Do we scrape away our best diagnostic tool every day?

[cheefreef985]

Am I crazy or does our tank glass tell us a whole bunch of stuff right out in the open?


We drop hundreds of dollars on test kits, dosing systems, ICP tests — and then every day we scrape off what might be the most real-time indicator in the whole tank without giving it a second look. I'm not saying throw out your test kits. But hear me out.

The stuff growing on your glass right now — the color, the texture, whether it's flat and painted-on or stringy and reaching into the water column — I think it's actually talking. Dark and wispy? My tank is asking for a water change before the nitrates even show it. Bright green, almost like someone painted it on? I've been overfeeding. Pale dusty gold? Something's off.

…..is this obvious? Maybe it's obvious. But every time I bring this up in person someone kind of nods along and then goes right back to talking about their skimmer.

We treat the glass like a window. What if it's actually a dashboard?

What patterns have you noticed? Does the character of your growth — how fast it comes back, what it looks like, how it changes — actually track with what's happening in your water? Cyano vs. dinos early on? Phosphate vs. nitrate showing up differently?

Feels like this lives in people's heads and never gets written down. Curious what this community has figured out.

 

[steveschuerger]

I’ll agree with caveats. Tests are important but so is observational data from what you observe. But in my case I’d say it’s the day to day observations of the coral and any other livestock. Much less the glass.