A Breath of Fresh Saltwater

I've been trying to remember to take more pictures when I do maintenance on my aquarium, and for good reason. I get a lot of questions in regards to maintenance and how much upkeep a saltwater aquarium involves, so I'd like to talk about aquarium maintenance today. I'm going to split it up in to a few segments though, since there's a lot to cover (THERE'S A LOT OF PICTURES). This week I'll start with the most recent picture of my tank. (ALSO, if you didn't know, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them!)

"Why does he keep using a potato to take pictures of his aquarium?"

The Water Change

One big thing I see a lot of aquarists struggling with is the dreaded water change. Beginning aquarists, and this applies to anyone that just kind of wings it with their setup, either change their water too often, too seldom, too much, too little, or a combination of the four. With that being said, there is no end-all-be-all rule when it comes to changing your aquarium water. There are a lot of factors involved: how many fish you have, their diets, how often you feed, the types of filtration you have, the size of the filters, light intensity, the size of your aquarium, the quality of your tap water, and on and on.

Zzzzzzz... aquariums... ZzzZzZzzz,... (wisegeek.com)

I know, I know, it's a lot of information, but it's important to keep in mind. There just isn't a clear-cut answer about how much aquarium maintenance you'll have to do. It varies. What I recommend is to ask someone that does have experience with aquariums to help you. For instance, since I'm not there every day to maintain my aquarium, I have an extensive filtration system.

Protein skimmer, calcium reactor, phosphate reactor, carbon filter, refugium, and UV sterilizer.

These allow me to neglect weekly or twice a week water changes on my aquarium. I also try not to overfeed my corals and fish. It's important to remember that whatever goes into the tank has to come out of the tank. That includes all the food you feed your fish. So to answer the question, I change about 40 gallons (that's about 20%) of my aquarium water every 2 weeks.

That's about this much water.

Where it all starts!

Now, I know you're sitting there browsing another website and reluctantly coming back every few minutes to see if I'm saying anything interesting yet; I assure you I am. As we speak, I'm typing a blog in my underwear. More importantly, I bet you're wondering where the saltwater that my aquarium craves actually comes from. The answer, and this is going to blow your mind: I make it.

You calm the hell down right now. (maothebrok.deviantart.com)

It all starts with a lovely unit called a Reverse Osmosis Deionization System (RO/DI). The only thing you need to know about this terrifyingly named device is that it removes all the extra chemicals in tap water (and it probably got made fun of on the playground).
 

My RO/DI system. Essential material for Making Water 101.

You see the problem with tap water is that it contains all those filthy chemicals that prevent living things from growing inside the water pipes around the city. That's great for us when we want to drink it; not so great for us when we want our fishy friends to swim in it. The RO/DI unit takes out all the extra minerals and chemical agents leaving it as close to pure water as possible. It has a threaded fitting that fits most regular garden hose sized faucets. It takes me about 9 - 12 hours to fill up an entire 44 gallon trashcan with RO/DI water.

Now I have a trashcan full of water in my living room. What do I do?

Ah! Another common problem! You've followed my thorough guide step-by-step and now you're sponsoring the most pitiful kiddie pool on the block. So what do you do? You add salt, ya dig?

Snort this. Hilarity will ensue.

This is what a 5 gallon bucket of saltwater aquarium salt looks like. It has all kinds of delicious things for the fish and coral. It's full of calcium, magnesium, and other trace elements found in the water around coral reefs all over the globe. This is a main source for replenishing the vitamins and beneficial minerals to your aquarium.

One small scoop for fishkind.

So if it's not obvious, that's me scooping marine salt mix into a cup. Don't worry, for those of you lacking any form of imagination I even captured a picture of what I do with it (hint: it doesn't involve making it into lines).

"OMG I SO KNEW THAT WAS COMING!!!"

Bravo! Seriously, well done! Yes, after scooping up some salt I start adding it to the garbage can full of RO/DI water. Now, you can't just poor the entire bucket of salt into the trashcan. You only add enough salt to raise the water's salinity to the same salinity as your aquarium. Before you ask, let me tell you. The way you find out the salinity of the water is by using a hydrometer.

Salinity magician.

This is the simplest method of determining salinity. It is a pre-calibrated device that weighs the water inside of it and tells you how dense it is. The white circle inside the white arrow thing has a known weight to it. When the hydrometer is filled with water, the white circle causes the white arrow to rise up to whatever the corresponding density of the water is. As you know (start nodding your head and smiling knowingly), the density of water is affected by temperature and pressure. With that in mind, the hydrometer will give false readings if there is undissolved salt or if the water inside of it is not the same temperature as your aquarium. More accurate devices are refractometers (they use light to determine the density of the water) and conductivity meters (they measure the ability of the water sample to conduct a current to determine the salinity). However, these are expensive and for most cases a hydrometer will work fine.

Trashcan snowglobe!

The black cord in that picture leads to a pump on the bottom of the trashcan that vigorously mixes the water. I use a pretty strong pump to do this for a few reasons. The stronger the pump, the better the mixing. This reduces how long it takes the salt to dissolve into the water. Just as importantly, it also increases the amount of oxygen exchanged between the water in the trashcan and the air. That's also why I mix the water with the lid off: to make sure there is an ample supply of oxygen mixed into the water. If I added 40 gallons of anoxic water to my aquarium, the corals and fish could die. The next step is to start siphoning water out of the aquarium.

"Why does he have so many trashcans???"

 Multitasking: The Key to Aquarium Maintenance*

*the author takes no responsibility for hilarious aquarium related disasters involving unattended pumps and carpet, wood floors, or electrical outlets

If you're looking to cut down on your aquarium maintenance, it's important to be able to do two or three things at once. That being said, please don't ever leave a pump or siphon unattended (oh, man... that has so many inappropriate interpretations). Every aquarist has AT LEAST one tragic story about how an unattended hose broke lose and sprayed gallons upon gallons all over their floor. Just remember, only you can prevent carpet flooding.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuu..." (today.com)

When I say multitasking, I really mean killing two birds with one stone. That saying seems so out of place in a blog about aquariums... Anyway... I seriously cannot focus. Right, so in this case, multitasking involves siphoning out things I don't want in my aquarium while I also siphon out the 40 gallons of water to be changed. Siphoning is like water-vacuuming. So, instead of just putting a hose in the tank, starting the siphon, and walking away, I like to vacuum out hair algae and any detritus (undissolved organic waste) buildup I see.

Focus on the gross fuzzy green mess in the middle.

When you let hair algae grow a little bit, sometimes it will make a mat and you can get it all out by just siphoning it. So, I went ahead and sucked it out.

That's "out" not "off" for you adventurous types.

And voila! Most of it is gone. Snails and hermit crabs will eat hair algae, but they usually stay away from dense mats of it. You have to keep it trimmed. (Ok, I can't keep up these euphemisms.) Annnnd here's what it looks like in the dirty waste water.

"Ewwwwwwww"

So before I started the siphon, I shut off my sump pump. The sump pump is the pump that pushes water from the sump tank into the top tank. The water falls into what are called "overflows" and is then transported to the sump via PVC pipes and aquarium hoses. After it's filtered, the sump pump pumps it back up into the main tank. Since we're lowering the water level of the tank by siphoning out 40 gallons, if we let the sump pump continue to run, eventually it would pump the sump dry since no new water is overflowing into the overflows. This could damage the pump and cause unnecessary headaches. So, in short, turn off your sump pump when doing water changes.

"I'm leakinggggg!"

I swear this isn't the same picture as the one above it.

As the water level drops, some of the corals near the top of the tank will become exposed to the air. This really isn't a big concern unless they'll be exposed for a long period of time (30 minutes or more). Now, I just arbitrarily made up that number, but you get the idea. If it's going to take you longer than that to do the water change, I would try and either move the corals to a lower place in the aquarium for the duration of the water change, or siphon water out of your sump instead of the top tank.

Rose birdsnest being exposed to the air.

Spaghetti finger leather falling with the tide.

Fill 'er Up

Once I've siphoned out about 40 gallons, I start pumping the water I mixed earlier into the tank. It's important to make sure the salt is completely dissolved into the RO/DI water. You don't want your water to mix in the tank. Also, if you're doing large water changes (anything over 20% of the total tank volume), you should make sure the temperature of the water you're adding is within 1 degree of the aquarium's water temperature.

"Weeeeeee!"

I need a pump because I add water to the top aquarium as opposed to adding it to the sump. Since gravity only works in one direction, I use a pump to pump it out of the garbage can and into the top aquarium. I could use the sump pump to pump it up into the top tank if I just siphoned the new water into the sump, but since the return pipes for the sump pump are high up in the aquarium, water would splash everywhere. That's not ideal. Now back to multitasking. While the aquarium is filling, I like to empty out the dirty algae-infested waste water that I siphoned out. Being a responsible individual, I dispose of it in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

"Uh, hey... um... so what are we.... what are we doing out here, huh? Wait.. WAIT! WAIT NO!"

The most responsible way possible.

"I ONLY EVER LOVED YOU--"

When the tank is just about full, I'll turn the sump pump back on and add some saltwater if needed. Remember to always make a little extra to compensate for this, and also it's nice to have some extra saltwater in a bucket somewhere. It's useful for replacing saltwater after acclimating a new fish or refilling a filter with aquarium water.

I swear it looks like an angry aquarium face.

Next Time on Fishy Fishy...

I thought I'd be able to fit it into this post, but apparently I rambled for far too long. The next installment of Fishy Fishy will feature my striped hogfish, Mr. Swiss, that loves to get into places he doesn't belong. The things you'll do to rescue your fish...

Water changes can seem intimidating, but really anyone can do them. Over time you'll even start to recognize when your tank needs a water change, and then maybe you'll start writing outrageous aquarium blog posts. Who knows? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post of Fishy Fishy. If you have any questions about water changes, or anything aquarium related, don't hesitate to ask! Until next time.