how often do you check your parameters

[Alexander]

Originally Posted by Bifferwine

I refuse to answer this question.

me too! I know how you roll..... just like me hah.

salinity multiple times a week... everything else..... well I won't say

[bri74]

Originally Posted by Bifferwine

I refuse to answer this question.

Uhhh ya what biff said

[fatman]

My temp, pH, nitrate, conductivity, calcium, orp and dissolved oxygen is digital constant hourly recording on computer desk top display. I check alkalinity, phosphate, iodine and strontium once a month. I use a refractometer every week to check my conductivity meter accuracy. I recalibrate my pH meter once per month. I do a chemical reagent test of nitrates every two weeks to check the nitrate monitor as it is fairly new and I do not know its trustworthiness yet. I do a titration test for calcium every month to check calcium monitor.

Electronic test equipment and computers may not be cheap, but they make reefing a lot easier. I am glad I have nothing to support but mysef and reefing.

[jcegt87]

Originally Posted by fatman

My temp, pH, nitrate, conductivity, calcium, orp and dissolved oxygen is digital constant hourly recording on computer desk top display. I check alkalinity, phosphate, iodine and strontium once a month. I use a refractometer every week to check my conductivity meter accuracy. I recalibrate my pH meter once per month. I do a chemical reagent test of nitrates every two weeks to check the nitrate monitor as it is fairly new and I do not know its trustworthiness yet. I do a titration test for calcium every month to check calcium monitor.

Electronic test equipment and computers may not be cheap, but they make reefing a lot easier. I am glad I have nothing to support but mysef and reefing.

That's cool yeah I got me just a pH meter

[bobby]

I check calcium ever few weeks. and everything esle probably about 3 times a year. Oh and salinity every week with the water change.

[fatman]

I never new how greatly my tanks fluctuated over the period of even just one day until started monitoring heavily. I probably never would have added refugiums, ozone, as heavy of circulation or additional skimming if I had not seen the results of even just a few days of 24 hour monitoring. Very large dissolved oxygen fluctuations and pretty substantial daytime pH rise with a very quick pH drop after lights went out. A pH fluctuation of .3 to .4 every day. And a decrease in dissolved oxygen by around 60 percent. That is with a heavy coral load, but no fish and very limited coraline, no macro and minimal micro algae. With ozone and a refugium running reversed light cycle with lots of macro algae the pH swing is around .1 and the decrease in dissolved oxygen is only 18 percent. A lot of my electronics and testing frequency is due to reefing being my only real expensive in life other than general living expenses. I have no wife or girl friend, or expensive vehicles or other hobbies and the government pays for my schooling, pays be a disability payment monthly, and I work, do public speaking and own a small aquarium maintenance company with two part time employees.. My only debts are student loans and the payments on that are deferred while I am in school and the government pays the interest on them while I am in school. Hence, I stay in school.

[Piggy]

Thanks for info. I understood all of it except one thing. what ia a ozone?

[fatman]

I use ozone as it cheaply increases the performance of my protein skimmers am therefore allows the use of smaller skimmers. I like smaller skimmers as I like to run two at a time for redundancy reasons. Some people use it to artificially increase the oxygen reflux potential of their aquariums water. To try to make redox, orp understandable to most would require quite a large write up and it really is not considered by most keepers of reef tanks. Ozone is generated electrically an it is 3 oxygen molecules joined together rather than the typical two oxygen molecules that we normally breath. Ozone can also be used to kill some pathogens and it is helpful in decreasing dissolved wastes. It is typically only used on large tanks with heavy fish loads and by commercial aquarists. It is helpful when a tanks bacterial oxygen demand is high, which basically means when there are high levels of organics in your water that the bacteria in your tanks bacteriological filtering system would lower the levels of oxygen in your water (demand more oxygen) for the process of breaking down the organics. Therefore ozone injection counters this allowing the maintenance of higher levels of dissolved oxygen even with heavy organic inputs. Ozone injection also requires the use of a controller, with an electrode for reading milli volt readings which change with different injection amounts, for safe usage. Figure a fair cheap system will run several hundred dollars at least.

[diver]

I have been up & running since Jan. 5th this year and I check mine every 2 days, except for salinity every 3-4, it doesn't seem to vary much. I could probably go longer, but being so new I don't want to assume things are not going bad.
My ammonia tests were changing alot when I was using a basic Mardel test kit. So I got an separate ammo test and now I feel much better that I know what is going on.

[fatman]

My variances I find through what some would call tinkeritis. I ca not leave well enough alone. When nothing appears wrong, I go hunting. I use to tellpeople for years that I had greatly flucuating pH readings between night and day and they would just sorta say yeah and shrug it off like I was lying or that it did not matter. Now just about every experienced reefer realizes that there can be large differebnces between day and night pH readings and most of them put macro algae in their sumps to minimize the pH swings. Not that I am saying tinjeritis is a good thing, but I am saying observation and testing beyond the establish norm or average can at times bring your tank problems out for viewing and therefore correction.