poll: who takes care of their reef "intuitively"?

[danmhippo]

I guess you could say that I am the anal ones (& get your mind out of the gutter). I test for everything that I could get a test kit on and perform daily check up, and I am not even a German Engineer! This is my hobby, entertainment, investment and it has already cost me more than 5 figures over the past few years AND I DON'T WANT TO F*** IT UP!!!!!

Funny that someone put a brochure for an anger management class on my desk today......

 

[dvmsn]

I don’t believe that use of the intuitive approach and laziness are necessarily the same thing. I don’t see how close daily visual inspection of your system and immediately correcting any perceived problems without the use of expensive testing is bad. If you notice a problem with
your system that you can’t explain then testing is certainly the best solution. For example, I run an extremely low nutrient system. I will notice a small outbreak of algae long before nitrites or ammonia become a problem that is serious enough to cause harm. I understand that phosphates
are the major cause of algae outbreaks but it generally fair to say that the increase of one nutrient will be accompanied by the increase of others. If I notice a problem in one area I will take steps to increase water quality generally. When I advocated building a healthy system and sitting back
and letting it run itself I wasn’t saying that maintenance wouldn’t be necessary. I just believe that a properly constructed and balanced system will naturally stabilize with out the use of daily additions or tests.

 

[bigtank]

I am a hands-on reefer. I test for Ca and alk and add supplements weekly. I put my hands in the tank every day for many reasons. The skimmer requires emptying daily, lest it overflow, and my fish are pigs. My maroon clown has probably never been full in his life.

danmhippo,

I could see 5 grand, but 5 figures, holy smokes! How many tanks do you have?

 

[mattf0124]

when I first got into the hobby, I tested everything I could for the first few months,in the past 7 or 8 years, all I test are temp and sg

 

[reefworm]

"Intuition" is probably experience in disguise. It's easier to evaluate conditions in your tank once you've built a knowledge and experience base from years of continual observation. However, I would still agree w/nathan and damnhippo that there's a lot riding on the water perameters. If there's already so much time and effort invested, why not just the little more that regular testing requires? It's not really that much of an effort. It's been my experience that problems often begin subtly, and by the time I notice something amiss, it's a bigger problem to fix. I've acted on little fluxuations that may not seem like much, and never were because I made adjustments based on the tests. I like Tullock's philosophy, "test, then tweak." No big adjustments = little stress. Would those little fluxuations have continued into something big and nasty? I don't know. I don't want to find out.

[ July 19, 2001: Message edited by: reefworm ]

 

[reefworm]

Grrrr! "Data missing" message led to a double post. Sorry. Sure would like to be able to delete my own posts. Where's that option?

[ July 19, 2001: Message edited by: reefworm ]

 

[Nathan1]

Not to keep beating a dead horse, but did you see Reefworm's signature quote?!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

"God does not play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

... but I do agree that if all you want is some saltwater fish and a couple of plastic corals, then it's fine not to bother with all the extras that make a full blown reef thrive since that's not what you want to keep anyway.

-Nathan

[ July 19, 2001: Message edited by: Nathan ]

 

[danmhippo]

BT, 5 figures constitutes over 10 years of fish keeping, stupid mistakes, early stage ignorances, upgrades, upgrades, and more upgrades. However, in the last 12 months, the costs are around low 4's, which includes a disaster the tank had a couple weeks ago when my temp surged up to 92F.

How many tanks? Hmmm.....one currently, and not looking into anymore as I am trying to save up as much as I could into kid's education funds. Finally there are something that costs more than my tanks on my monthly bills!