This is from 4 years ago so I am sure it is on here somewhere. I had nothing to do and my wife is not feeling well so I figured while I was waiting for her to feel better, I would re post this here. If you don't want to read it. (I don't) go and watch Rachel Ray make ravioli with broccoli rob .
Remember my tank is far from perfect. A month ago I put in a garden eel, I have not seen it since so it is either croaked or under the UG filter. But it probably croaked. A week or two ago I added two ruby red dragonettes, havent' seen either one yet so they are either hanging out with the garden eel or dried up on the floor somewhere. If a fish lives a week, it generally lives forever, but the first week is crucial. I also lose corals, sometimes in a very short while, sometimes inexplicably after years. No one knows why but it is not the silly parameters that everyone is so worried about. If the majority of your creatures live to be older then Myley Cyrus, the parameters are fine. :cool:
I was just reading about refractometers and how you need to calibrate them to be exactly what ever. Why would you care about that? Your salinity should be close to what it was where your fish came from, but it need not be exactly in the center of the line, the fish or corals can't read your refractometer and don't care. The salinity all over the earth varies, so what are we setting it at? Let me check my salinity right now................It is hard to tell exactly what it is with my ancient swing arm hydrometer but I brought the thing with me many times to the tropics and drew lines on it where the arm was floating so I have to guess. I also tested it against a refractometer.
My salinity now is much lower than the salinity in Florida is, about 21. I am going to change the water tonight and I like to have my new water close to my old water so I check it. I will mix my new water to a salinity of 25 (or 1.025 for the perfectionists) this way my overall salinity will come up a little. This is perfectly fine and the fish and corals will not get the horrors from this minor change. I am changing 20% of the water so the overall salinity will probably rise one degree. :p
You would be amazed at the salinity variations our fish and corals can live at. Of course we want it close to something like 25 but IMO close is close enough. It's the same with the temperature. Mine stays about 78 in the winter to about 82 in the summer but it has gone to about 87 which is too high, although I never lost anything to salinity, parameters or temperature.
RAP music maybe but not from my house. :rolleyes:
As for changing too much water, I stick with that. Why is it that new tanks look lousy? If new water was so great why is so much water changed to kill algae even though that never works. When people see ich, they change water, like the ick parasite cares. Maybe ich likes new water, who knows.
We need more common sense IMO than medications and controllers.
I don't have any controllers or dosers. They are not bad, I just see no need for them. I also have no sump, nothing wrong with them, they were just not invented when I started my tank.
The secret to keeping salt water is live bacteria. That's mostly it. The majority of people never allow live bacteria into their tank because they only use store bought frozen fish food that is frozen to the temperature of Antartica and is irradiated to kill bacteria so the stuff lasts longer.
That is great for fish food manufacturers and I use some commercially sold food every day, but I also add live bacteria in the live worms and clams I feed every day. That is the main reason my fish never get sick. But it usually falls on deaf ears which is why we have need for those "disease forums". ;Happy
