- I love, hate this topic because it's so boring
to talk about, but I'm gonna spend the entire day
sexifying it with all sorts of interesting B roll.
So I think the tank's are gonna look pretty good
at the end of today.
A big howdy howdy to all of my fellow
and future hobbyists out there.
My name is Matthew.
I am your BRS beginner guru, and this is episode 40.
I can't believe we have done 40 episodes
of this series already.
It's crazy.
So if you haven't watched episodes one through 39
and evidently have two weeks of vacation
to binge watch all of that common
then we will put a link in the description below.
You're gonna develop your own maintenance routine,
but you need somewhere to start.
My biggest warning for you is just be aware
of your personal tendencies.
If you're like me and super anal retentive with things,
then your tendency may be to get your hands wet way too much
and overdo things which could upset the balance
of your tank.
But the opposite is also true of course.
So if you're a true beginner for now,
just follow along with our recommendations
and then adapt them as you need down the road.
Well, let's jumpstart this maintenance video with all
of those daily tasks that you will need to perform
on your saltwater aquarium.
First up, you're gonna have to feed your fish
and your other livestock.
I typically set a baseline of two to three feedings per day,
but you're absolutely gonna have to adjust depending
on what livestock you have.
So check out episodes 36 and 37 if you missed them
or need a refresher for more details.
The second thing you're gonna have to do
is two part dose or if you're a little bit lazy like me,
you can do something like the Tropic Marin,
all-for-reef one part dose.
That's half the work really.
This is for all of you newbies out there who went crazy
with stony corals and other inverts who need
to build their calcium carbonate shells
and whose water changes aren't able to keep up
with the daily depletion of alkalinity and calcium.
If you just have a lightly stocked tank,
you're not gonna need to do this because your weekly
or every other week water change is likely gonna be enough.
Especially if you use a salt like the red sea coral pro,
which is super high in calcium and alkalinity,
but check out my reef tank.
It is medium level stocked with a few SPS,
but mainly LPS corals and my weekly water changes
just can't keep up.
So I have to actually dose about 10 to 15 milliliters
of all-four-reef every single day to keep up
with the depletion/
Are you guys ready, huh?
This is step number three.
I'm gonna show you all of my observation poses,
but seriously, number three, observe your livestock.
You're gonna have to do this every day
and preferably several times a day.
I like to sit down for five to 10 minutes,
maybe even longer, if I've just added some new livestock,
this is how you're gonna get to know your tank
and know your livestock.
This is how you're gonna recognize disease and illness
or nuisance algae growth before it becomes a problem.
Once you know your tank you'll know the sounds of your tank
and you'll know the smells of your tank
and you'll know exactly how everyone looks
and when something's off you'll be able
to diagnose the problem and hopefully get
on top of it before it spreads through the tank.
Daily task number four is check the water temperature.
I don't actually manually check my temperature,
except when I'm doing water changes
because I use different temperature controllers.
My two favorites are the Inkbird or the Bayite
because they're super inexpensive, but I do also have
the fancy, innovative Marine Helio system as well.
That one costs quite a bit more.
If you're like me and just get a temperature controller,
then all you have to do is set the variance level
and set when you want the alarm to come on.
If it either gets too high or too low,
and then the obnoxious beeping sound will alert you
when there's a problem.
Daily task number five,
might be something you didn't think about
when you were starting out,
but you're gonna have to flip over your snails.
It used to be the Trochus snails were everywhere
and they were inexpensive.
You could get them for $2 or less.
But the thing about Trochus snails is everybody
has figured out how awesome they are
because Trochus snails can flip themselves back over.
But if you have similar style Turbo snails like Margarita,
Turbo or Astraea snails, they may look the same,
but they can't flip themselves over.
So you're gonna need to go through every single day
and see if there are any snails that are on their back
and trust me, this happens all the time.
What I like to do is just get a piece of acrylic like this,
stick it in and flip them back over.
If you don't flip them over every day,
they will likely die and become food for your crabs
or your other fish.
And these sixth and final daily tasks
you're gonna have to do is replace evaporated water.
For all of you true newbies out there,
let me remind you that only the fresh water evaporates.
Salt does not evaporate.
So when you refill your tank with evaporated water,
you're only using RODI water or distilled water.
If you were to keep adding salt water back every day,
all you would do would be increasing the salinity
of your tank over time.
If you don't have an auto top off system,
you're gonna have to do it manually every day,
which trust me, it gets annoying after a few months.
So I'd recommend picking up some sort
of auto top off system.
You can do something inexpensive,
like the Reef Breeders Prism ATO,
which is under a hundred dollars or another option
is the XP Aqua Duetto Dual Sensor system.
It costs a little bit more,
but it's really small, which is nice.
I also use the rather expensive Tunze osmolator
but it is by far the best one I have.
And I've had it for over five years with zero problems
and the exact same pump.
Another thing for you true beginners out there
is the only chamber in your tank that is going to vary
in water height is the chamber that has your return pumps.
Every other chamber will not get lower or higher.
I know that seems obvious for all of you who have done this
for a little while, but for a beginner,
it's not always obvious which chamber is the one
that varies its water height.
That means that you're gonna have to check
that return chamber daily and either fill it up
to a specified line.
You can put a piece of tape on there if you want,
or if you do end up going with an auto top off system,
that is where you will place the sensors
for that auto top off unit.
There are a lot of different factors that go
into how much water is going to evaporate daily
from your tank, such as the temperature of the room,
the humidity of the room, how much surface agitation
there is and how big the surface area is.
Let me give you two of my tanks as reference.
First is the 65 gallon seahorse macroalgae tank,
which sits at 73 degrees and the humidity inside our house
is usually somewhere around 35%.
It only evaporates probably a quarter gallon each day.
But on the other side, you have my clownfish harem tank,
which is also a 65 gallon, but sits at 77 degrees
with more surface agitation and that tank evaporates
probably a gallon a day, four times more
than the seahorse macroalgae tank.
But somebody, somebody keeps barking at me
when I'm trying (growls)
when I'm trying to work in the morning
and do these filmings.
Somebody thinks it's playtime.
So she will sit over in the corner and bark at me
and it's so cute.
All right, that wraps up the daily tasks.
Now let's move on to those tasks that you're gonna need
to do two times a week.
First up is scrape the glass.
I own like a no, I don't own like eight flippers.
I do own eight flippers.
I gotta stop saying like,
because I used to have eight tanks and I had a one
for every single tank.
So do I recommend the flipper for a magnetic algae scraper?
Yes I do.
For those of you that don't know what the flipper is,
it is a magnetic algae scraper that allows you to flip
from the soft felt side to the hard stainless steel
or plastic side in the water without getting your hands wet.
It's fantastic.
I usually start with the felt side near the top of the water
being careful not to do it too vigorously because then water
will spill on the outside of the glass and then get
in between the flipper and the glass
and then you just smear salt water all over the outside
of your tank.
One little technique I use is I run my hand along the top
with the flipper, just in case there is gonna splash
it'll hit my hand and not go on the tank.
And then I also am careful with the felt side,
not to get too close to the sand bed,
'cause your worst nightmare using any magnetic algae scraper
is to get a piece of sand stuck in between the magnet
and the felt because then you will just scratch the heck out
of your tank.
Then I flip it over and I go to the stainless steel side
since my tank is glass.
If you have an acrylic tank, you want to make sure
you use the acrylic attachment,
not the stainless steel attachment.
And then I carefully get all of my seams.
I do the top of the water line and I get near the sand bed.
And every week there's always places that you get
that harder type of film algae that needs
the stainless steel scraper to get it off.
You can take the flipper out after every use and rinse it
with some fresh water.
But I usually just leave mine in the tank
for about three weeks that way I don't have to clean it
every single time, but it is important to take out
whatever magnetic algae scraper you're using
and rinse it off or over time,
it's gonna corrode and might start to rust
and you're gonna get a whole bunch of Coralline algae growth
on it, but you can't clean everything with the flipper
unfortunately, because there are some places
where a magnetic algae scraper either isn't the best
or just won't work such as the rear wall of your aquarium
or the rear filtration chamber.
And for that, you will need some sort of handheld scraper.
And we have plenty of options here at BRS.
Semi-weekly task number, semi-weekly or biweekly.
Do you guys ever struggle with that?
Is it semi-annual for twice a year?
Semi's like half, right?
So I feel like that would be twice.
We're gonna go with semi.
If I'm wrong, put a comment down below, let me know.
Semi-weekly task number two is to change out
your filter sock and or rinse out your sponge,
if you have one as well.
BRS investigates did an entire episode just about how often
to change out your filter sock and they discovered
for the most phosphate and nitrate reduction
every three days is best.
When I change out my filter sock,
what I do is I pull the old filter sock out and I leave it
in the rear filtration chamber or in the sump.
I install the new filter sock and then I gently squeeze
the old filter sock into the new filter sock.
That way I'm not removing a ton of salt water
and then all the stuff I'm squeezing goes
into the new filter socks.
So it's not like I'm just adding it back into the tank.
For sponges you can just rinse them in some fresh seawater,
if you are using your sponge as part
of your biological filter.
But if you have plenty of other biological filter media
in there, then you can just take out your sponge,
rinse it in the sink and re-install it.
I usually like to have several cut-up of the same size
so I can just pull one out and put another one in easily.
And the last semi-weekly task is to fill
your auto top off reservoir.
Obviously, if you're doing this by hand still,
don't worry about it, but if you do have an ATO,
then you're gonna have to fill up the reservoir as well.
Well, I actually have a lot more to do
so I think we're gonna cut that episode here.
So stay tuned for next episode, episode 40 B,
because we'll go over the weekly and the monthly tasks
that you're gonna have to perform
on your new saltwater aquarium.
I've also tried to highlight several of my favorite products
throughout the video.
So if you're interested in learning more or purchasing them
yourself, we will put a link down below
and as always everybody thanks for watching.
Happy reefing, be well.
We'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)