Too clean?

[aliciatprince]

Is it possible for a tank to be too clean? Everything is doing well (a variety of soft corals, coco worm, assorted snails, starfish, hermits, one clown and one small dragonette). 25 gallon display with another 20 in the sump.

I seldom have to clean the glass except to scrape the coralline algae off the glass. I run a protein skimmer and a phosban reactor. Change water about every 7-10 days, 5 gallons. 10 gallons quarterly.

Not sure if I should remove some of the CUC or just stop worrying

 

[nuxx]

Some coral won't like being in a way too clean of a tank. Especially some LPS.

Apart from that, no problems

 

[toothybugs]

It sounds like you're doing well. Got any numbers for us to review - nitrate ppm, etc?

 

[BlackTip]

If the inhabitants are healthy and doing well, then the environment is doing well

 

[aliciatprince]

My numbers have always been ideal for each phase. Tank is 8 months old. Had a rogue emerald crab that killed a hermit and a wrasse while he was sleeping in the sand. That caused a couple of spikes but a 10 gallon WC took care of it quickly.

It's one of my soft corals that spurred the question. My whisker coral hasn't been out much lately.

 

[anthonys51]

do you feed your duncan. also my clowns host my ducan, witch cuases its to retreat a lot. do you have a clownfish

 

[aliciatprince]

I do feed it and I have one clown but have not seen it bothering any of the corals

 

[anthonys51]

why dont you think its doing well lately. what happened to it, do you have a picture

 

[CStrickland]

So the way I think about "clean" water is this...
What our nitrate and phosphate tests can show are the results of an imbalance between nutrients added, and nutrients removed. We add food to the tank, fish and coral eat and poop, coral and cuc eats the poop etc. Eventually, the leftovers break down into nitrates and phosphate forms that our tests can pick up, and algae can eat.

There's two directions your import / export can be unbalanced: over abundant leftovers, or insufficient food. Most tanks with fish are the first way, because too much is added or not enough taken out by filtration so the leftovers accumulate and nitrates and phosphate rise as the leftovers break down. Or you never see any n&p cause there's not enough food, or you are too aggressive with removal (like overdoing gfo).

I'm not so sure it has to do with what we measure, but the balance that creates it, like we are one step removed. My tank seems happy when I need to clean the glass of algae 2x a week. So I tweaked my feeding and filtering to get there, if that makes sense.

Also, some lps get hidey when they are splitting, which isn't a bad thing. Idk "whisker coral" tho

 

[anthonys51]

duncan dont split, they add heads around the base. do you see new heads all around the base on your duncan. i know mine went from 2 heads in march to 15 heads today. so they grow fast.

 

[CStrickland]

Oh! Whisker = Duncan. Yup

 

[anthonys51]

dont feel bad csrickland. i had to Google whisker to know that it was a duncan