I've got a few days of enforced idleness because of a small operation, so I thought I would put down a few words about trend management in a reef as opposed to number chasing.
It is a somewhat hypothetical scenario, but I have seen it repeated again and again in greater or lesser degrees....
Imagine I am a relative newbie to reef keeping, I have bought all the gear, got through the cycle and added a few fish/corals/inverts. I very much want to keep my tank conditions as good as I can and I am very conscientious about this....
I get home from work, have dinner, open a beer or two and because I am diligent, I go to check my Tank.
Usually, Ph gets checked first and because it is late in the day, I get a reading of , say 8.4. Now ...I have been told that the best Ph number is about 8.2, so I think that my 8.4 is too high and immediately go for a fix by adding some of Dr. Nerks wonder solution Ph- down No 1....and because a little is good, and a "bit" more must be better, I maybe add just a little more than the bottle says...no biggie ??
Next morning, because I am diligent, I check PH again before I go to work........OOOPS !! it is now 8.0....I must have added too much last nite. So in goes another dose of Dr. Nerks wonder solution Ph -up No. 2, expecting that this will fix the problem.
When I get home that evening, my Ph is now 8.5, and would you believe that my Kh has now started to do mysterious things and needs boosting.
So I add some of Dr. Nerks wonder solution Kh -up No 3 and hope for the best.
Next morning, Ph is still wrong, Kh has not responded but Ca has started to drop...and the Tank looks a little cloudy. So in goes a dose of Dr. Nerks wonder solution Ca -up No 4...that will fix it !!
WHAT THE H##LL IS GOING ON, I wonder...nothing is working, and now my corals look a bit sick and withdrawn...so in goes a dose of Dr. Nerks wonder solution coral revive No. 5....the label on the bottle and the ad. in the latest magazine guarantees that this will make all your corals "pop" (God knows what that is...must be exploding coral of some kind !!!).
Next day...all has gone haywire...water crap, corals real sick and fish hiding in the rocks........
About now you are working with a totally upredictable chemical soup that is on the edge of total disaster and is completely primed for outbreaks of every nasty you can imagine..cyano, algae, bubble and/or hairy etc etc.
What started out as a very good water set-up has quickly descended to chaos...why ??
If, in the first place you had studied and measured the TREND of the Ph in your system, you would have noticed over a couple of weeks of checking that there is a natural swing over the course of a day. It is quite normal to see the Ph in a reef system go from 8.1 in the morning to 8.4 in the evening, its all about the CO2 cycle.
Had you understood this, then you would have not felt panicked into changing Ph numbers in the first place....ie number chasing.
Number chasing almost certainly leads to overshoot and the need to chase again...rarely can you achieve any level of stability.
I know the slick advertising of all the miracle cures is hard to resist...and in fact under the correct circumstances a lot of the tried and true additives do work. But experience with YOUR tank and its little quirks beats a load of chemical soup any day...less wear on the nerves.
Happy reefing
