maintenance routine

I need to get on a more disciplined maintenance routine. I just do things like clean the powerheads, sump, etc when I think of them. I feed my tank every other day but sometimes, I forget. I'm going to make a calendar I think so I am more regular about maintenance. So, what is your maintenance schedule? Daily, weekly, monthly? Are there things you do less often than once a month?

blennieluvr wrote:I need to get on a more disciplined maintenance routine. I just do things like clean the powerheads, sump, etc when I think of them. I feed my tank every other day but sometimes, I forget. I'm going to make a calendar I think so I am more regular about maintenance. So, what is your maintenance schedule? Daily, weekly, monthly? Are there things you do less often than once a month?

I like to do this to. But when you have 5 kids work 6 days a week. work on the house when i can. I do my best to do a weekly W/C lol

Yeah. I know what you mean and I think that's why I'm feeling guilty and wanting to set up a schedule.

Today, we cleaned out the sump. I'm embarrassed to say we never have since the 75 has been up and running (maybe 3 years?) It's a HUGE chore with our setup. It's not going on the once a month list that's for sure or I need to get out of this hobby!

So far, my schedule is:
*Feed every other day.
*Dose twice a day. (Just setting up a drip for this now.)
*5% w/c once a week (clean the glass just before). Siphon the sand during w/c. Every other week, I'm going to siphon out the sump now.
*I need to get back to testing once a week too. I have only been about every couple of weeks.

I think I'll clean the powerheads and the light once a month.

I am terrible with schedules, water changes get done depending on how much I work that week and how lazy I am, last few days have been so hot we haven't even turned any tank lights on. Haven't tested in god knows how long but I know I need too, pretty sure my calcium/alk is off, I am good about cleaning out powerheads/filters pretty regularly though.

Hmmm Aren't you guys siphoning out all of your copepods and "mini critturs" when you clean your sumps?

Matt told me once that by disturbing the substrata that you are releasing toxic gases. That I should not vacuum my sand, and I agree with Seafishinmn that all the bacteria, copepods, the good stuff that you have built up in 3 years is swept away.

But you kept your LR bubbling so they did not die, but I am interested to hear more.

Once per week turkey baster off the rock well, scrape the glass then change water, I am doing more 10% now in my W/C's, then clean my filters. Skimmer gets a remove and clean up every 3 months.

W/C's seem to be the most important thing, up in the range of 30 - 50 %.

Every two weeks 50 gal salt change, siphoning all sumps and frag tank of detrius. Also removing half of the cheato and cleaning of overflows of algae/wave box

Every day 6 cubes mysis and
every other day reef chilli

I'm pretty good on routine and this is all I really do other than fill CO2, and reactors. Takes like 3 hours every other weekend.

I siphon my sump out to every couple of weeks, I use No sand in my sump just large rubble and the sand in my main tank is not deep enough to have any bacterial benefits to it so I keep it clean to, as for loosing pods and stuff I can usually see where they swim when I clean I use a 6 LED light strip I put on the side of my sump and turn that on and they move over to the light.

I only have chaeto in my sump. I did siphon out and keep some little swimmers I saw in the corner when I drained it. I also grabbed as many of the living critters I could but managed to miss one snail who became a casualty of the process.

As for my sand, I'm just siphoning detritus where it settles on one side of my tank. Some day, maybe I'll get the flow right or enough flow that this doesn't happen.

I agree with w/c's being key. I only do 5% w/c's due to the way my equipment is setup up. If I did more, it would be more of a pain and I would be less likely to be regular about it.

Thanks for the input. Keep it coming.

A big enough container to make all salt for a single change is key. When I added the 55 gal barrels it made it much easier for me.

why does everyone siphon out thier sump? what is in it to siphon out? both of my sumps have nothing in there to sipon out. when i had that fuge then there was stuff to sipon but i never did my fuge.

I get detritus build up in my sump. Not a lot, but, any detritus is bad doo doo.

Yep same here if you keep a good flow of water in your main tank debris will need to finally settle some where and since i took my socks off which I will be putting back on soon again I just need to get them restocked so I can always keep a clean one on my outlet, but once I do that I shouldn't get detritus built up in my sump any more.

I have a sock in my sump too but it only works on the skimmer output. The other water charges out of the pipe so fast, the sock doesn't seem to do much good. So, I'll probably always have to siphon out my sump. And, it's hard to get all the way around in mine. I will have to just take it down from time to time and clean 'er out.

MNReef...good point about the larger storage. I'll have to make more room to hide larger containers since everything takes place in my kitchen/living room.

One thing I realized I could do more often with the detritus that settles. I can put a sock (nylon) on one end of my w/c siphon hose and siphon out that side of the tank as often as I want. I can dump the water right back into the tank when I'm done! Sometimes I'm done taking water of the tank for a w/c and didn't get as good of a cleaning as I'd wanted to. I'll use this trick for those times.

Every three months with the skimmer might work. Ours is a pain to get at but I can tell it's working much better after the cleaning yesterday.

My schedule is this: Whenever I have a spare moment and have some spare drive as well i clean something...lol That happens about once a month

Testing happens whenever I feel like it, which needs to become more frequent but the alk just doesn't seem to have a consistent usage yet.

Water changes happen on weekends where I am not doing anything. That means in the winter... Sometimes they happen in the summer too but not as often for sure.

Skimmer hasn't been cleaned since october, but the pump has been run in vinegar once...

Closed Loop pump hasn't been removed since October as well.

Schedules are nice but are sometimes hard to follow... Maybe a magnetic schedule on the fridge would be easier as if you miss something you can move the reminder to the next day. hasn't worked for me but it's something to try.

Ha LOL I believe cdness was writing my maintenance routine a lot like what mine is any way

I have a thing from current on my laptop that tries to remind me i still do my own thing !

Well thanks a lot Cammie! I started to feel bad that I was neglecting the tanks so I dug out my test kits and checked my 24 gallon, I figured something was off in there because my coraline was turning white, alk was low, nitrates around 5 so I went ahead and did a water change, one of my chalices kept falling, found out my rockwork wasn't that steady so tried to fix it....You know how that goes, 2 hours later the tank is destroyed, I gave up for the night, messed with it another 2 hours the next night, still can't fit everything back in, still in shambles. I hate rearranging!!!!