How Do Gainfully Employed Do It?

[Buzz1329]

I'm retired. I still have stuff going on that demands my time, but let's be real, I'm retired. And I'm home for most of most days.

Over past 3 days:

1.The pump feeding the ATS on my 180 died and I did not catch it for a least two days. Yesterday morning, stench required that I completely disassemble ATS, clean it, and replace pump with spare one I had on hand. (BTW, may I just say that RIO pumps are the absolute worst products on earth? Thanks, I feel better now.)

2. After doing chemi-clean thing in my 75, I installed a filter sock, which I do not normally use. Luckily, tank is in my bedroom, and I heard a dripping noise at 4 am yesterday morning. Got up and saw that filter sock, resting on lip of sump had overflowed and was dripping over back of stand and soaking through to carpet. Rush to remove sock, towels to absorb water pooling on carpet around the tank, quiet dash down to basement to see if water leaked though floorboards onto something that could cause issues with she who must be obeyed. I'm safe, but never got back to bed.

3. Noticed at 9 am feeding on 180 today that Tunze ATO had stopped topping off sump in my 180. (Splash of water exiting ATS clued me in.) Cleaned out end of tube from ATO by soaking in vinegar. No change. Cleaned probe with vinegar and toothbrush. No change Cleaned emergency cut off probe with vinegar. And problem solved. No idea why cleaning this probe should matter, but it did.

4. Tested alk and calc in two tanks at 11 am today. Calc in 75 was down to 375. Investigated and saw that i had dislodged tube from doser when removing filter sock and completely knocked it over tank. Bolo dosed 300 ml of calcium 2-part solution over 8 hours, replaced tube in holder and carried on.

I could go on (running RO/DI water for weekly 10% water changes, topping off ATO containers with RO/DI water and in one tank kalkwasser, changing metal halide bulb on 75 when spot check with PAR meter showed a significant PAR decrease, changing media in GAC/GFO reactors, doing 10% weekly water changes, yadda, yadda, yadda).

How do you gainfully employed keep your tanks from teetering over the edge?

Mike

[nmotz]

Well, for me I just have to employ limits that I wouldn't need if I didn't have a job. Both of my tanks are really simple, and my livestock choices are also fairly straightforward. I have three corals: a yellow nano whip, a purple rim monti, and a red plating monti, all of which are fairly easy to take care of. I don't have a sump or any plumbing to worry about. And yet I'll still confess that I've been fairly lucky. The only two things that have given me trouble so far are a faulty refractometer (cheap), and my AutoAqua ATO because the sensor is a favorite spot for snails to congregate.

If I didn't have a job I would set up a full reef tank with fish and inverts out the wazoo. But at this point in my life I just can't. Right now I just enjoy what I have. I think it's incredible that I'm able to take care of beautiful, tropical marine livestock right here in my home. Such a special privilege IMHO.

[Dmorty217]

When it rains, it pours right? Everyone goes through a bad stretch, it's if you learn from it or not? Most lose interest within 3 years of setting up a tank. I lost 4500$ worth of fish to disease last yr... We ALL go through it

[Buzz1329]

Well, for me I just have to employ limits that I wouldn't need if I didn't have a job. Both of my tanks are really simple, and my livestock choices are also fairly straightforward. I have three corals: a yellow nano whip, a purple rim monti, and a red plating monti, all of which are fairly easy to take care of. I don't have a sump or any plumbing to worry about. And yet I'll still confess that I've been fairly lucky. The only two things that have given me trouble so far are a faulty refractometer (cheap), and my AutoAqua ATO because the sensor is a favorite spot for snails to congregate.

If I didn't have a job I would set up a full reef tank with fish and inverts out the wazoo. But at this point in my life I just can't. Right now I just enjoy what I have. I think it's incredible that I'm able to take care of beautiful, tropical marine livestock right here in my home. Such a special privilege IMHO.

Great attitude. And great choice of corals. Never heard of a yellow nano whip before, but after sampling pics of same, it looks pretty cool. Ditto with purple and red plating montis. I have both in my tanks. The red seems indestructible; the purple seems to need a bit more light, but both are beautiful. What are you using to filter the tank?

Mike

[Buzz1329]

When it rains, it pours right? Everyone goes through a bad stretch, it's if you learn from it or not? Most lose interest within 3 years of setting up a tank. I lost 4500$ worth of fish to disease last yr... We ALL go through it

Yep. But it hit me this week how much rain can pour in so short a time. Sorry to hear abut your loss. I hope I've learned from latest downpour, but every week, it seems like something else smacks me from behind.

Thanks,

Mike

[ColinAbi]

Does school count lol.

[LuciDog]

I work 10-12 hours a day plus have a very busy house with kids in it. My days are pretty packed. I just try and stay on top of things. I do my tank-keeping on Saturdays so that if something gets messed up or breaks, I have Sunday to fix it. A little each day in maitenance and it keeps things running smooth and doesn't seem to overwhelm me too much.

[ca1ore]

Well, for me I just have to employ limits that I wouldn't need if I didn't have a job.

I think that's exactly right. I work from a home office 2/3 of the time (winging my way around the world the other 1/3) which allows me to maintain animals that would have been problematic earlier in life when I commuted into NYC. Plus, my kids are getting to an age when they can be at least occasionally helpful.

[Lucky Lefty]

It is tough I'll admit. I actually have a personal family matter going on right now that has taken a lot of my attention. If I'm not at work, all of my focus is on family and I noticed that just in a few weeks time, the lack of focus has made my tank suffer a bit.
As long as it doesn't crash (knocks on wood) I know I can always get it back.
Prior to this, I felt like I had everything under control fairly well. Wake up, mess with tank, go to work, stop home for lunch and mess with tank, come home,. Mess with tank for a couple hours. I'm sure my wife gets a little jealous here and there, but I'm home and I'm sure she realizes I could have much worse hobbies.
Speaking of which... time to go mess with the tank.

[GoldeneyeRet]

Being away for work actually helps my tank by forcing me to leave it alone.

[Aframomum]

For me I realized with a 3rd shift job, and a 6 year old (and wife too!) that a big tank was not the best idea, so I kept it small and simple and went with a 40b.

Mark

[seamonster124]

It's all about focus control.

I suggest everyone read "7 habits of highly effective people"

You learn to save your focus for things you actually have control over. Turns out we have control over very few things. Most people waste energy focusing on things they cannot do anything about; some crime in another state, ebola, sars, state of some other country, some actor in LA, etc.

So the idea is you focus only on things you can control and you will become very very good at those things; like parenting, your job, reef tank, etc.

[uwish]

Yeah I work 45 hours a week but we have no kids, that releases significant amount of time that would be spent with them and their activities. I get 24 flex days a year that I could employ if I had an emergency. That and my APEX tank controllers and my programming is so tight if my tanks fart I get an email about it. Then my regular maintenance routine usually catches things, throw in some luck and poof!

[stingeragent]

Just a string of bad luck. It happens. I'm currently going back to school, but in my previous job I was working 100+ hours a week and my tank suffered. I pretty much got home, had time to eat, take a shower, glance at the tank for 10 seconds, and then go to bed. I think automation in tanks can make life much easier, but at the same time, you don't constantly check the things that are now automated, so if something isn't right, takes a while to notice it.
Edit: One thing you can do, is get your sump to the water level it's supposed to maintain, and put a mark on the outside of it. Then just make sure you visually check your sump everyday to make sure the water level is close to that mark. If its way under the mark you will know something is off.

[SecretiveFish]

That is sure a string of bad luck OP!

When it rains, it pours right? Everyone goes through a bad stretch, it's if you learn from it or not? Most lose interest within 3 years of setting up a tank. I lost 4500$ worth of fish to disease last yr... We ALL go through it

Sorry Dmorty217. That is awful!

In the last 18 month, we have been schooled on every inadequacy of our coral/invert/fish quarantine. Red Planaria, Montipora Eating Nudibranchs (twice! suspect we narrowed down the distributor that gave them to us and will not buy from again), ick, ick, ick, did I mention ICK?, internal parasites and velvet from a coral frag. We have also been being schooled on flow for SPS corals... I think SO has figured flow out now though.

I am very impressed that SO was able to save our Montiporas from the Montipora Eating Nudibranchs. Those things are really nasty. Granted, all lost some tissue in the battle, but all are rapidly growing now!

[Roccus]

In the words of dirty Harry .."mans got to know his limitations"....I work a 45 50 hour week.. working 6 miles from the shop cuts down on travel time..- I keep 4 tanks and a pond... as well as a small garden( obviously in summer) and flower beds... it's all about budgeting time and having "systems" in place to make the tasks as easy as possible...it doesn't hurt to have a wife that is semi retired and takes interest in OUR hobby ( or mowing the lawn)...

[Sk8r]

I have a home office now, but my hobby predates that luxury. My answer is a) securely fasten everything that needs to stay in place B) touch your tank glass when you do pass c) test weekly d) have reliable, basic automations like timers, and a taped line for water levels. If the level isn't where it needs to be, something's wrong. e) buy quality brands with a very low failure rate where it comes to pumps and heaters and lights.

[toothybugs]

I do 40-45 hours a week an hour away from home and have my system set up so I don't have to do much maintenance on it. I give it an hour or two over the weekend but otherwise have things set up simply so that the bulk of my maintenance is blowing out the rocks and sucking out crud, then replacing the taken water which counts for my water change. I may end up investing more time when I run a bigger tank (currently 40B, 75 in setup) but that will be barebottom and I don't expect much to change since it will be higher flow. More chemical maintenance though, I guess, for SPS sticks.

Eh well :)

[monkey4life]

it's all about budgeting time and having "systems" in place to make the tasks as easy as possible..

This right here. I'm a full time employee, plus have 5-10 dogs at any point in time, and a 4 month old daughter. glass cleanings are infrequent, but feedings are regular. I focus on a healthy tank lately, not a pretty one (well its pretty to me anyways). As long as everything is looking ok I dont mess with it. Automation really helps (reefkeeper/ATO/autofeeder) combined with low demand corals and fish really helps.

[BrandonFlorida]

I work 45 hours a week, have three dogs and a beautiful 20 month old little girl so my time is limited with the tank. I use a gravity fed ATO, and I test maybe once a month. I use ocean water and so far its going great.. I feed everyday but only have two clown fish in it. I am going slow with this one. I like to K.I.S.S. and it has worked great. Everything I put in the tank will be relatively easy to care for and should work out great.

Im not into SPS where it takes over my life and before my daughter I spent lots of time on my tank but I never really enjoyed those tanks like this one. If your constantly working on it you never get to enjoy it. I do QT now since I learned the hard way..

My daughter loves the tank and we named the clownfish Peanut butter and Jelly which she will eat everyday if she could..

[nmotz]

Great attitude. And great choice of corals. Never heard of a yellow nano whip before, but after sampling pics of same, it looks pretty cool. Ditto with purple and red plating montis. I have both in my tanks. The red seems indestructible; the purple seems to need a bit more light, but both are beautiful. What are you using to filter the tank?

Mike

I have a 1gallon HOB refugium full of chaeto/red gracilaria/marinepure biospheres and a simple marineland HOB filter.

You're right, the red monti is bullet-proof, but the purple rim monti needs some work. I'm about to reposition it higher in the tank. I tried some of the encrusting monti's too but I struggled with them. I've been patient enough to stay away from Acros for the time being.

[nmotz]

It's all about focus control.

I suggest everyone read "7 habits of highly effective people"

You learn to save your focus for things you actually have control over. Turns out we have control over very few things. Most people waste energy focusing on things they cannot do anything about; some crime in another state, ebola, sars, state of some other country, some actor in LA, etc.

So the idea is you focus only on things you can control and you will become very very good at those things; like parenting, your job, reef tank, etc.

This^^^^

Soooooo much stress and problems are self-generated, we just choose not to accept that and blame something or someone else. I should know, I'm usually the worst offender!

[reefwiser]

Working 7 days a week still keep the tank moving forward. Also in charge of Fragswap in my signature and do a Video Podcast. Plenty of free time.:)

[Greybeard]

Let's see... I work 40 hours, but I work from home, most of the time anyway. Four daughters, but the youngest is twenty. Two year old grandson living with my wife and I. Three great pyrenees, two shih-tzu's, a flock of chickens, a fair number of acres to maintain...

Oh, I'm a automation developer... so I _know_ how to automate things. My aquarium? Very little automation. It's a hobby, I don't want it to run itself! No probes, I'll do my own testing. No controller, though I do use timers on certain things. First rule of automation: _everything_ is going to fail, eventually. Make sure that it fails in a safe condition.

If I block my overflow, the pump will quickly empty the return compartment in my sump, and flow will stop. Tank has plenty of capacity to hold this volume. Return pump has an auto shut-off when it runs dry. If I kill the pump, sump has plenty of capacity to handle what comes down, without relying on back flow valves. Basic fail-safe practices.

ATO is gravity feed to the sump with a float valve, 5g reservoir. Plumbed to the RO/DI system with a manual valve and a float valve. I have to turn on the water for an hour or so once a week, but the float will keep it from overflowing if I leave it on too long.

There's a battery powered water alarm mounted about 2 inches higher than normal water level in the pump compartment of my sump, if it overfills, I know about it. 5 gallons isn't enough to bother the system much anyway. \

There's a 2nd battery powered water alarm in the bottom of the stand. Stand is waterproofed where the sump is. Can hold about 20 gallons.

Plan for failure... it's going to happen.

[EricGRIT]

I work ~50 hours/week, renovating the house any chance I get, while studying for my CCNA (Cisco certification) and I just started a new job. Trying to get this all done before kids (none yet), but I still don't have any spare time outside of these few items. My Apex has been a life saver. I have my 180 gallon tank to the point where I just have to feed the fish once per day and change water (~30 gallons) every 3 weeks or so.

ATO takes care of top-off.
Low dosage of Bio-pellets along with Chaeto handles my nutrients (no algae, at least not more than my Tang eat immediately).
Auto dosers setup for Alk/Cal
Empty skimmer every 2-3 days.
Fill up ATO container every few weeks.

Without the automation, I'm not sure how this tank would be working at this point. Now, it's all smooth sailing to the point where I'm surprised how beautiful this tank is looking with such little maintenance.

[Pastey]

Reliable automation and failsafes. Most days, I have to do very little with the tank. I feed nori in the morning before work, frozen in the afternoon every 2 days. Change filter socks out every 3. Clean the glass about once a week. Drain the skimmer cup once a week on average. Water change approximately every 2 weeks (~15%).

Taking precautions to avoid disasters like randomly testing siphon breaks in the case of an outage, testing my leak detection sensors, etc. go a long way.

I've been lucky but as far as the day to day stuff goes, my tank no longer takes up much of my evenings or weekends (unless I want it too) ;)

Hope you have a better string of luck from here out!

[heathlindner25]

dedication, plain and simple....ocd helps

[Buzz1329]

Yeah I work 45 hours a week but we have no kids, that releases significant amount of time that would be spent with them and their activities. I get 24 flex days a year that I could employ if I had an emergency. That and my APEX tank controllers and my programming is so tight if my tanks fart I get an email about it. Then my regular maintenance routine usually catches things, throw in some luck and poof!

Ahhh. I'm realizing how important the Apex email alerts are.

As a result of recent snafus, I have now adopted a 2x daily check of each tank, including:

water level in sump is at proper level;

reactors, skimmers, and ATS are flowing;

skimmer cup does not need to be emptied;

tubes from doser/ATO are not clogged and are still in place;

pumps in tank are all working (I have 4 in each so it's easy to lose track of one that has died);

heaters/controllers are maintaining set temp;

LED lights I use on one tank are still set on "custom," as opposed to "sunny," or "cloudy." (When working on tank, I've noticed that I can inadvertently brush my hand against control panel on front of light and change the setting.)

Plus, I have gone to daily testing of calc and alk; and every other day testing of NO3 and PO4.

And the next potential disaster will without a doubt involve something not covered by above checklist.

Mike

[cham]

Properly set up automation with good equipment.


After 5 years of running my reef tank life got busy and I left the tank alone for 2 years. Granted my corals died, but my tank ran great for 2 years without being touched once and the fish were doing great. I restarted it in July this year to be SPS again, but it's good to know that the system can run for weeks at a time without messing with it and it will be just fine.

[Buzz1329]

Does school count lol.

Absolutely not. How dare you even ask the question!

Kidding of course. Having worked my way through night school B.A. and J.D., while working full time during day, I know the drill. You have zero time left over. I kept FO FW tanks (10-30 gallons) while doing so and still found it a real challenge.

If you are attempting to keep a reef under similar circumstances, you may want to consider simplifying tank as other posts in thread have detailed.

In any event, good luck!

Mike

[Bent]

dedication, plain and simple....ocd helps

That's offensive...


Please put the letters in proper order. It's CDO.

[Buzz1329]

That's offensive...


Please put the letters in proper order. It's CDO.

OK, I'll bite.What is CDO?

Mike

[heathlindner25]

OK, I'll bite.What is CDO?

Mike

If your ocd....logic dictates "cdo " falls in alphabetical order

[Bent]

OK, I'll bite.What is CDO?

Mike

Cough cough**

Rough crowd.

[nuxx]

Get a bigger tank so less goes wrong ;)

Honestly, besides a weekly test and glass cleaning I really don't do much.

Feed three times a day, that's it for daily.

ATO, Automatic Water Changes, APEX, etc...

[Buzz1329]

Yikes, I think my 180 is trying to kill itself. This am, I went through the checklist and found the MJ 600 on GFO/GAC reactor had died overnight. Removed, reactor, replaced media, replaced MJ 600 (my sweet lord but MJ pumps bite) with Jabao DC 2000 pump set at lowest level and on we go.

When doing late afternoon feeding, and going through check list again, I realized I had turned Tunze ATO pump off when removing reactor for servicing in am and forgot to turn it back on.

Something is happening here and you don't know what it is? Do you Mr. Buzz.