The Puffer Forum

Ok, those who have like those 160+gal Marine setups...umm..how do you afford the salt for the weekly water changes???

Like a %50 WC each week...that's literally half a bucket of Instant ocean...per week!

At Bigalsonline.ca it's like $50 + heavy shipping costs. I wouldn't wanna see how much it costs retail..

Crazyness....Do you guys do %50 WC each week or just do smaller wc's each week to keep the nitrates down. OR is Marine aquaria a totally different "kettle of fish" *giggle* than fresh in the whole biodome thing

I'm thinking of either getting a Porc of a Fahaka in a few years time...so....yeah hit me

I just upgraded to a 156g. I always did 50% water changes. I didn't have a chance to find out if the larger tank and more rock would make a difference on if I had to do 50% or if I could start doing less. When I swapped tanks my nitrates spiked to 40 so doing the 50% was necessary. Once I got the nitrates down Elvis got Ich so into Hypo we went and daily water changes. Right now it's killing my pocket book. petsolutions.com and drsfostersmith.com does not charge a heavy shipping charge. If you sign up with ebates you can get 6% back for your drsfostersmith purchase. Every little bit helps. I buy the 3 pack box or the 160 g bucket, basically which ever one is on sale. I recently found a place south of Houston that has the 200 gallon buckets for $44. Also I was just about to get some marcoalgae but hypo probally would have killed it. I had to pass on the deal. Most people I know have sw tanks only do a 10% weekly water change. I still haven't figured that out.

I'm new to the large marine thing and I did alot of planning and research before setting up my new 180 gal. One of the thing I kept running into was this exact question. I gathered up the info, sorted it out and came to this conclusion. 1) Lots of live rock and sand in the tank with strong water flow, 2) Oversize your skimmer, 3) use an independent refugium with lots of live rock, DSB, and Chaeto to help with phos and nitrate control. From what I've been reading this has helped people cut their WC's down to 25% every two weeks. Whether this is a good thing or if it works well, I don't know, but I'm going to give it a try.

Why do you need 50% weekly water changes? If it's for the nitrates, you may find it less expensive in the long run to get a refugium with a deep sand bed and more live rock. And invest in a better skimmer.

The keys to not needing huge water changes:
- understock
- sufficient protein skimmer
- do not overfeed, and remove any uneaten food
- 4"-6" deep sand bed
- refugium with macroalgae
- extra live rock

I got large marine tanks with predators and do not have to do water changes that large to keep the water parameters in line and the corals growing. The same can be said for a beautiful public aquarium nearby. The more heavy stocked tanks need about 20% per week.

Dadof4 and goby1kenobi already covered solutions pretty well. Don't overstock, much live rock, a large and good (size is not everything) skimmer, well done and populated DSBs, a phosphate removal reactor, sufficient surface current for additional gaseous exchange. Macroalgae can help too if they grow well and if a bucket can be harvested each week (they are mainly water).

Here's what I have :
156g with a 55g sump
Stars & Stripes puffer (10")
GSP (3.5")
Wrasse (3.5")
Sailfin Blenny (3.5")
Snowflake ell (12")
Coralife skimmer 220 ( keep getting told it's a crappy skimmer but I think it works pretty good.)
300 lbs + lr
1" sand bed in tank (had 4"-5") before hypo (was told I shouldn't have a deep sand bed so I won't be putting it back in)
In sump 4" sandbed
Feeding: Every 3 days, 2-mussell, 1-shrimp, 1-clam , next feeding after 3 days 2- mussell, 1-shrimp & 1/4 crab (rotating schedule)
(for all fish) about 10 pellets for the blenny and wrasse. They are a little bigger than this size ( . )
Had plans to do a rdsb before hypo.

Unless I get a 400g tank it will always be overstocked. S&S requested tank is 300g. I had planned to get a 300g this year before my tank broke and I had to replace it. My nitrates always go up to between 10-20 after a week. This is why I always did a 50% water change. I don't believe I overfeed. Some weeks they eat 3X some weeks they eat 2X. Like I stated above: I didn't have a chance to find out if the deeper sandbed, more lr, larger sump & larger water volume would keep me from having to do 50% water changes each week. I've had nothing but problems since I have moved them to a larger tank.

With that being said: When I had two GSP's (1-3" & 1- 2.5") in the 125g and I was feeding them 1 shrimp every two days I still had high nitrates.
This is when they were in brackish. I was told once I got their sg up added lr and a protein skimmer then I would only have to do a 10% water change a week.
I must have had another crappy skimmer, and not enough lr because it didn't help. I had them set up alone for 4 months still doing the 50% water changes. This is when I got Elvis (S&S 4"), I figured if I'm still doing large waterchanges It wouldn't matter. And I had the plans for the bigger tank at that time. Elvis made such a mess I got the wrasse to clean up all the uneaten food. Which he does a great job. I was also having issues with algea so I got the sailfin blenny. Then I decided to get the eel to keep the sand stirred up between the rocks. It was eaiser than moving rocks each week to sipon the tank. She also does a great job at keeping things from settling in the rocks. My nitrates still stayed between 10-20 each week and I still did 50% water changes. Nothing had changed. Now a year later, I upgrade them from the 125 to a 156 and everything went downhill. This is where I am today. Doing daily 50% waterchanges in hypo to keep the amm. levels down. And I still don't know if the upgrade helped at all. I guess I will find out once they get out of hypo.

Forgot to mention: I started using Vit. C to help with the nitrates. It worked, my nitrates were 0 every week. I was paranoid so I continued to do the 50% water changes. That's when Ike hit our area. I couldn't do a water change for almost 3 weeks. We had sea water in our tap water and it was not safe for 3 weeks. After 10 days the electricity came back on and after 3 weeks our water was good again. At that time the nitrates went up to 20 and I still had to do 50% water changes to get it back down. I feel like I have been cursed sometimes. Everytime I do something good for the tank something bad happens.

Nitrates at 20 should not be a problem, really, for many fish, including puffers. Kelly (yes, the puffer queen) spoke at the local reef group's meeting a number of years ago, and told us what her puff tanks' nitrate levels sometimes got to -- far higher than that -- without noticable issues on the parts of the many puffs.

There's at least one marine aquarium I read about where they have a specific water change regime:
Fresh-mixed water goes into SPS tanks during water changes. Nitrates <10.
Nitrates at 10, water goes into clam tanks. (Clams need a wee bit of nitrate.)
From there, water goes into softies tank. Nitrates ~20.
Next, water goes into the FOWLR/predator tank. Nitrates ~30. This is the tank with the puffers.
Nitrates at 50, water's done.

Regarding that Coralife skimmer -- what's your skimmate look like? Does it look and smell more utterly nasty than tarry coffee sludge? It should, given your bioload. If not, it's not pulling out as much crud as it could.

Here's a pretty decent picture of the color your skimmate should be: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1319/872 ... 356a63.jpg
And this is skimmate from a wussy skimmer: http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t257 ... te-001.jpg

And I'm very curious to know who told you that you shouldn't have a DSB? And why not?

My skimmate smells horrible an looks like the first picture. I have to clean it in the evening. If I do it in the morning I'll start gagging from the smell.

I was told it wasn't a good idea because only the 1st 1" can be disturbed and it's better to have a rdsb.

RDSB? What's the R?

Regarding disturbing "only the first 1" " -- make it 6" deep and you're golden.

Pandora114 wrote:Ok, those who have like those 160+gal Marine setups...umm..how do you afford the salt for the weekly water changes???

Sheesh, I work at a pet store, and even with my 30% discount, I can barely afford the salt needed to keep up with water changes for two 55 gallon mid-range *brackish* tanks!

goby1kenobi wrote:RDSB? What's the R?

Regarding disturbing "only the first 1" " -- make it 6" deep and you're golden.

Remote deep sand bed.

In that case, I concur -- Remote DSB would be ideal, especially given your tank volume. Set up a 55g, or better, 75g, with 6" DSB and a bunch of chaeto....