Every tank is vastly so different, here is my findings.

[Matthew varble]

Hello, my name is matt. I work as the main servicing tech for whitlyn aquatics down in Evansville Indiana. The strangest of things happen with tanks that vary so much.

so there is about 25 weekly service tanks.
All use the same water, we provide premixed instant ocean, same thing we run in our store. We also use our rodi water. Roughly what I do per services is test; salinity, Alk, cal, mag, nitrate and po4. They all relatively stay pretty consistent and I try and match my tanks at;
Salinity 1.026
Alk 8ish
Cal 420-450
Mag 1250-1400
Po4 .06ish
Nitrate 10ish

all tanks are set up as similar as I can which includes ;
Par sand 50-90
Par mid 125ish
Par Top 250
Reactor for gfo and carbon
Ati essentials pro, converted from brs 3 part last year with good noticeable results.
Good flow, with use of wavemakers.
Protein skimmers vary in models
Some have uv sterilizers
Sand bed less then 2 inches
Decent luck on refugiums for some tanks.
Algea turf scrubbers on some tanks.
All titanium heaters
Ato’s

So here’s a couple breakdowns. Some of these tanks have full flourishing SPS Lps and softies. And literally take off with crazy growth.

Some tanks have great growth on only soft coral and lps. The SPS will stay alive for 2-4 weeks and slowly full out. I have sent icp test with nothing back. I have a theory that the troubling tanks have cats and I am always finding hair everywhere, possibly ammonia as well? Reaching for the stars on this one.

I have a particular tank that was half full of lps, after 2 years and no change in the tank or parameters, all the lps died. But now SPS are actually growing and taking off. No lps will live longer than 3 weeks.

I can go on and on, hope I don’t bore anyone lol.
A particular tank stopped growing SPS after the first year and would not grow anymore. All diead slowly. Once again icp and it was clean. 3 years couldn’t get SPS to grow. As a last ditch effort. I made a refugium, miracle mud and cheato grow additive. An SPS that I tried a month prior was white and brown looked dead for sure. Came back into an amazing beautiful coral within 2-3 weeks. Each week I was pulling out 2-3 gallons of chateo, can now grow SPS really well. He is out of
Real estate though, as he has 35-40 rose bubble tips.

I have one customer that is a once a month, his tank by parameter based should not be rocking out, high po4 .50-.60 and nitrate 25-50.
they are Supposed to do maintenance on there own and we come in as a check up. But he has torch colonies of high end prices that he has grown out from one head in one year.

some tanks grow chateo great and some for the life of me will not grow at all, no matter what I do.

I will keep updating this with weird things that tanks do.

So All I’m saying is this, every tank is so vastly different even if you do the same procedures as successful tanks.

 

[bevo5]

Interesting post because I've been thinking about this all a lot. So many people use such similar tech and water conditions, yet the results are so vastly different. It's maddening when you realize the difference between a thriving tank and a not-so-thriving tank could be something completely out of your control that you don't even know about so you can't fix it.

 

[smiley28]

Did you say cats?

 

[Miami Reef]

This is extremely interesting!

 

[G Santana]

You my friend have stated the Ultimate Truth, there is no magic formula to follow that will work for everyone.

There are things we can and cannot control.

All we can do is give the best parameters that we can and hope for the best.

Thanks for the input!!!

 

[ZoWhat]

I do not find this surprising at all.

Every tank has developed its own family of bacteria that shifts the needle all over the place.

IMO every tank is reactionary to the live rock and how certain bacteria are growing vs those that aren't

 

[Matthew varble]

Did you say cats?

It seemed the places that haven’t done that great , have cats as a common interest.

 

[mdb_talon]

It seemed the places that haven’t done that great , have cats as a common interest.

This definetely confirms my theory that cats are evil.

 

[PatW]

I do not find this surprising at all.

Every tank has developed its own family of bacteria that shifts the needle all over the place.

IMO every tank is reactionary to the live rock and how certain bacteria are growing vs those that aren't

I have concluded this also. I had cyano bacteria in my tank for a couple years and a fair bit. I tried various schemes to get rid of it. Low nutrients, higher nutrients, suction, various chemical concoctions to remove cyano and none worked. Finally, and I forget why I did this, I dumped a number of the OTC bacterial supplements for reef aquariums and the cyano vanished. I used dry rock to start my aquarium. I think I had a small diversity of bacteria flora. When I added the concoctions, the new bacteria flora outcompeted the cyano and got rid of it. After that my coralline algae took off and I have some spots of GHA but better some spots of GHA then what I had.

 

[ColoredRock]

effectively what you are saying might be... its not what is inside the water... but outside... thing that make you go hum

 

[afrokobe]

curious on your cats theory. I have cats and I always see hairs failing into the tank

 

[moz71]

Hello, my name is matt. I work as the main servicing tech for whitlyn aquatics down in Evansville Indiana. The strangest of things happen with tanks that vary so much.

so there is about 25 weekly service tanks.
All use the same water, we provide premixed instant ocean, same thing we run in our store. We also use our rodi water. Roughly what I do per services is test; salinity, Alk, cal, mag, nitrate and po4. They all relatively stay pretty consistent and I try and match my tanks at;
Salinity 1.026
Alk 8ish
Cal 420-450
Mag 1250-1400
Po4 .06ish
Nitrate 10ish

all tanks are set up as similar as I can which includes ;
Par sand 50-90
Par mid 125ish
Par Top 250
Reactor for gfo and carbon
Ati essentials pro, converted from brs 3 part last year with good noticeable results.
Good flow, with use of wavemakers.
Protein skimmers vary in models
Some have uv sterilizers
Sand bed less then 2 inches
Decent luck on refugiums for some tanks.
Algea turf scrubbers on some tanks.
All titanium heaters
Ato’s

So here’s a couple breakdowns. Some of these tanks have full flourishing SPS Lps and softies. And literally take off with crazy growth.

Some tanks have great growth on only soft coral and lps. The SPS will stay alive for 2-4 weeks and slowly full out. I have sent icp test with nothing back. I have a theory that the troubling tanks have cats and I am always finding hair everywhere, possibly ammonia as well? Reaching for the stars on this one.

I have a particular tank that was half full of lps, after 2 years and no change in the tank or parameters, all the lps died. But now SPS are actually growing and taking off. No lps will live longer than 3 weeks.

I can go on and on, hope I don’t bore anyone lol.
A particular tank stopped growing SPS after the first year and would not grow anymore. All diead slowly. Once again icp and it was clean. 3 years couldn’t get SPS to grow. As a last ditch effort. I made a refugium, miracle mud and cheato grow additive. An SPS that I tried a month prior was white and brown looked dead for sure. Came back into an amazing beautiful coral within 2-3 weeks. Each week I was pulling out 2-3 gallons of chateo, can now grow SPS really well. He is out of
Real estate though, as he has 35-40 rose bubble tips.

I have one customer that is a once a month, his tank by parameter based should not be rocking out, high po4 .50-.60 and nitrate 25-50.
they are Supposed to do maintenance on there own and we come in as a check up. But he has torch colonies of high end prices that he has grown out from one head in one year.

some tanks grow chateo great and some for the life of me will not grow at all, no matter what I do.

I will keep updating this with weird things that tanks do.

So All I’m saying is this, every tank is so vastly different even if you do the same procedures as successful tanks.

I have been saying this too. What works for one doesn’t another and I believe the battle of Baxter strains drive this. Just my theory. I have tried things that other swear by and didn’t do a thing. For one example I have added biopellets in a reactor almost 2 years ago and doesn’t do anything. Still have the same amount of pellets tumbling never added any more after initial dose. Tumbled fast for months tumbled slow for months nothing so obviously could not get that bacteria going but NOPOX finally did. Hopefully something has changed as my 3 year old monti cap frag is finally growing after 3 years. Stayed alive just didn’t grow. I don’t blame lights, alk or cal levels I blame bacteria strains in tank

 

[ColoredRock]

Baxter strains

Can you elaborate?

 

[Miami Reef]

These tanks were my favorite.

You are seriously making me want to get my tank mature and old so I can experience a beauty like how these tanks look!

Repeatable success! You sound like a great company!

 

[moz71]

Can you elaborate?

Yes. Fat fingers. Meant bacteria strains!

 

[Matthew varble]

curious on your cats theory. I have cats and I always see hairs failing into the tank

So for what ever reason the three tanks that’s can’t grow sps, always seem to have cat hair and accidents around the house. Definitely not proven, but it’s just odd that the tanks that only do okay, have cats. One in particular has a couple cats, and there is cat hai every week on everything inside the cabinet.

 

[Matthew varble]

So this isn’t the beast tank we service, but it’s on my favorite, because it’s in a dentist office and remind me of finding Nemo. Haha

 

[Matthew varble]

I forgot to add this tank, this is a 10 year old established reef. And is definitely one of the most stable ones we service. The lighting was probably the biggest flaw, it had 2 marine orbit, so we added two 100w led blue bars. The canopy was only 4 inches or so.

 

[blstravler]

Do you know of the cats litter boxes are close to the tanks?

 

[JumboShrimp]

Sooooooooo.... some of these tanks have the X-Factor, some have the Cat-Factor, some have the Voodoo-Factor, and some have No-Factor at all? lol