Travis: What’s up guys? Welcome back to FishOfHex. My name is Travis. Today, we’re going to be talking all about stability within your reef tank. In this video, I’m going to break it up into a couple different sections. First, we’re going to briefly talk about some of the benefits of having a stable reef. Next, we’re going to move into three of the main water parameters you should focusing on and go into detail on how to manage them and keep them stable throughout the lifespan of your system. Finally, we’re going to talk about some of the benefits and other things to consider when keeping a stable reef tank or building a new system. Let’s go ahead and get started.
What does stability actually mean within our hobby? The definition is to keep something stable. I know that might sound simple, but what that really means is taking all the water parameters that you’re responsible for. Just a few are calcium, alkalinity, salinity, temperature, pH, nitrates, phosphates. Those are some basic ones. Keeping them in the appropriate range and as stable within that range fluctuation to better the chances of success within the hobby. That’s what I consider stability to me.
There are many benefits to having a stable reef environment such as less coral death, faster coral growth, better coloration, better polyp extension, having healthier fish, having a bigger, more robust bacterial population to process waste and overall just a happier thriving reef tank. With knowing those benefits, we as hobbyists should try to create an environment that is stable from the very beginning. I’ll get into that here in a second. First, I want to go over the three main water parameters that you should be focusing on and go through some ways to keep them stable.
The first one is going to be temperature. I personally like to keep my tanks at 79 degrees with only a half a degree fluctuation, which is monitored and controlled by my Neptune Apex Aquarium Controller. When it comes to temperature, you can get away with anything between 77 and 80 degrees. I’ve seen people even having the reef tanks down to 75. I’ve never personally done that, but I have seen people do it and actually be pretty successful. What I like to do is just pick a degree that you’re comfortable with. Of course, you don’t want to be at the extreme of either one. I want to stay at 75 and I wouldn’t try to stay at 80. I’d pick something in the middle maybe a 78 or a 79. Personally, I like to stay at that 78.8 to 79.2. Again, the Apex will control the fluctuation and simply turn on and off my heaters.
Let’s just say that you’re just starting out and you don’t want to invest the money into an aquarium controller. I completely understand. What do you do instead? I recommend you go out and spend as much money as you can afford on a high-quality heater with a reliable thermostat and has a pretty good rating within our community. The reason why you want to do this is the thermostat which is just a very small part of the heater is what controls and dictates when the heater turns on and off. If you buy something cheap on eBay for $10 or $15, there’s a good chance that that thermostat will fail. When that fails, it’s either going to fail in an off position or worse, it’s going to fail in an on position. Better yet, to have the tank be colder opposed to it boiling with the heater just not shutting off. Again, buying something that’s a little bit higher quality will be better for you in the long run until you’re ready to invest some money into an aquarium controller.
Regardless of the type of heater you’re using or your aquarium controller, I recommend that you test your water temperature at least once per month with a secondary source, an accurate one at that. Finding a temperature probe that is within a half a degree of accuracy is something that I would look for. Again, it can be a little expensive, but it’s really good to do this at least once per month just to make sure you can catch the calibration issues that you run into the longer you go without recalibrating a probe on an aquarium controller. You might also catch your thermostat going out or not being as accurate on your heaters. Yes, using a secondary source is something I definitely recommend that you do.
Another thing you can do to aid in temperature stability is to use multiple heaters. The reason why you do this is if one was to ever fail, the second one would at least be able to keep up with the temperature to the point where you’ll catch that dip in temperature on your graph on your controller or you’ll notice it during your testing and then be able to go and look and find that dead heater and replace it accordingly. This has happened a couple times on my frag system. Basically, I use three cheap heaters that I have laying around that I picked up on eBay. Again, they’re connected to the aquarium controller. When one dies, I noticed that fluctuation. Usually, it stays pretty stable between the 78.8 and 79.2.
If I notice it is dropping down to maybe 78.7, that means that either I left the door open downstairs and it’s freezing cold outside or one of the heaters has died and those two that are left are just not keeping up with the temperature. Then, I’ll go in there and test, see if the light comes on. Feel them, see if they’re getting warm and then I just replace it when I need to. A quick recap on keeping your temperature stable. You want to pick a temperature and stick with it, try to stay within half a degree fluctuation if you can. The aquarium controller, buy higher quality equipment if possible. Test and calibrate often and use multiple heaters.
Let’s go to move on to our second water parameter and that is salinity. Keeping salinity or the salt level within your reef tank is actually pretty easy. There are some basic concepts that I’ll go over here, but keeping it stable is one of the easiest of the three that we have. Having a reliable ATO or auto top off system is your best bet for consistent top offs of fresh water. There are many different price ranges and qualities that you can look at. I recommend, again with the heater, just buying the best and highest quality that you possibly can. Preferably, one that has a backup system like the tunze that I have has the main eye that dictates the water level.
If the pump was to ever stay on for whatever reason, the secondary float would actually trigger and turn off that pump, so I didn’t overflow my sump freshwater or dilute my system to the point that I had way too much fresh water which dropped the salinity. Again, you just want to get the best you can and afford. If you have to top off with hand on a small system until you can afford it, just keep up with it, check it every day, you’ll be good to go. As a reminder, make sure you top off your tank with fresh reverse osmosis water and not salt water. In the beginning, when people are just starting out, sometimes they get confused and think the water’s being evaporated, the salts gone and they accidentally top off the salt water. Over time when doing that, you’re eventually going to increase the salinity to the point where it will kill your fish and coral. Always top off a fresh RODI water.
Let’s go to move on to testing your salinity and how this impacts the stability of your reef tank. Most people who are just starting off will buy all their stuff at the local fish store. 9 out of 10 times, they have what we call hydrometer. It’s very cheap. The store clerk will tell you it works. Yes, it does work to a certain extent, but by all means, it’s not something that I recommend to anybody who’s looking to keep a consistent salinity level within the reef tank. The reason for this is it doesn’t take much for it to not work. Air bubble will get in there, maybe it’s just a crappy brand or bad bill quality. It will throw off. You’ll think you won’t have enough salt when you do, it’s just not a good thing. I definitely recommend that you pass on that and at least upgrade to the refractometer.
One thing you want to note about this is over the last couple of years and I’ve mentioned this before, the build quality of some of these have gone downhill and in turn, the reason why I don’t use that anymore. If you decide to use the refractometer, I recommend that you calibrate it at least every single or every other time that you’re going to use it to make sure that it’s accurate and you’re getting a good reading. If you want to go a step further and have an accurate system, I would go with the Milwaukee. Again, it’s a little bit more money up front, but I’ll tell you right now, having three systems in here, testing salinity quite often, this is awesome. Especially when I’m going to clients’ houses and doing all the stuff.
Bringing this with me knowing that I have an accurate reading and I don’t fiddle around with the refractometer, it’s just a nice thing to have. I calibrate mine once per month with distilled water. It’s good to go. I keep it in its case and it’s awesome. If you have the money, buy that, if not, then definitely stick with the refractometer and avoid the hydrometer if you can.
Let’s go and do a quick recap on keeping your salinity stable. The first thing you want to make sure you have is a reliable ATO system, preferably something with a backup in place to prevent it from overflowing the tank. If you can’t afford an ATO system, make sure you’re topping off by hand at least every day or every other day to keep that fluctuation to a minimum. Second, make sure you’re always topping off of fresh RODI water. Thirdly, make sure you’re testing with something accurate like a refractometer or a Milwaukee. Moving on to our third water parameter. That water parameter is alkalinity and by far the most important one that I ever deal with within my reef tank. I feel that this parameter has to be stable because the smallest fluctuation can cause devastating effects on an SPS and Acropora reef tank. If you’re doing with something that’s soft coral or you just have a little bit LPS, you probably don’t have to go as full in and/or extreme as I do and keeping it stable and consistent. If you’re looking for long-term success into progress into harder corals, I would suggest really focusing on keeping your alkalinity stable.
How do you do that? The first thing you want to do is test with a reliable test kit like a Haena checker and you want to do it often. If you’re just starting out and you want to really get a hang of how your tank is reacting to water changes or just start at dosing to part. You want to test your alkalinity at least once or twice per week. Once you get something stable, like you’re using a calcium reactor, like I do here on the 300. I only really test once a week just to make any minor adjustment based on the alkalinity fluctuation. I personally like to keep mine at 9.5 and that’s it. I don’t move from that. If it dips down just a little bit, that when I’m going to make a little adjustment to the calcium reactor and vice versa if it gets up too high. I’ll bring it back a little bit. It’s just one of those things that I test again every single week to make sure that it stays consistent.
Just like temperature, alkalinity has an acceptable range. That is between 7 and 11 DKH. You don’t want to be at either end of that. You don’t be hovering around 7 and then hovering around 11, teeter-tottering back and forth. You don’t want to be doing this. Again, just like temperature, pick a number, stick with it and see how your tank reacts. If you want to jump around from say 8 to 9.5, do that slowly over several days. If you have SPS tank, you want to do it over maybe a couple of weeks, if not longer to help with that fluctuation and not to cause any unnecessary stress to your coral. Now for me, 9.5 I've always seen the best coloration, growth polyp extension, overall happier reef tank. I have no reason to go down to seven or eight or 8.5 or anything like that. 9.5 is what I stick at and it's worked out great so far. Okay, let's go and talk about a couple of things that can impact the level of your alkalinity. Now the first thing is going to be water changes and doing water changes with salt that is not really around your desired or targeted alkalinity level. Now, what I mean by that is using something that has a seven DKH salt in a tank that you want to stay at 9.5 that could be a problem if you're doing 50% water changes every couple of weeks.
Now, if you want to continue to use that salt, you're going to have to break those water changes up to smaller ones to help with that fluctuation, but what you should do is you should find a salt that matches your desired alkalinity level. For me, I used the RPM because it's about nine out of the box, I like to stay at 9.5. I only do a 20% water change about once per month to remove to the tritus so there is no ill effects or fluctuations based on that amount of water being changed. The next big thing that can impact your alkalinity level is dosing it. That's where the calcium reactor, kalkwasser and even two part.
I talked about dosing two part in my previous video last week and basically to sum it up, you want to dose equal portions of calcium and alkalinity at all times. The calcium reactor automatically does that, so it does the kalkwasser. When you do two-part, you're responsible for dosing equal parts calcium, equal parts alkalinity. That allows the balance to stay within the water and you don't have to worry about having that fluctuation. Now, another thing to consider when dosing two-part is spreading that dose out as much as you can. For example, my 125 before I took it down required 220 milliliters every single day of both calcium and alkalinity and I dose that over a 24 hour period.
I spread everything out, dose 24 times a day of both elements allowing it to get into the tank and be used but not to the point where I'm dosing too much and it causes a spike in alkalinity. Again, dosing by hand or by dosing pump try to spread it out as much as you can and whatever works best for your budget or your schedule. The last thing I want to talk about regarding alkalinity is keeping your equipment clean and basically making sure it's always working properly. When it comes to calcium reactors, this is the adjustment valve. You want to make sure that that's cleaned, not getting clogged. On your dosing pumps, you want to make sure there's not any kind of salt creep or corrosion getting on the end of the tube. You also want to make sure that your pump is calibrated about every six months to a year, depending on the brand and the quality of the pump that you purchased. Also just making sure that your media is topped off on the reactor. Your PH probe is calibrated, all that good stuff. You want to make sure you stay on top of it to ensure that you're having a consistent, accurate alkalinity being dosed regardless of what method you choose.
Okay, so a quick recap on alkalinity, makes you pick a number between seven and 11 DKH. Stick with it and if you want to make any adjustments say from eight to 9.5 make sure you do that slowly over several days to ensure that there isn't any spikes or fluctuations and causing unnecessary stress. Next, you want to go ahead and make sure that your dosing equal parts calcium, equal parts alkalinity. Keep on top of your equipment maintenance and don't forget to test often that make sure that you are being consistent in that you're DKH is stable. Okay, so moving onto the last part of this video and that is some things to think about and consider when setting up a reef tank and managing one long-term.
The first thing here is the more water volume you have the more stable the system's going to be and more forgiving it's going to be when you make mistakes like overdosing or adding too much food. The numerous mistakes that we make here in the hobby will be more forgiving on a bigger system like the 300 opposed to my 30-gallon here that I also have in the fish room. The next thing you want to think about is whenever you do anything. you want to start slow. That's everything. That's dosing. Adding fish, adding coral. If you're not familiar on how the tank is going to be affected by something, it's better to go slow and win the race than to go fast, fail and never finish it. Just keep that in mind when making any changes to your tank.
The last thing I can recommend for you is to always under-dose opposed to accidentally overdosing. That goes for two-part, that goes for adjusting calcium reactors, kalkwasser, food supplements, coral food, whatever it is. It's always best to go under the recommended amount than to accidentally overdose your tank because to add more is a lot easier than trying to get it all out via water changes just further causing stress, instability and wasting money. That's about it guys. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have any questions, please put into the comments section. If you liked it, definitely get it a thumbs up and if you have anything you want to add to the list, feel free to also put that in the comment section. Until next time, I'll see you guys later. Peace.
