How much time do you spend on your tank?

ReefJCB · Jul 18, 2020

So I’m doing some tank maintenance this weekend and got me thinking about how much time I spend on my tank each week.

Daily fish feeding
Cleaning glass every other day
Cleaning filter socks every 3 days
Weekly water change
Weekly aiptasia hunting (UGH)
Weekly coral spot feeding
Weekly tinkering
Cleaning pumps every ~3 months
Cleaning sump every ~6 months

Then there’s misc stuff like:
Forum research
QTing fish
Frag swaps
Home made fish food
Im sure I’m missing stuff, and this doesn’t even count the time I spend LOOKING at it, but realistically I think I’m spending at least 5 hours a week on my tank. Curious to see what others are doing.

Nick Steele · Jul 18, 2020

I’d say I’m about 2-3hrs nothing special but I keep it clean.

Ippyroy · Jul 18, 2020

I work about 80 hours a week until mid October. Until then my tank is mostly on its own. Apex makes it all possible.

Billldg · Jul 18, 2020

I agree with @Ippyroy, this is my busy time of the year and I work anywhere from 50 to 90 hours a week. It just depends on whether or not I am on call, and since I picked up a 2nd on call to pay for my tank upgrade, it is usually 70 to 90 hours a week. My Apex lets me know what is going on.

BeMoto · Jul 18, 2020

I spend more time on R2R than actually anything else tank related.

Aussiemarine · Jul 18, 2020

3-4 hours total display maintenance, mixing water, filling up ATOs, buying stuff online, going to the LFS and getting stuff, quarantine fish through TTM and looking after the coral quarantine tank

Ashish Patel · Jul 18, 2020

In the past I used to spend hours and now its maybe 30 mins per week. Focus on testing Alk, cleaning skimmer, and feeding. These tasks don't take long but main time I spend is monthly spending an hour cleaning all the powerheads with vinegar and every 2-3 months doing a 30% waterchanges, this task is time consuming for me so maybe a 3 hours.

I find its been more beneficial to observe and test so I can figure out what works and what doesn't. Alk stability has been of most imporant and also has been keeping flow stable by cleaning all the pumps.