Stability and consistency is doing things right in my book. If you're doing a 10g weekly, then make sure you do it weekly and don't get lazy, cause we all do at some point, just have to push through it.
Also, don't do any knee jerk reaction when you see something wrong. Fix things slowly. My last tank, I had the worst case of hair algae, so I manually pulled it weekly for several months, before my livestock got it under control. Then at one point I had red planaria flatworms which I had to vacuum out daily for a month before I could use flatworm exit and my wrasses finished off the rest. Same with cyano and dinos, all the uglies take time to correct.
For me, stability comes in a few ways:
- Calcium reactor - this provides everything my system needs for the most part
- Annual maintenance - this means cleaning it completely, greasing the seals, checking the pumps (recently had to replace the impeller), and replacing the media
- GFO - My system, I found every 3 weeks changing this out keeps my phosphates between .01 - .04
- Water changes - every week, no matter how lazy I get, 15G water change
- Testing -
- Alk - test weekly to adjust calc reactor as needed
- Calc - once a year, usually doesn't change since I'm running a calc reactor
- Mg - once a year, I usually dose to get it up to 1600 over the course of a week, then it usually drops to 1200 by the year end
- Phosphates - every 2 - 3 weeks, I'm not that consistent with this now since I got my GFO change out down pretty good
- Nitrates - every 2-3 wks, my nitrates doesn't fluctuate that much for me to test that much, but recently I did had to test every 3 days as I was dosing sodium nitrate to get it up some
- Skimmer - once a month, clean the collection up - i have skimmate going to a skim locker
- RODI system - keep it maintained, got to have that clean water
- Every year, change out all the carbon blocks (4x)
- When pressure drops I swap out both sediment filters
- Swap out membrane when I start to see before DI canister get over 3, which for me took 5 years
- Lighting - set it and leave it after you get your PAR correct. For me it's 350 at the top shelf and 150 on the sand bed.
I stay consistent by keeping reminders on an app.
Keeping acros requires stability, a lot of patience, and dedication. If you see some algae or cyano in your tank and the first thing you want to do is find an instant fix, then you're not going to make it.
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