I'm writing a guide for aquarium maintenance

[zygote2k]

I've been asked to write a series of topics to be the basis of a maintenance guide for all levels of experience.

I'm currently doing the "fish only" topic and would like any input from WAMAS that I may have missed or am clearly wrong about.

Thanks.

 

 

 

Fish only systems do not work. Here are some reasons why:

 

1) No benthic life to breakdown fish waste.

 

2) No snails to remove algae from surfaces.

 

3) Tend to be highly polluted from overfeeding and infrequent water changes.

 

4) Wet/Dry filter often undersized. Poorly designed overflow boxes with incorrectly sized return pumps make for poor water flow.

 

5) Disease often takes a heavy toll on fish kept this in this fashion.

 

6) Lack of internal circulation prevents excess nutrients from being flushed into the filter where it belongs instead of being kept on the bottom.

 

7) Large crushed coral allows waste and detritus to become thoroughly saturated in the pore structure of the substrate. Smaller grain sand allows waste to stay above sand layer so it is more easily processed.

 

8) Lighting tends to be on the dimmer side and bulbs are rarely changed. Older bulbs have noticeable spectral disintegration and are a contributing factor to the growth of nuisance algae.

 

9) Improper nutrition of fish. Many of these fish are being fed Jumbo Krill and Frozen foods. Frozen foods contribute a great deal to waste accumulation. Most people drastically overfeed Frozen food and do not pre-rinse it before adding to the aquarium. Jumbo Krill is like potato chips to fish. You can turn a herbivore into a carnivore easily and have a tank full of hair algae with Tangs.

The majority of tanks being fed these 2 food are highly polluted with visible hair algae and/or cyanobacteria.

 

10) Usually overstocked. When your tank was new and you had 10 small fish, it was a good match for your wet/dry system. Now you have 10 Guinea Pig sized fish and they have all of the aforementioned problems going for them. As Bioload increases, there is a net GAIN of nutrients. In order for a closed system to be successful, you must have a net LOSS of nutrients. This can be accomplished by more frequent water changes, proper nutrition, addition of invertebrate life, proper lighting, and better husbandry techniques.

The more common way is to just wait till the weaker fish die off and the strong will survive. If you throw enough poop at the wall, one or two turds will eventually stick.

 

11) Water source. There are circumstances which require the use of tap water. Make sure your tap water doesn't contain nitrate or phosphate. If so, you need to push an alternative source. R/O or bottled water should be strongly encouraged when possible. Test all incoming tap for excessive variation in P04, N03, pH. Buffer appropriately.

R/O filters need to be checked regularly for less than a 10% ratio of TDS.

 

12) The amount of work necessary to keep a fish-only system is far greater than the time spent on a reef tank. Cleaning of gravel is a thing of the past with benthic life. Cleaning of the decorations is also a thing of the past. Snails, fish, and crabs will do that for you. I can't remember the last time I had to take all of the decos out of a reef tank, but I certainly can tell you that it takes at least 3 hours to remove, bleach, scrub, and put back the decorations in some of these tanks. On some of the large tanks, this process often requires 2 people. At $75/ hour billable rate, this can be an expensive process that happens at least twice a year.

An average reef tank can be well maintained with no more than 90 minutes per visit once per week.

 

13) I'd like to think that profits are greater with a reef tank because of the sheer amount of organisms that can be placed into a healthy, thriving environment.

A fish only tank should have less because only a certain amount of fish are going in and the rest of sales have to come from cleaning supplies, chemical filtration, food, and new fish when the sick ones died.

 

14) A Protein Skimmer is a must for a reef tank, so why isn't it a must for fish-only tanks? It's backwards thinking to suppose that a wet/dry can handle the wastes and excess food of a typical fish-only system without a protein skimmer. Liverock in a reef tank is the equivalent of a wet/dry in a fish-only tank, but the reef has an additional waste removal in the protein skimmer. This is a must have for a fish-only tank!

[smallreef]

Are you only listing the 'cons'.... many people run (and most should) FOWLR with snails and such and have oversized skimmers...if I were talking about the maintnenace aspect I would include these as either best practices or good advise to make the maintenance easier...

[Ne0eN]

I've been asked to write a series of topics to be the basis of a maintenance guide for all levels of experience.

I'm currently doing the "fish only" topic and would like any input from WAMAS that I may have missed or am clearly wrong about.

Thanks...

 

-R/O filters need to be checked regularly for less than a 10% ratio of TDS.

 

 

TDS is measured in ppm not percent.

[Rosco's Reefs]

This is very good. I am interested in following this thread to see how it develops. Good luck! Thx

[zygote2k]

Are you only listing the 'cons'.... many people run (and most should) FOWLR with snails and such and have oversized skimmers...if I were talking about the maintnenace aspect I would include these as either best practices or good advise to make the maintenance easier...

I'm talking about the majority of fish only aquariums in non-wamas members tanks. The majority of them are a mix of plastic decoations, coral skeletons, and extremely dead rock.

 

 

TDS is measured in ppm not percent.

True, TDS is measured in ppm, but the ratio of output vs. input should be less than 10%. More than 10% means it's time to change the DI membrane, then the prefilter and carbon.

[steveoutlaw]

I'm really confused here. It seems that you are writing a guide of discouragement based on your opinion. You can give reasons NOT to do something until the cows come home, but there are a number of FOWLR tanks out there that are successful. Why wouldn't you give guidance on what people should do to have a successful tank rather then saying "they don't work so don't even try"? It seems that your "cons" listed up top could be turned around as guidance on what NOT to do in order to have a successful tank. They're going to do it anyway, why not help them?

[zygote2k]

I'm really confused here. It seems that you are writing a guide of discouragement based on your opinion. You can give reasons NOT to do something until the cows come home, but there are a number of FOWLR tanks out there that are successful. Why wouldn't you give guidance on what people should do to have a successful tank rather then saying "they don't work so don't even try"? It seems that your "cons" listed up top could be turned around as guidance on what NOT to do in order to have a successful tank. They're going to do it anyway, why not help them?

 

You're right, Steve. So far what I have is the CONS of setting up a fish-only tank in the typical fashion using a w/d and no skimmer. You'd be surprised at the sheer amount of systems like these in the greater metro area.

FOWLR tanks are not as common as I'd like.

[zygote2k]

Does anyone remember Rainforest Cafe? Those certainly weren't FOWLR tanks. A product called AquaMaid was used to clean those types of tanks and others. Big plastic "reef replicas" are one of the norms in office, hotel, and institutional aquariums. Typically fish only with zero CUC. High N03, low redox, low ph, low calcium to prevent coralline algae growth, low alkalinity due to large infrequent water changes.

Not many of the big plastic displays have internal circulation because big powerheads and pumps are ugly and difficult to clean if hidden.

[epleeds]

off topic/but check your pm.

[Chad]

I've been asked to write a series of topics to be the basis of a maintenance guide for all levels of experience.

I'm currently doing the "fish only" topic and would like any input from WAMAS that I may have missed or am clearly wrong about.

Thanks.

 

 

 

Fish only systems do not work.

 

This is wrong. Perhaps, though, it is in your definition of "work." I did aquarium maintenance for 3 years, many of the tanks I maintained were FO tanks with fake decorations. These tanks required additional filtration and large skimmers, but they "worked" just fine.

 

Here are some reasons why:

1) No benthic life to breakdown fish waste.

 

Benthic life is not required to break down fish waste. Several options 1) remove it, 2) filter it - actually well run RUGFs work well for this.

 

2) No snails to remove algae from surfaces.

Snails are not the only things that eat algae, many FO tanks have tangs, they do that as well.

 

3) Tend to be highly polluted from overfeeding and infrequent water changes.

 

This is usually true, but I'm not sure how it's beneficial from a "maintenance guide" point of view. To be helpful, you ought to talk about how much fish need to eat and what "overfed" really means.

 

4) Wet/Dry filter often undersized. Poorly designed overflow boxes with incorrectly sized return pumps make for poor water flow.

 

Again, maybe true, but not helpful at all. How do you properly size a wet/dry filter? How do you properly size return pumps for correct water flow?

 

5) Disease often takes a heavy toll on fish kept this in this fashion.

 

OK.

 

6) Lack of internal circulation prevents excess nutrients from being flushed into the filter where it belongs instead of being kept on the bottom.

 

True. What can you do about it? What is proper internal circulation? How do you determine this?

 

7) Large crushed coral allows waste and detritus to become thoroughly saturated in the pore structure of the substrate. Smaller grain sand allows waste to stay above sand layer so it is more easily processed.

 

I thought you said there was no mechanism to process waste? RUGFs work well with large crushed coral, but it does require maintenance to prevent the problem you are talking about.

 

8) Lighting tends to be on the dimmer side and bulbs are rarely changed. Older bulbs have noticeable spectral disintegration and are a contributing factor to the growth of nuisance algae.

 

In a fish only tank, what difference does it make?

 

9) Improper nutrition of fish. Many of these fish are being fed Jumbo Krill and Frozen foods. Frozen foods contribute a great deal to waste accumulation. Most people drastically overfeed Frozen food and do not pre-rinse it before adding to the aquarium. Jumbo Krill is like potato chips to fish. You can turn a herbivore into a carnivore easily and have a tank full of hair algae with Tangs.

The majority of tanks being fed these 2 food are highly polluted with visible hair algae and/or cyanobacteria.

 

What is the proper food? How do you determine it? How much should you feed? How frequently?

[Chad]

10) Usually overstocked. When your tank was new and you had 10 small fish, it was a good match for your wet/dry system. Now you have 10 Guinea Pig sized fish and they have all of the aforementioned problems going for them. As Bioload increases, there is a net GAIN of nutrients. In order for a closed system to be successful, you must have a net LOSS of nutrients. This can be accomplished by more frequent water changes, proper nutrition, addition of invertebrate life, proper lighting, and better husbandry techniques.

The more common way is to just wait till the weaker fish die off and the strong will survive. If you throw enough poop at the wall, one or two turds will eventually stick.

 

What is overstocked?

 

11) Water source. There are circumstances which require the use of tap water. Make sure your tap water doesn't contain nitrate or phosphate. If so, you need to push an alternative source. R/O or bottled water should be strongly encouraged when possible. Test all incoming tap for excessive variation in P04, N03, pH. Buffer appropriately.

R/O filters need to be checked regularly for less than a 10% ratio of TDS.

 

What are good sources? What options do they have?

 

12) The amount of work necessary to keep a fish-only system is far greater than the time spent on a reef tank. Cleaning of gravel is a thing of the past with benthic life. Cleaning of the decorations is also a thing of the past. Snails, fish, and crabs will do that for you. I can't remember the last time I had to take all of the decos out of a reef tank, but I certainly can tell you that it takes at least 3 hours to remove, bleach, scrub, and put back the decorations in some of these tanks. On some of the large tanks, this process often requires 2 people. At $75/ hour billable rate, this can be an expensive process that happens at least twice a year.

An average reef tank can be well maintained with no more than 90 minutes per visit once per week.

 

This is probably true in my experience as well. When I did maintenance, I determined it was better worth my time to have two complete sets of decorations for every tank and swap them out. Bleach, sodium thiosulfate, and rinsing tubs back home to soak things - almost no scrub time. Much less time on the job.

 

13) I'd like to think that profits are greater with a reef tank because of the sheer amount of organisms that can be placed into a healthy, thriving environment.

A fish only tank should have less because only a certain amount of fish are going in and the rest of sales have to come from cleaning supplies, chemical filtration, food, and new fish when the sick ones died.

 

For the average customer, a reef tank is much greater of an investment than they want to make.

 

14) A Protein Skimmer is a must for a reef tank, so why isn't it a must for fish-only tanks? It's backwards thinking to suppose that a wet/dry can handle the wastes and excess food of a typical fish-only system without a protein skimmer. Liverock in a reef tank is the equivalent of a wet/dry in a fish-only tank, but the reef has an additional waste removal in the protein skimmer. This is a must have for a fish-only tank!

 

I thought we were talking about FO tanks?

 

Overall, I think you have the right rants, but if you are writing a maintenance guide, than you need to address solutions to the problems. Otherwise your reader is going to get tired of reading after about the third line of ranting (like I wanted to) without any idea about how to address the problem. Only talking about why you don't like FO tanks is without benefit.

 

Fish only tanks are going to continue and they are your bread and butter. I'd recommend treating them that way.

[DaveS]

Fish only tanks are going to continue and they are your bread and butter. I'd recommend treating them that way.

 

+1

 

This doesn't sound like a "guide for aquarium maintenance". More like a "Rant from Aquarium Maintainers"

[zygote2k]

I won't submit my article as it is because it looks like a rant, I'm just trying to identify all the cons of doing a FO tank to persuade someone not to go that direction. FO tanks IMO, are wasteful and often cost far more in the long run than a reek tank done properly.

FO tanks are not my bread and butter although they do constitute about 25% of the current clients. I've been persuading clients to make the switch but it's a slow process.

As far as keeping extra decorations goes, we have tons of extras for smaller sized tanks, but when you're dealing with large tanks, then you only have the one in the tank.

[Chad]

Wow, I am surprised they make up such a small percentage. That seems odd. Just 5-6 years ago when I was still doing it, FO tanks were 75% or more and of the 160+ clients, only about a dozen were full blown reefs.

 

Either way, FO tanks can be just fine. Reread most of your points objectively, you will see that most fixes are maintenance and husbandry related (all but point 13). I have had many and maintained many without the problems you talk about. Sure, some had the issues you discuss and, yes, it will require some training of your clients. Writing a "Guide for aquarium maintenance" and distributing it to your clients is a good idea because most probably don't know better and just like to watch their pretty fish eat, educating them is part of your job as a maintenance guy.

 

However, if your goal is to persuade someone not to go FO tanks, then you should title it "Why you should go with a reef tank" or something similar. I'm not sure who asked you to write the article, but if you call it a "Guide for aquarium maintenance," which implies a "how-to" instructional type article, then your reader is not expecting to be persuaded and likely won't finish the article when they find out they have been baited and switched. Not to mention your editor might not be expecting it either.

 

Rob, much of my professional work product is spent writing and editing. If you want, I'd be happy to comment or edit. I know I'm a PITA, but I'll help force clarity to the argument you are trying to make.

 

 

[BowieReefer84]

I think it would be better written with a introduction/summary on each type of setup listing the necessary equipment (and optional equipment) followed by Frequently Asked Questions (intead of NO NO NO). Also, I would rate each type of setup as beginner, intermediate, and expert. The way you have it comes off negative.

 

Also, I would include a glossary bolding the words in the text that can be looked up... That would be nice.