Past the fairly frequent chain of hair algae, bubble, cyano (which often has to do either with rock & sand bringing in a lot of phosphate or initial fill with tapwater---)...past all those hiccups, granted good care, there is often a 'honeymoon' period in which corals flourish and fish are happy and everything seems cool.
Then there begins a slow slide to little problems...
What's going on here?
In many tanks, it's because the tank started with a new fill of fresh, well-balanced seawater/or mix---and over time, some elements got used more than others, some elements piled up with evaporation, some got depleted by fish or corals, and other stuff gets in from food, bioprocess, etc---in short, things slowly drift off the 'perfect' balance you started with.
What to do, what to do?
One of the best answers is a campaign of water changes, not so many or so large as would be a problem, but something to noodge the tank back to a better balance. My own answer is a chain of daily or every-2-day changes of about 3-5%, which are easy to do from the sump---just turn the ATO off for a sec, swipe a little water out, put some in, not forgetting to flip the ATO on again--- and just keep it up for a while. This process lowers nitrates and provides trace elements, and over all brings the tank back toward that balance it's lost.
There are more exotic things you can do if the system is a) older than a year and b) showing real problems, including carbon dosing (a precise program of adding a dose of, say, white vinegar to your tank), which should be done according to strict tables, which can be had.
In general, for a younger tank, your best answer is literally to clean up the act early on, before you have any problem at all---do the water changes, watch your chemical balance through an array of tests---you don't have to run some of these EVERY week, but running them once a month or every couple of months is a good thing. Keeping a logbook of results and dates is a good thing. Sometimes it all looks sorta good---but if you look at the 'trend' or curve of certain numbers up or down over time, this can show you where things are headed so you can fix it before it gets there.
Sure, fish-onlies have looser 'requirements' than reefs. But the more both fish-onlies and reefs can try to keep things as close to those 'honeymoon' conditions as possible, the healthier the tank as a whole.
Then there begins a slow slide to little problems...
What's going on here?
In many tanks, it's because the tank started with a new fill of fresh, well-balanced seawater/or mix---and over time, some elements got used more than others, some elements piled up with evaporation, some got depleted by fish or corals, and other stuff gets in from food, bioprocess, etc---in short, things slowly drift off the 'perfect' balance you started with.
What to do, what to do?
One of the best answers is a campaign of water changes, not so many or so large as would be a problem, but something to noodge the tank back to a better balance. My own answer is a chain of daily or every-2-day changes of about 3-5%, which are easy to do from the sump---just turn the ATO off for a sec, swipe a little water out, put some in, not forgetting to flip the ATO on again--- and just keep it up for a while. This process lowers nitrates and provides trace elements, and over all brings the tank back toward that balance it's lost.
There are more exotic things you can do if the system is a) older than a year and b) showing real problems, including carbon dosing (a precise program of adding a dose of, say, white vinegar to your tank), which should be done according to strict tables, which can be had.
In general, for a younger tank, your best answer is literally to clean up the act early on, before you have any problem at all---do the water changes, watch your chemical balance through an array of tests---you don't have to run some of these EVERY week, but running them once a month or every couple of months is a good thing. Keeping a logbook of results and dates is a good thing. Sometimes it all looks sorta good---but if you look at the 'trend' or curve of certain numbers up or down over time, this can show you where things are headed so you can fix it before it gets there.
Sure, fish-onlies have looser 'requirements' than reefs. But the more both fish-onlies and reefs can try to keep things as close to those 'honeymoon' conditions as possible, the healthier the tank as a whole.
