Reef Tank Sustained With Little Maintenance

[Reefman603]

Due to my work schedule and life in general I haven’t been on top of tank maintenance like I used to be. But I also was intentionally not doing water changes or any maintenance other than cleaning the glass, this includes no reef additives, no feeding corals, and no skimmer. I wanted to see how simple I could make reef keeping.

The reef has been self sustaining for about 8 months now with no maintenance. I’ve lost some corals but not due to water quality or chemistry, it’s been due to coral growth over shading some other corals, which I’ve only lost two or three frags over the last 8 months due to that. Other than that recently I’ve been dealing with some algae problems I assume being mostly due to my T5 bulbs needing to be replaced as they are a bit over due but corals are still growing. (Bulbs will be getting replaced soon) I however did unfortunately lose my tridacna clam unsure of reason.

Other than feeding the fish and cleaning the glass I haven’t done any maintenance in the past 8 months, and the corals have grown substantially and still look healthy other than loosing a little bit of color. My clown fish have laid multiple batches of eggs and all the other fish have been doing great. In the end I was trying to see if my reef would be able to self sustain with no maintenance and how long it would be able to self sustain which today at this point it is still going strong considering no maintenance has been done. I plan to keep it going with little to no maintenance and see how long it will self sustain.

So it is true and I do believe if you have a well established reef, it doesn’t have to be complicated to maintain a beautiful living reef, it can be maintained very simply with little maintenance and relatively hassle free and cheap, as I have not spent much money over the past 8 months maintaining the reef. It can be as complicated or as simple as you make it, and also depends on what your visions are for your reef.

HAPPY REEFING!

 

[Aros]

Some pictures would help.

 

[Reefman603]

Some pictures would help.

Uploading some in a minute

 

[kgstei]

I'm changing my reef name to sloppyslacker. What kind of corals are in your tank?

 

[Reefman603]

 

[Reefman603]

I'm changing my reef name to sloppyslacker. What kind of corals are in your tank?

LPS, Soft corals and one SPS

 

[kgstei]

Stony Coral as well, interesting. No water changes? Do you test your calcium?

 

[Aros]

Looking good I’ve got an sps dominate mixed reef and I do a little too much maintanance. Trying to color up the coral a bit more. My tanks at .02 po4 and I trying to get it to .03 by doing less water changes and feeding a bunch more.

 

[Joe Rice]

I tried to go without water changes for two years and eventually it did lead to a tank crash. I was dosing and keeping Alk, Ca and Mg stable as well as running a fuge and a skimmer. Once I started doing water changes again, everything bounced right back. Now I change about 20% every other month, so still not a lot of water changes but it does seem like my tank needs it.

 

[Reefman603]

Stony Coral as well, interesting. No water changes? Do you test your calcium?

No water changes in almost 8 months and haven't tested any of my parameters in a while

 

[kgstei]

Hello. My name is Kurt and I am a slacker. Soft coral tank, 9 years, never test, check salinity on water change day...whenever that happens. On my next tank I'll make, I plan on making that a little bit more automated. I always find it interesting how we all are individuals and do things differently, from the look of the tank to how we meeting them.

 

[kgstei]

I would like to see where you are in calcium. I would think that's where you'll run into problems.

 

[kgstei]

How big is the tank?

 

[Reefman603]

Looking good I’ve got an sps dominate mixed reef and I do a little too much maintanance. Trying to color up the coral a bit more. My tanks at .02 po4 and I trying to get it to .03 by doing less water changes and feeding a bunch more.

Thanks! And yah I have increased feeding the fish more but haven't fed my corals or dosed the tank since the end of last summer.

 

[Reefman603]

I would like to see where you are in calcium. I would think that's where you'll run into problems.

65 gallon tank and yah I've been thinking the same, my purple and red plating monti both seem to be growing just as fast as they did when I was doing normal maintenance and dosing, especially the red plating monti. So I'm thinking calcium is probably a little bit off from where the ideal range is but It can't be to far off because the growth hasn't slowed if at all and colors have remained pretty consistent. Definitely going to check the calcium soon just out of curiosity to see where it is at.

And if my parameters are low I'm thinking since it was such a slow gradual decrease (over the past 8 months) if the corals have adapted to the lower parameters. Which was also my other experiment by not doing maintenance. I was curious to see if the corals would be able to adapt to lower (not ideal parameters) parameters and still grow/ stay healthy and overall if the system would be able to adapt to the parameters as a whole and self sustain. I know it probably won't be able to forever but just curious as to how long it can keep self sustaining before corals start bleaching or showing signs of death, and how low the corals will adapt parameter wise.

 

[Reefman603]

I tried to go without water changes for two years and eventually it did lead to a tank crash. I was dosing and keeping Alk, Ca and Mg stable as well as running a fuge and a skimmer. Once I started doing water changes again, everything bounced right back. Now I change about 20% every other month, so still not a lot of water changes but it does seem like my tank needs it.

Nice! yah I'm assuming and know that I won't be able to keep the tank self sustaining forever, but still be interesting to see how long it can go with minimal maintenance before the corals start showing negative signs. Ans yah before stoping doing maintenance I would do around a 10-15% water change every week and vacuum the tank as well as clean glass, I was also dosing for calcium, Mg and alk. I was also spot feeding my LPS and dosing amino acids which had a positive effect on the corals. Which I will resume that schedule at some point.

 

[Chris A.]

I’ve read somewhere somebody actually has his tank down 5.5/6 dkh and everything is fine in it. He does it on purpose now but was a accident at first.