calcium question

[titus]

Hello,

Beverly, I'm sure your inhabitants love you for the fresh water instead of recycled water off from a skimmer. That is a lot of work though.

Titus

[Beverly]

Titus,

Did I mention my aching back

Over the past few weeks, I've been noticing how much valonia is my my 42g, so I tore it down yesterday, got out my Xacto knife and scraped it all off Scraped a bit of rock off while doing it to make sure I got to the root of the problem, if you know what I mean. Rinsed each rock off in two separate rinses to help remove any spores I released. Have gone through 20g (and counting) of NSW and one laundry load of towels (and counting) to do the job right.

Am now in the process of putting the tank back together, but the water is cloudy for the moment, so it's pretty hard to see what the heck I'm doing in there Corals are in a rubbermaid tub with heater, powerhead and an NO strip light. Rock not in the tank is in buckets of sw. Will post pics of the tank in a few days once the tank is back together.

Better go soak my sore back in the bathtub until the tank clears

[Bob I]

Beverly I find it interesting and heartening that you are one of the very small skimmerless, and sumpless crowd.
In my case I have a 50 and a 20H tank. These tanks have always been skimmerless, and sumpless. The only difference in my case is that I run Chemipure in smaller Fluvals. I am assuming it does a good job, as I don't bother measuring things, and I do very few water changes. Between the two tanks there are seven smallish fish and a couple of Cleaner shrimp. I also have some soft and LPS corals, and zoanthids that grow like mad.
The 20H also has some M. digitata, a bit of Hynnophora, and a piece of staghorn. All the inhabitants appear to be happy, so I will continue being less anal than most.
I am 63 years old and could well be considered somewhat stubborn.

[Chad]

I was skimmerless on my 20gal for a good 8months.. but I finaly opted to put my crummy Sea Clone on there because I was having some cyno problems. However, I have come to realize its more than likely related to my sandbed (crushed coral) .. I am in the process of switching over to sugar sand..

[TANGOMAN]

Hey Bob, ya' forgot about me...I 've got a few tanks with no sumps and no skimmers. There a pain in the ...compared to my tanks with sumps that house skimmers...much "tidyer" if your dosing kalk to maintain calcium levels too.
You stubborn ? Get outa' here...

[Beverly]

boB,

The thought of a sump scares the cr*p outta me with all those stories of animals finding their way into the plumbing and other plumbing failures producing floods A few years back we had a HOT Precision Marine skimmer on our 75g that was more trouble than it was worth. The thing overflowed several times, but it did skim well

I'm even afraid of Fluvals and the like because of overflow problems, so now everything is in the tank and no water is lost due to malfunctioning equipment.

I find it more important to clean the foam media in the Hagen 802s than doing a water change, but I like the hands-on aspect of doing weekly maintenance and water changes. Makes me feel like I'm an integral part of that strange world inside the tanks for some strange reason.

I only started measuring alk and Ca when I noticed in our almost 1 year old 42g that I wasn't getting very good coraline growth. Wasn't dripping kalk like I used to so I had to resort to measuring and adjusting stuff. Both alk and Ca were low in all tanks, even the 28g seahorse tank which has no corals, only LR, sandbed and macroalgae.

Yes, it's heartening to me too to know there are others who aren't high tech with their reefs and still manage to have nice looking tanks. How about some pics of yours, boB?

[Bob I]

Originally Posted by Beverly

boB,

I'm even afraid of Fluvals and the like because of overflow problems, so How about some pics of yours, boB?

There are some pics on my website. I will put an updated picture of the 20H on tomorrow. When I get Evan's custom built 11G nano later this week I will have to put pictures of it up also.