New Dad & A Reef Tank

[Daddyrawg]

Your maintanance schedule sounds just like mine except I have a 6yr old and a 9 month old.. I recently setup my tank 2 months ago. No way in hell I was gonna do this during the infant stage. I think what you have going for you though is an established tank and schedule so you should be able to pull this off.

My baby proofing consists of a canopy and door locks to the bottom cabinet.. that's it.

 

[squeakymcmurdo]

Your tank is well established, it will survive the first week or two when your wife REALLY needs you. Just give it a quick daily once over to scan for casualties and deal with those should they come up. My tanks survived multiple instances of 2-4 weeks neglect post partum. I'm the primary animal care giver and they did just fine with me barking orders at my husband from the couch. You know what you're doing so yours should fare even better.

No need to anchor your tank as long as you have a good quality stand. I have 5 minions ranging in age from 2-10 and the under 6s CLIMB on the doors of my 75s. Yours won't go anywhere unless the stand wobbles in which case it definitely would have failed by now.

Use a shopvac to do water changes. Nice and fast suck the gunk out of the sump. I usually do bench press 5 gallons at a time. If I was smart, I would replace the pump I used to have so I could mix 30 gallons at a time in a container next to my tank and just let it fill the tank. Lol

 

[phenom5]

No you won't.. You just learn to do them really quick..

Instead of a slow siphon with 1/2" tubing to remove the water you pick up a shop vac with a 4" hose and suck that water out in under a minute..

Instead of a 1/4" tube filling the tank back up you are bench pressing the saltwater jugs over your head dumping it right out the large spout..

All the time you are rocking the baby with your big toe... :lmao:

Well, outside of the bench pressing things, that may be a good idea. Streamlining my WC routine would be awesome.
Right now I have 2 Brute cans, on wheeled base, I pump old water out, and pump new water into the sump. Then I pump the old water down our utility sink. I am using an old maxijet 900 that I have had forever. Maybe this is a good excuse to replace that with something that can speed up the job...

 

[homer1475]

I knew there was a reason I never had rug rats.

 

[Bryan3536]

I knew there was a reason I never had rug rats.

Ahh, but here's the awesome thing: my 8 year old and I overruled mommy and set up our tank together in January. Ha the only reason I got to "œyes." We never did anything like it before, jumped in with a 180g. He watched more BRS and CoralFish12G videos than I did. Sure it started as a way to get cool fish, but he quickly got sucked into the dirty details of sumps, fuges, the value of beneficial bacteria and pods, the various species of coral and the pros/cons of metal halide lighting. Just like the rest of is. He can tell you the differences between species of calurpa, corrects me on fish IDs at the LFS, and can tell you the target Ph, temp and salinity range.

Good luck. It's going to upend your world in ways I can't explain and you won't "œget" till it happens. Sleep when you can, take help when it's offered, and get one of those slider chairs.

But you can manage the tank. Don't worry if it doesn't look perfect.


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