeping Information

Discussing the 4 most common mistakes made by new reef keepers and narrowing it down to four was a challenge. Most of you advanced aquarists out there should already know these common mistakes. Nevertheless, it is a great review for those of us that are reef veterans. Even better for those of you just starting out, learn from our mistakes.

4. Listening to your LFS
Some of us got bit by the saltwater bug by your local fish store. They of course supplied you with beautiful reef tanks for your eyes to feast upon. We of course saw that, and never looked back. You were at your local fish store for advice, carefully trying to remember everything they tell you, your ears soaking it all up. You usually leave with a boxes full of new equipment that we are drooling about, most likely big no-no’s in saltwater aquaria like canister filters, bio wheel’s and the occasional under-gravel filter for the local fish store owner who actually is daring enough to give you one of those.
They suggest getting all these supplements, buffers, additives and compounds that “you must have”, giving you specific times of the week to dose each. If you did, just throw them all out, they aren’t needed just yet or maybe not even at all. Keep it mind that all of this is helping the store owner take a longer vacation when you need to talk about why your tank just crashed a few months from now.
In short, please take what your local-fish-store says with a grain of salt, or sand for that mater. They are in the business to make money by selling you things you don’t need. Unless you have an established reef tank with pounds upon pounds of small polyp stony corals (SPS) you won’t need a ton of supplements, you might even need supplements if you had a SPS tank.
To illustrate, we had a member get this long list of items with specific dosage requirements from a LFS. That LFS gave him a schedule, now please keep in mind this is for a 130 gallon, with no SPS corals (one of the most demanding) and about 5 corals max.
Weekly Supplements – For 130 Gallon
Monday
Kent Essential Elements…………….. ……………. 1 ½ capfuls…….. Into Sump
Kent Coral-Vite………………… ……………………. . 2 capfuls………… Into Sump
Phyto-Feast (in refrigerator)………… ………….. 7 capfuls………… Inside tank

Tuesday
Reef Magnesium……………. ……………………. … 6 teaspoons…… Into Sump
Reef Strontium……………. ……………………. …… 6 ½ capfuls…….. Into Sump
Kent MicroVert……………. ……………………. …… 2 ½ capfuls…….. Inside Tank

Wednesday
Kent Lugol’s Solution…………….. ………………… 6 drops………….. Into Sump
Phyto-Feast (in refrigerator)………… ………….. 7 capfuls………… Inside tank

Thursday
Kent Coral-Vite………………… ……………………. . 2 capfuls………… Into Sump
Kent Essential Elements…………….. ……………. 1 ½ capfuls…….. Into Sump
Kent MicroVert……………. ……………………. …… 2 ½ capfuls…….. Inside Tank

Friday
Reef Magnesium……………. ……………………. … 6 teaspoons…… Into Sump
Reef Strontium……………. ……………………. …… 6 ½ capfuls…….. Into Sump
Phyto-Feast (in refrigerator)………… ………….. 7 capfuls………… Inside tank

Saturday
Kent MicroVert……………. ……………………. …… 2 ½ capfuls…….. Inside Tank

Sunday
Phyto-Feast (in refrigerator)………… ………….. 7 capfuls………… Inside tank
Water Change Every Week………………… …….. 20 gallons………. First 2 Months
Water Change Every Other Week………………. 20 gallons………. After 2 Months

This isn’t needed for a tank with such a low calcium need. Most of the corals are all large polyp stony (LPS) corals which are much less demanding in their calcium, magnesium, and strontium levels then small polyp stony (SPS) corals. To illustrate what all this dosing does in a tank that doesn’t have any demanding corals soaking it all up just look in your shower. What happens when you don’t clean your shower out? Usually after a very short while scum starts to appear on the tiles, mold, and other bacteria start to grow. This is a rough illustration of what happens in a reef tank. All that build up eventually must crash, known by reef veterans as a “tank crash”.
For the record, Sunday is the only day that the LFS got right, regular water changes with reverse osmosis water is the secret to reef keeping. There are few exceptions. Granted you might hear some person say they never do water changes and their tank looks great. Ask to see their tank, odds are it won’t look great.
The good news is the tank owner in our example is taking steps to correct his issue. Hopefully, he won’t have a dreaded tank crash from all this
unnecessary dosing.

3. Canister Filters/Under-gravel Filters/ and the Crushed Coral Obsession
Odds are you might have upgraded from freshwater. In freshwater it is common to use gravel on top of an under-gravel filter. It is a cheap and inefficient way to filter your water. However, it is very popular and sometimes can be carried over to saltwater, which will not work. For an under-gravel filter to work you will need a larger substrate to cover the filter for it to work. Live sand is out of the question, your going to need a form of crushed coral. By adding crushed coral to a saltwater tank you are just asking for trouble!
Crushed coral is a NO3 (nitrate) factory. How so? Everything you put into your tank will eventually settle on the bottom layer unless you have crazy flow going. Crushed coral catches all the detritus, which includes food, feces from fish, dead plants, dead fish, anything else. That settles on the bottom down deep in the crushed coral. You could compare crushed coral to a large septic tank. Imagine having a septic tank as your layer of carpet…gross right?
You could of course use crushed coral if you really wanted to. Keeping crushed coral clean would be a giant chore, constantly having to vacuum it just like a fresh water tank, mixing new saltwater to replace the water that you vacuumed out. Whew. What a chore!
Why is live sand so much better? It really doesn’t even have to be live, you can get a cup full of live sand from some other tank and it would be great in a few weeks. The secret is the particle size of the live sand compared to the crushed coral. With sand, which has a much smaller particle size, snails, crabs and other animals and inverts can eat all that stuff that you really don’t want down there. With crushed coral, with a much larger particle size, your snails, and crabs, inverts have a hard time getting to all that good stuff which they like to eat, which it won’t compact enough to form an anaerobic area to allow de-nitrification and the ultimate removal of waste as atmospheric nitrogen, which is what you want to have happen in a constant cycle.
Are canister filters any different? Not really. They have the same problem that crushed coral has, except instead of it happening at the bottom of your tank it happens in that canister when all that media gets chock full of fish decay, feces, food, etc. The same can be said with power filters.

2. Water Quality & Water Testing

The biggest part of your aquarium is water. Aquarium means “is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. water” Water is the single most important ingredient to any saltwater aquarium. The quality of the water you are putting into your tank will most likely determine the success of your reef aquarium, baring a few other factors that I have already mentioned. By using tap water you are asking for your tank to be a failure. It is going to happen, it just is a mater of time. Tap water is a reef builders number one enemy, it is the quickest way for your tank to fail.
Using a reverse osmosis filter is the preferred and recommend choice in keeping a saltwater reef aquarium. Reverse osmosis water is free of any contaminates that could effect your fish, corals or inverts. It is designed to remove dissolved solids such as salts and minerals (lead/mercury/copper) out of the water. Those would kill and destroy your corals, or cause an outbreak of algae blooms in your aquarium. Using reverse osmosis water will make your life much easier and if starting a saltwater aquarium is a must.
Keeping records of your water by testing each and every water parameter is a must too in keeping a successful reef tank. I recommend testing for PH, NO2, NO3, PO4, Salinity, MG, KH. Please don’t buy cheap dip strips or other cheap brands. Good brands for testing your aquarium water are: Seachem, Elos, and Salifert. I regularly test at least before and after water changes which I do every month, keep in mind that my tank has been established and if you have a newer tank, I would test more often, especially before adding fish, corals, or inverts.

1. Not having enough time

Time. We all seem to have the same amount, or so that is what scientists say. Problem is we all don’t have enough. We get busy or something comes up, we might go on vacation, or get stuck at work. The result? Our tank suffers.
Keeping a saltwater tank is no easy task, sure it might be easy if you understand it, but it isn’t easy because it will take a large portion of your time. Unless you have a very automated tank expect to spend at the bare minimum of 15 minutes a day working on your tank. Have a larger reef tank? Expect to spend more time, in fact the larger the tank the longer you can expect to spend working on your tank.
If you decided to keep a saltwater reef tank, then that’s great. I really hope you succeed in your endeavors. But please for the sake of all aquatic life out there, calculate if you can afford to devote the time in making your reef aquarium successful. Your fish, corals and inverts will be happy if you did.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Reef Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.