Simple SPS tank setups

[High ICP]

The evidence is aquacultured corals being more hardy than their wild counterparts.

That’s not evidence that instability causes desensitized and hardy corals

That’s evidence that instability has killed sensitive corals, and you don’t get them. Because they died

This is not evidence. It’s not even a good hypothesis.

Your intuition is not evidence

 

[Rakie]

I get your point about not being there. Still not a necessity imo as you can just ask somebody to dose for you while you're gone. Small changes in water parameters IMO, doesn't harm SPS at all. I used to manage Seaside Tropical Fish which you're probably familiar with. At one point we had a 2k gallon system stocked heavy with SPS frags and colonies. I had to hand dose it daily due to the owner not wanting to pony up for a large CaRX. That system had a KH fluctuation of probably 1-2 throughout a 24 hour period and both wild and aquacultured corals were fully colored up and had explosive growth in that system. So I am always skeptical about people blaming small swings in parameters for their coral woes within reason of course due to my own professional experience. On the other hand, an instant ten degree temp spike or instant drop in salinity from 1.026 to 1.000 would be very bad indeed.

This I agree with mostly -- my only caveat would be I feel stability makes the biggest difference. I'm sure they survived and even thrived under your conditions, but when I went from dosing 12x a day to 24x a day there was definitely a positive impact.

But then we're getting into the difference between "do we need it" vs "what's best", a different topic.

 

[Big E]

All my dominant Sps systems have been this way. Skimmer only setups, carbon occasionally, GFO if needed depending on fish load. I hand dosed alk- calc for 7 years.....now use a doser for alk(last 4 years). Calc I still hand dose.........eventually I'll get to hooking this up.

I've dabbled in vinegar dosing and a Tropic Marin Bacto balance( frag tank), but have always gone back to the above setup.

The only automation I have is a digital timer for lights and a temperature controller. The past 9 years I've topped off evaporation by hand too. I've used evaporation top offs in the past (Litermeter 3) and will get back to that just haven't gotten around to it............I don't like ATO's or anything that the top off is based on electronics measuring water level.

My tanks are in the same room I work so I'm there all day. A lot of what I do is so I stay "connected" to the system. It makes me pay attention daily.

 

[mstockmaster]

Mine is literally skimmer, light, flow, ato and diy 2 part on a doser. No carbon, no gfo, no chaeto or other macros, no filter sock, no controller. My secondary drain on my bean animal flows into a section of the sump with live rock, and I do a weekly 5 gallon water change when I remember.
That's all.

 

[High ICP]

Btw

I really like Wincey’s vocal idiom and affection. Watched the vid with screen off, driving to work.

And she know her ****. And rapier sense of humor. I like her.

I need to watch the vid part again. Orange HD bucket as the newest APEX automation device, had me in laughter

 

[High ICP]

Poop, **** got censored

Is there a rule about retconning banned words into other words on this forum?

 

[Dkeller_nc]

There is something to this, but the key thing about it is diligence and knowledge. Most beginners would probably not do too well with this approach; it takes time to realize that you're due for a water change, when to drop a bag of GFO or GAC into the sump, how often you need to clean your skimmer, etc...

But it very much is possible to do this. My 20g nano was set up 15 years ago in 2004. It's lit by 2 power compact high-output fluorescents, and for the first 11 years was topped off by hand and dosed by hand. There were no reactors, and the skimmer was a classic but wholly ineffective Tunze type like the one on Julian Sprung's nano from the 1980s, and the circulation was provided by the Hydor click-monsters. I did finally "modernize" it a little with a Tunze ATO, a Reef Octopus skimmer, and a couple of Tunze 6040 circulation pumps, but it's still dosed by hand. Grows stony corals like weeds.

But, and there's a big "but" coming - up until 8 months ago I was having to cut a couple of types of acropora and a couple of types of branching montipora out of it at least every 2 weeks to keep them from overgrowing the tank. It had been that way for years - an LFS was the beneficiary. Work overwhelmed me about 8 months ago, and I neglected the tank for about 4 months, with just adding RODI to the ATO and the occasional dosing of Ca & Alk. That did not work out well for the acropora, so I no longer have those two strains. One of the monti strains also crashed, though fortunately I had some of it in another tank. The orange branching monti that I've had since 2004 got almost completely wiped out. In fact, I thought it was completely gone until I got on top of the maintenance of the tank around Christmas; to my amazement, some dozen tiny spots of it had survived, and are now growing into colonies.

During this same period, my "high tech" tank with reactors, ATO, dosing pumps and a tank controller suffered the same neglect, yet I didn't lose anything. Granted, even this tank is doing far better after I got on top of the work schedule and resumed paying close attention to it.

So the bottom line is that you can absolutely keep a beautiful tank almost completely manually. If you're diligent with water changes, you can even go without a skimmer as I did when I started the hobby in 1990. But it's a lot of work, and there really is a reason to have gadgets on the tank - they're not an excuse to neglect paying attention and performing maintenance, but they do give you a margin of error that you don't have when doing everything manually. Moreover, to keep an SPS tank manually, you need a bit of an "aragonite thumb"; specifically, you need lots of time in front of the tank, know how to interpret the appearance of the coral, inverts and fish, and know how to correct things when they start going South.

 

[Oshengems]

Corals can definitely tolerate some swings specially if they are happening often I been testing less lately and been getting swings of 1-2 points in my Alkalinity I have not seen any ill effects, also last week i KO with my RODI on and dumb about 5-6 gallons on fres cold water my temp went from 78 to 76.5 in less than 2 hours my salt dropped from 1.025 to 1.024 I was going to immediately try to correct it but since nothing looked stressed decided to leave it and let evaporate top about 7 days to go back to its original water level and my tank didn’t skip a beat.

I don’t have many hobbies and sometimes wonder if other hobbies are like this one I read comments on this of people’s experiences and there’s always an “expert” to tell you you’re wrong and there’s no other way and then I wonder why dismiss my experience if NO ONES! Tank is the same, we don’t run a set specific gravity, we don’t run a specific alkalinity number, we don’t run a specific calcium or mag and I could keep on, flow equipment lights maintenance but yet we see high success with a lot of people with different configurations so to come on here and call a theory silly it’s a bit harsh, a theory is nothing more than someone’s observation you can’t just simply dismiss it especially if you have no evidence to suppport your dismissal, funny I read some here dismiss asking what proof they have but yet don’t provide actual proof of their dismissal

Yes you can have swings and have a nice tank manually dosing yourtank and having a beautiful tank alone is proof swings can happen and still be successful

Let’s keep it simple everyone

Just my 2 cents

 

[High ICP]

Corals can tolerate a lot of stuff, I agree

Do a 90% water change, they can tolerate being out of water entirely