Water chemistry

[MJI]

Hello all,

As you may remember , finally got mysel a good looking mantis - G Chiragra. He's in a 10 gallon tank make of glass :eek1:

Anyway, we get a lot of post on IDs, set up, problems etc and that's all good, but I'd like to know about tank maintainence.

It would be great if everyone could say how they keep their tanks clean - how much LR vs water, water changes, tank cleans, additives, clean up crew etc etc.

Just "How you you keep your tanks from gunking up???

My tank has been running for about a months now, and it's still getting little bits of brown algae on the glass. Not a big worry, but unsightly nontheless.

I'll kick off:

7 gallons of water vs about 4 kilo's of LR, playsand at about 1-2 inches deep, change about 40% water every other week, clean glass once a week, balanced additive, three turbos (current menu!) and three hermits, 1 cowrie. Run a little Rowaphos too along with Caulerpa.

 

[Gonodactylus]

This entirely depends on the size and species of the stomatopod(s), and purpose of the tank. I will say that I have had bad luck with various addatives designed to keep down phosphates.

I go through a lot of credit cards (the expired variety) and only an occasional bashed finger scraping algae.

Roy

 

[DensityMan]

Magnet-scrapper all the way!

Regarding other maintenance I just strive to keep his tank like any other. I can't begin to describe how loaded with 'pods his tank is (since the heater went POP and the fish went away). I still prune out some larger macro-algae occasionally, but the little stuff gets taken care of by the tanks clean-up crew. I top off daily and still use a 'waterfall' filter w/ cartridge, so my nitrates are a bit higher than I would like, but don't seem to be having any adverse effect on the tanks inhabitants. The tank is also heavily planted to consume 'trates as well.

I keep many different varieties of snail and crab w/ Tim to help clean up. His favorite is Nassarius and he eaither doesn't like the taste of or can't break open astrea snails. Ceriths are a new conquest for him. Generally I can get a dozen nassarius snails to last a month with ever-other-day feedings of mysis shrimp or shrimp pellets.

And even thought the larger members of the clean-up crew don't last long, at least they go out with a BANG and serve a fulfilling purpose.

 

[dave2184]

I keep a N. Wennere in a ten gallon AGA with a small power filter, maxi-jet 400, 150 watt thermal compact heater, duel 15 watt AGA strip light with a coralife 10,000k and a coralife actinic 03, 10 pounds of live sand, 10 pounds live rock, 2 pounds live rock rubble.

Maintinence consists of a 2 gallon water change every month, cleaning the glass with a mag float every other day, top off every other day of a half gallon of RO/DI.

Inhabitants consist of.

Neo (Neogondylactus Wennere mantis shrimp)
6 blue legs
6 red legs
2 scarlets
2 astrias
dozen nassarius (his favorite meal)

I feed him mysis shrimp every other day. And he eats a nassarius a day.

I will soon upgrade the lights so i can stock some softys and i will be replacing the power filter with a hang on skimmer.