What is the biggest issue you face right now in keeping a saltwater aquarium?

[Bob Lauson]

Aptasias. Went through the ugly startup phase and got into a battle with dinos. When I had dinos I actually thought it would be nice to see the coraline algae and some bio diversity including maybe an aptasia or two. Now I am going to war with the aptasias.

 

[Robthorn]

White band and white spot disease.

 

[RtomKinMad]

Hi! I couldn’t actually figure out how to start my own thread so I’m am really glad for this one maybe you all can help us!
We live in Wisconsin and have very few months that we can keep the windows open. It is just my husband and I but we have 3 dogs and a few cats. We have a 300gal reef tank have a really hard time maintaining ph. The alk is usually higher but when we close the windows the ph drops from 8.0 to 7.7 over night. Our tank is heavily stocked with fish and mostly SPS, leathers and star polys do really well but our zoas grow well and then just melt sometimes and the hammers look good one day and then the next have bailed out. We just got our first birds nest a few weeks ago and it is growing. We upgraded 1 yr ago from a 75 reef. Some of the corals are four years old. We have a doser and dose ca, mg and Aqua vitro Balance for ph. We haven’t needed to dose alk. We have well water and an RODI. We do 10% water changes once a week. dIY sump with refugium. The problem is we have to dose Balance daily and a lot of it when we close our windows it’s even more. Balance is very expensive about 80$ a week for us. I think we have too much CO2 in the house with us and the pets, the sump is in the basement. We just ordered a co2 scrubber and installed on sat. For the first time our ph is 8.16 with the co2 scrubber running. we have an apex and AI hydras x4. Going to get an estimate from heating and cooling company for air exchanger. We have a budget but spend a lot of money on our tanks. Also have 180 FO tank and new 93 gal cube we added for our naughty powder brown we had to take out of the 300 due to being a bully. Here is a picture of the tank. Does anyone have any suggestions about the ph or anything else we could do better. Also any suggestions to help our coral grow and for some not to die. We hate loosing animals/fish/ coral etc. thank you in advance for anything you all might add. Best regards, Kindel

 

[GoldeneyeRet]

Hi! I couldn’t actually figure out how to start my own thread so I’m am really glad for this one maybe you all can help us!
We live in Wisconsin and have very few months that we can keep the windows open. It is just my husband and I but we have 3 dogs and a few cats. We have a 300gal reef tank have a really hard time maintaining ph. The alk is usually higher but when we close the windows the ph drops from 8.0 to 7.7 over night. Our tank is heavily stocked with fish and mostly SPS, leathers and star polys do really well but our zoas grow well and then just melt sometimes and the hammers look good one day and then the next have bailed out. We just got our first birds nest a few weeks ago and it is growing. We upgraded 1 yr ago from a 75 reef. Some of the corals are four years old. We have a doser and dose ca, mg and Aqua vitro Balance for ph. We haven’t needed to dose alk. We have well water and an RODI. We do 10% water changes once a week. dIY sump with refugium. The problem is we have to dose Balance daily and a lot of it when we close our windows it’s even more. Balance is very expensive about 80$ a week for us. I think we have too much CO2 in the house with us and the pets, the sump is in the basement. We just ordered a co2 scrubber and installed on sat. For the first time our ph is 8.16 with the co2 scrubber running. we have an apex and AI hydras x4. Going to get an estimate from heating and cooling company for air exchanger. We have a budget but spend a lot of money on our tanks. Also have 180 FO tank and new 93 gal cube we added for our naughty powder brown we had to take out of the 300 due to being a bully. Here is a picture of the tank. Does anyone have any suggestions about the ph or anything else we could do better. Also any suggestions to help our coral grow and for some not to die. We hate loosing animals/fish/ coral etc. thank you in advance for anything you all might add. Best regards, Kindel

http://www.reefedition.com/ph-and-the-reef-aquarium/

This should help understand pH

 

[Tix0l]

Definitely aiptasia - i have berghia nudis, but its happening soo slow T_T.

This is truly the bane of all sw tanks - you either remove them when there are just a few, or they will be a permanent inhabitants in your aquarium.

 

[RtomKinMad]

http://www.reefedition.com/ph-and-the-reef-aquarium/

This should help understand pH

This was a very informative article. I just finished reading it. I’m an ICU RN so I have a pretty good understanding of ph for people but this helped a lot. I think we are going in the right direction but wish we had read this article sooner. So thank you so much! We are hoping the co2 scrubber will help us stabilize the ph so we don’t have so many swings and drops to 7.7 during the day which meant lower even at night. The reason we are so concerned is that we do see our corals affected and very little growth is some corals, except the leathers. Do you have any other suggestions for coral growth and survival? Ca is around 450 I don’t know mg but husband always says it’s fine. Alk 8-10. We use a phosphorus reactor so phos is low almost 0. Fish grow well. We do need to increase plants in refugium. Our BT anemones are small but bubbled, do not grow either, 6 months in our tank. 2 cleaner shrimp about 2.5 yrs old. We do have some non reef safe fish but haven’t noticed any damage from them- coral beauty angel, annularis angel, lime green wrasse and valentini puffer. The only thing I noticed was the lime green wrasse eats zoas. Thank you for sending the article. We appreciate it.
Any other advice would be appreciated. Thank you, Kindel

 

[GoldeneyeRet]

This was a very informative article. I just finished reading it. I’m an ICU RN so I have a pretty good understanding of ph for people but this helped a lot. I think we are going in the right direction but wish we had read this article sooner. So thank you so much! We are hoping the co2 scrubber will help us stabilize the ph so we don’t have so many swings and drops to 7.7 during the day which meant lower even at night. The reason we are so concerned is that we do see our corals affected and very little growth is some corals, except the leathers. Do you have any other suggestions for coral growth and survival? Ca is around 450 I don’t know mg but husband always says it’s fine. Alk 8-10. We use a phosphorus reactor so phos is low almost 0. Fish grow well. We do need to increase plants in refugium. Our BT anemones are small but bubbled, do not grow either, 6 months in our tank. 2 cleaner shrimp about 2.5 yrs old. We do have some non reef safe fish but haven’t noticed any damage from them- coral beauty angel, annularis angel, lime green wrasse and valentini puffer. The only thing I noticed was the lime green wrasse eats zoas. Thank you for sending the article. We appreciate it.
Any other advice would be appreciated. Thank you, Kindel

You might get more help if you start a new thread. Go to the forum page, click on the forum you want to start a thread in. There you will see a button to push that says start new thread. Push it and you are set!

Also, read Randy's articles in the chemistry forum. They will explain everything.

Basically, stop using the buffer. You are just adding alk and it wont solve a ph issue. Also, stop chasing ph numbers. 7.7 isn't too bad and there are ways to get it higher and more stable ( kalk, fresh air intake, scrubber, reverse ref. Photoperiod, etc). Get your alk and Ca stable and correct first, that is a higher priority.

Good luck, I'll check in if you start a new thread, but you will get tons of help in the chemistry or new to the hobby forums form smarter folks than I !

Ps, your tanks looks pretty dang good!

 

[Seahorse man]

Not having enough room in my tank and having to convince my wife I need a new and BIGGER one!

Same problem, except I have to convince myself dad that I need this tank. My dad gets scared by volume, so I told him my new 40 gal was a 20 gal. White lies never hurt!

 

[DonTavo27]

My biggest struggle at the moment is Acro eating flatworms,
Followed by some algae.

 

[Jinko]

Vermetid snails. I've broken down my tank and am in the process of rebuilding. I had them at plague levels; people that say just to glue them shut don't understand. Quarantined my corals and am treating them with this https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/here-it-is-fenbendazole-use-against-hydroids.214950/page-3 to get rid of the rest of them.

My tank was otherwise successful however I lacked in biodiversity, no cope/amphi-pods, no crabs. I think having the biodiversity, especially micro fauna, helps to keep pests in check by eating the larva when they settle. My rebuild includes running a fuge with a healthy cope/amphi-pod population.

My file fish loves to munch on vermitid snails, I dunno if this normal, I only had a couple which I found kind of interesting but he killed them anyway.

 

[Jinko]

Definitely aiptasia - i have berghia nudis, but its happening soo slow T_T.

This is truly the bane of all sw tanks - you either remove them when there are just a few, or they will be a permanent inhabitants in your aquarium.

Peppermint shrimp are so much faster than nudibranch, I had plague levels was absolutely unreal, within 2 months I'm down to maybe 10 big ones which they won't touch which I'm slowly killing by hand.

I had cyanobacteria which I solved by buying a roller filter and asternia stars by getting a harlequin shrimp, there are Soultions but unfourtantely they all involve spending money.

 

[fishybizzness]

Time, time,time!!! Working full-time and having 2 reno projects going on at the same time ( replacing all my upstairs windows and rebuilding my deck) and stressing about hurricane season starting, it's nearly impossible to do anything more than a water change every 1-2 weeks when I remember to. Hopefully when all the projects are done I'll have time to actually enjoy my tank. Gone for now are the sitting in front of the tank, sometimes for an hour or more, just observing.. I miss those days.....

 

[Nailqueencat]

I think a massive issue most will struggle with is maintenance and time. Sure initially it's exciting and fun but after years and years it's easy to push those water changes further apart, the skimmer, pump, wavemaker maintenance and clean to another week than another week. And before you know it you've got a problem

V true! Some people call this Old Tank Syndrome but it’s actually Old Reefer Syndrome! My tank has been running 12+ yrs now. Around the 8 year mark, I fell out of love with it and did the bare minimum. However, a massive overhaul and rescale got my mojo back and I’ve tried not to slack on maintenance ever since. My problem is a lack of space to shoehorn any more corals in .

 

[Proteus Meep]

Sea Pea's for me... as part of the battle i recently changed to just using Polyfilter and Xport PO4 cubes to keep things simple and its looking quite promising so far

 

[siggy]

My wife....

+1 and what he said^^^^^

 

[Tallison]

Time and worrying about a move. I'm transferring out to Los Angeles in January from Texas and am freaking out how I'm going to transfer fish and corals 21 hours away.

 

[siggy]

Time and worrying about a move. I'm transferring out to Los Angeles in January from Texas and am freaking out how I'm going to transfer fish and corals 21 hours away.

I would be freaking too. Unique corals is in LA and I think have a lodging service send Joe a email .

 

[MarsRover]

Sometimes talking about issues in life can really help you gain insight and resolutions. The same can be said in keeping a saltwater aquarium. In my latest EMBARRASSED thread I was able to post about an SPS issue that had plagued me and because of it am on the right track to gaining some real knowledge that will empower me to become keeper of sticks!

This is a post-Starbucks topic by the way.

So I got to thinking about all the things we can accomplish and all the issues we can correct that begins with talking about it. Of course after you talk about it there has to be action! But it starts with admitting! So while we don't really have anything to "admit" in keeping reef tanks we do however have a responsibility to be the best keepers of reefs that we can be.

So in the spirit of "talking things out" I want to ask you this question and I need you to be VERY honest. Hopefully your honesty will lead to reefing victory! Here it goes.

What is the biggest issue you face right now in keeping a saltwater aquarium?

As others read I hope those with answers will chime in and help. We each are part of a Reefing Family, a Reefing Body and we need each other. Maybe you're not really up against a wall at this time. If that's you how about sharing something that WAS an issue with you and what you did to overcome it!

Biggest issue: most custom tanks and stands, even from very well known, expensive, and “reputable” companies are not engineered by anyone but rather just built based on some dudes experience with things not failing. Little do they know the safety factors on their products are dangerously low. Little consideration is given to the fact that after a certain dimension is exceeded, these tanks are deadly. A pane of glass pushed by hundreds of gallons of water can kill even a large adult male. Not to mention electrocution as a secondary hazard to anyone nearby who runs to their aid.

It’s shameful. I’ll post a thread later about all this.

 

[Jdeleon]

Trying to stay at work for a full 10 hour shift

 

[dutch27]

Time and worrying about a move. I'm transferring out to Los Angeles in January from Texas and am freaking out how I'm going to transfer fish and corals 21 hours away.

Give away frags to local hobbyists, sell the fish, move worry free, and when you settle in call up the people who have your corals and offer to pay shipping if they'll send you frags of the corals you gave them. Or sell it all and just start with a clean slate, great opportunity to try taking a tank in a different direction. Then again, I broke down a couple months ago to avoid moving a tank a few miles, lol.

My challenge - not having a tank. Trying to decide if I want to set up or not when I get to the new place. Good chance to try out a DIY stand, but I don't really miss the maintenance aspect of tank ownership. Not sure if I'm out for good, or if I'll jump back in. After 6-7 years of keeping tanks, I'm considering that I may enjoy the process of planning and setting up the system, more than the actual tank anymore.