- Hey, what's up coral people. My name is Remy and today,
I'm going to take you through the eight simple steps,
that make up my weekly maintenance schedule.
I'll also leave my checklist in the description below.
So if you're new, you can print it off,
and have it near your tank. Oh, maintenance,
love it or hate it,
It's always going to be a part of this hobby,
and we cannot stress this enough;
weekly water changes and maintenance will ultimately lead
to your success in the reefing hobby.
Especially if you're just starting out this weekly
check-in with your tank, is really gonna help a lot.
I personally love it because I get to check on my tank.
I get to explore the different things that have grown.
I get to see the different facets and angles
and different views of my tank.
That's something that I really enjoy. And let's face it,
nothing feels better than a crystal clear sanctuary
for your marine and inhabitants when you're all done.
You ready for some maintenance? Let's go.
Step one, the water change.
First things. first,
you're gonna wanna make sure that you start with
good RO/DI water with zero TDS.
Now this could be water that you purchased
from your local fish store,
or it could be water that you make
in the comfort of your own home,
with one of the mini RO/DI units
the BRS offers on the website.
From hobbyists to hobbyist and RO/DI unit,
is one of the best purchases that I ever made.
No more hauling water to and from the local fish
store to your house, and if you've got a larger system,
well, it's just inconvenient all around.
Invest just a little extra money and get that convenience,
right in your house.
So how much water are you going to remove and then replace?
Well, the rule of thumb here is about 10% weekly,
or if you choose to do biweekly,
you're looking at about a 20% water change.
So, the night before a water change,
I always heat up the water
and make sure that the water is circulating.
On the day of my water change,
I'll mix the salt to the manufacturer's recommendation
for 1.026. That's the salinity that I shoot for.
After slowly pouring the salt in,
I'll wait for about two hours.
Now, I'm using a synthetic salt.
Please check with your manufacturer
on whatever salt you're using and
how long that salt needs to mix before it's ready to use.
Step two. Testing your parameters.
Think about testing as a solid check-in with your tank.
If you're testing weekly,
you'll be able to see gradual changes
and you can chart those over time.
You'll also be able to see if anything is way off
that you need to adjust for right now.
So, let's just say you go to a frag swap
and you spend too much like we all do,
and you buy a bunch of calcium and alkalinity-dependent
corals, and now,
you've got to adjust your dosing,
when it comes to calcium and alkalinity,
because you've got more corals
that depend on those elements.
By doing weekly testing,
you'll be able to see these numbers fluctuate.
Now, most of the time,
especially on smaller systems,
you'll be able to keep up with these elements,
just by doing weekly water changes.
When I test, I test for alkalinity, phosphates, nitrates,
calcium, and magnesium.
And we do offer a variety of testing kits
and supplies on the BRS website, but I will say that,
if you're gonna get the best
and you're going to get the most accurate,
I would go with the Hannah checkers.
They've got an amazing line of checkers
and I use all of them.
Step three, your aquarium glass.
Another thing to do
while you're waiting for your salt to mix,
is go ahead and start cleaning the glass.
I like to get this done and out of the way,
you're getting all that gunk off the glass
and into the water column,
which will eventually be siphoned out
when you do your water change.
For this task, I use three different tools,
and they are so satisfying to use.
This first product is the Seachem Algae Scraper.
Just a quick sidebar,
If you have an acrylic tank,
and you probably already know this,
you shouldn't be using razors on your acrylic.
I love the scraper because it's so effortless
and it actually really works on Coraline algae,
really, really well.
Now, once I've got all the crud off the glass,
it's time to move to an often overlooked portion
of your tank, which is the corners.
You definitely don't want to use a scraper
around the silicone.
So, you're going to want something a little more gentle.
In this case,
I really love using the Nano Sparkly Sponge On-a-Stick.
Like I said,
you never want to take a sharp edge to the corners
because that's where the silicone is,
and you don't want to break that seal.
So, I just went to the sponge into the crease
and pull out all the algae for a nice clean look.
We'll save the third product, the Tongji glass cleaner,
for the final step in today's checklist.
Step four, siphon out the water.
For this water change,
I'm going to be taking out the standard five gallons
that I would normally do on this tank.
Here's a handy tip.
Have different size hoses,
whenever you're doing a water change.
If you're wanting to do a quick water change,
a hose with the larger diameter
is going to get the water out pretty fast.
But if you want to siphon detritus from your rock work
or from the sand or Mir the sand bed,
getting a smaller hose is going to work great
because it's not going to remove as much water as quickly,
so it gives you a little bit more time to work.
And remember, you can always kink the hose
and have that in your hands
so that you're
controlling the flow of that siphon.
while siphoning,
you can also manually remove any nuisance algae.
Now, if there is a lot of nuisance algae,
cause a lot of new hobbyists
have issues with green hair algae and Bri Opsis,
you might need to take out an extra maintenance
step and just focus on that.
I've found.
that if you try to squeeze it into your weekly maintenance,
you'll quickly become frustrated with the amount of work.
So, just moving that off to another day
is probably your best bet.
This tank doesn't have a large sand bed,
so I usually don't siphon it too much.
If there's like, any kind of bubble algae
or any algae that's growing on the sand,
I'll manually remove that.
But if you've got a larger sand bed,
maybe a one inch or deeper,
this is where you want to siphon your sand bed.
And remember, you don't have to do the entire sand bed
all in one fell swoop.
Step five,
replace the water you removed with fresh seawater.
One last thing before you replace the water in your tank,
make sure that your salinity is at 1.026.
If you don't have the Hannah solidity checker,
please do yourself a favor and go pick one of these up.
It is the best thing ever. It's so easy to read.
It's so easy to calibrate
and it's going to give you a result in seconds.
Once you've achieved your desired solidity
and the temperature is correct.
You can go ahead and start replacing that water.
There are a couple of different methods
for replacing the water.
One of them, a little messier than the other.
The first, and the messy option,
is using a pitcher, and either using your hand,
or some of the rock work to diffuse the flow
of that water.
Or, you can use the method that I use
and make a little PVC pipe, candy cane,
and stick that on the end of your tank.
Put the other end to a pump you've got lying around,
or maybe one that you purchased from us.
It's super easy and convenient.
No more water all over the floor.
Step number six,
remove any mechanical filtration, clean or replace.
For this tank, I have a couple of different spots
where I've got mechanical filtration.
The first being a little bit of filter floss
in one of the overflows.
And then on the other side of the tank,
there is a UV sterilizer.
On top of that is a small sponge filter,
that I like to rinse out.
In this case, I'm running a smaller tank,
so I don't have a ton of mechanical filtration,
but if you're running any kind of reactor with carbon
or GFL, now's a good time to replace that.
Also, if you've got a protein skimmer,
remove the top cup and dispose of any waste
and put that back.
Step number seven, rinse the lid and spray down the glass.
If your tank has a lid,
you`be probably come to learn that it can get pretty cruddy.
What I like to do is just give it a quick rinse
with some RO/DI water.
Having these handy spritzer bottles are really nice.
Give that a quick wipe down,
make sure you get all the salt creep off of that.
And my favorite part cleaning the outside of the glass.
Now for years, I just use RO/DI water and a spritzer bottle,
but then I came across this Tunji glass cleaner
and this stuff is absolutely amazing.
I don't know what it is,
but it leaves the tank looking so much better
than if you were just to use our RO/DI water.
For the newbies out there,
never use any kind of Windex or any kind of cleaner
that you might use on your typical windows in your house.
The Tunji glass cleaner is great because
it's aquarium safe.
Step number eight, the worst step of all,
clean up your mess. I'm guilty of it too,
just kind of leaving stuff out after a long maintenance,
you just kind of want to leave it out and
come back to it later.
But I'm telling you,
you will thank yourself by cleaning up all the buckets
and all the hoses and all the, everything that you used,
for your maintenance. And just like that,
You're all done.
If you're an experienced reefer,
I hope there was a little tidbit
that you could pick up there.
If you're a new reefer, don't be overwhelmed.
You'll get this. I promise.
And let me reiterate.
Briefing hobbyists, especially when they're new,
who do weekly water changes and maintenance
are setting themselves up for success.
Once your tank has matured,
you can back off this stuff a little bit.
You can relax on the weekly water changes,
but when we're talking about a mature tank,
we're talking about a tank that's like a year and a half
to three years old.
At BRS, we've made it super easy for you.
We put together a bunch of kits and bundles
for cleaning specifically.
Here's my favorite.
And you can check it out from the link right here.
And I will see you in the next one.