High Tide Aquatics

What little thing in reefkeeping changed your life?

IOnceWasLegend

Frag Swap Coordinator
BOD
There's lots of parts of the hobby we don't like, but there are ways to mitigate them. So, what little thing have you done in the hobby that has made a huge positive impact?

I'll start with my own: getting a pump for water changes. After giving my torch a haircut, constantly having to deal with saltwater spillage, and lifting up 5 gallon buckets to pour into my 20g tank, trying out a pump was a godsend. I kicked myself so hard for not doing this sooner.
 
Not so little I supposed, but Automatic alk testing with KH guardian. I still have a difficult time keeping stable alk in my small tank but with automatic testing it’s easy to catch spikes/dips before they become an issue (I say that as I’m dealing with the repercussions of a spike). I can tune my dosing schedule to keep stability despite intake being higher/lower at different times of the day.

I think if I had more volume it would be perfect, but with only 25gal and dosing 4mL of each part doesn’t provide much wiggle room when dosing 1mL more can spike it. My recent spike was because I saw alk going down after being stable for a few days, I increased daily dosage too much and then it sent me up and now I’m waiting for it to come down slowly, I also did a wc
 
Feeding ring for pellets is also really nice. Now I don’t have to turn off powerheads/pumps to prevent pellets flying over the overflow as soon as I put them in. And it’s looking awesome as it’s getting coralline coverage.

Yeah...I've wanted one of these for the past couple weeks. I've gone to Neptune four times since then for unrelated things, and each time I've started driving home I've *immediately* remembered I need to buy one.
 
There's lots of parts of the hobby we don't like, but there are ways to mitigate them. So, what little thing have you done in the hobby that has made a huge positive impact?

I'll start with my own: getting a pump for water changes. After giving my torch a haircut, constantly having to deal with saltwater spillage, and lifting up 5 gallon buckets to pour into my 20g tank, trying out a pump was a godsend. I kicked myself so hard for not doing this sooner.

What pump are you using for water changes? I've been thinking about getting one.
 
What pump are you using for water changes? I've been thinking about getting one.

This is the one I use. Coincidentally, I also use it to mix up the salt - instead of a power head.


 
How do you handle that with multiple tanks? Are some manual top off when they look low, or are they all ATO? Do they share a RODI res? I think you’ve mentioned the pest tank being manual top off which makes sense
Most tanks have their own ATO and reservoir... three of them in same corner share 1 29G petco $1/gal special for reservoir... :)
 
my personal ATO refiller.
5190659cc5a38ecc2e2334bd03848407.jpg


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This is the one I use. Coincidentally, I also use it to mix up the salt - instead of a power head.



How do you personally use the pump? I looked at the link and it says submersible and another spot says wet/dry. I’ve been thinking about getting a small pump to do water changes and try to vacuum out crud, but think it’d be easier to use something that doesn’t require being submerged.


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