From about 1995 to 2005 I had a 55 gallon saltwater tank. I was only moderately successful, because fish did not always eat, and the more delicate ones, like the butterfly (with the eye bar) did not survive more than a few months. I tried and it was a lot of work, since I did a lot of water changes. I also used a UV sterilizer to avoid sick fish, it leaked, and always changing the bulb was a hassle.
I read articles, and I wanted to find the secret to success.
Work smart, not hard. Knowledge is power ... etc
There had to be a better way!
Photos by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
I did not understand pH control, which was key to having healthy strong fish. Also I was able to eliminate all the hard work of constant water changes, and I got rid of the UV sterilizer.
I learned how to control pH by adding Marine Buffer, and adding much more than most fish keepers would think is needed, weekly. I did this later on the 75 gallon tank in 2013, which is described below.
Like caring for plants, and having a "green thumb", fish do well when there is stability of favorable conditions. pH tends to get acidic in an aquarium from fish urine, waste, and uneaten food. It is impossible to get rid of all the waste completely all the time, so there will be decay, and the result of decay is acid, which makes pH low. When the pH is low continuously, even a little, it makes the fish weak: they get sick, and eventually they die. Learning to control pH was critical, and made all the difference in my results.
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Having a lot of buffer in the water, which is called "alkalinity," keeps the pH steady at the desired 8.3 all the time.
When pH is stable all the time. not only do you get healthy fish, they will have good colors, with a lot of swimming and perkiness, and they will have voracious appetites. Also, they don't seem to get "hole in the head" disease over the years.
There was an article that supports this practice of adding a lot of buffer, written by the founder of Seachem, Dr. Leo Morin, called The Contrarian Reef. See the section called "How Much Alkalinity Does A Reef Aquarium Require?" Note that I was keeping fish only, not a reef tank with corals. The article does say that for reef tanks you have to be more precise with the dosage. For a fish only tank, using a little too much does no harm.
But, when this tank was running, I didn't know this about pH control. There were some great fish in that tank. Through a lot of work, a lot of water changes, the fish lived. But it could have been easier as a hobby. The photos below were shot on film and scanned.
Naso tang - common around Hawaii and they love romaine lettuce.
Photos by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
Blue face angel - incredible snout coloring - found in Indonesia.
Photo by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
For this tank I use bleached coral decorations. This didn't work out so well. The white corals only look good for about 1-2 weeks and then they turn brown with algae.
I never solved the coral getting dirty problem. Instead I gave up on bleached corals, and instead used "lace rock" on my next tank. Every two weeks I would remove the rocks, and put in another set. The dirty rocks could just sit in the sun and dry out, ready to be re-used - no bleach required! Using bleach to clean decorations was dangerous - if any traces got into the tank it would kill everything!
The original idea for this project was to end up with a silent marine fish tank at eye level in my bedroom.
Below are pictures at completion of installation, and after about 1 month of holding fish (October 19 2013). In this picture, three fishes are visible, and a fourth is swimming in the rock caves.
Yellow tang, Blue tang ("Dory" in Pixar's 2003 film "Finding Nemo"), and a Flame angel fish.
Photos by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
Tangs are great saltwater fish to keep, because they eat plant based food. They will eat anything green. In Hawaii the larger ones love frozen peas. They are also called "surgeonfish" due to the sharp little knife blades they have near the tail. The tangs also get along with each other, never fighting. They do get excited at meal time, and can recognize the fish food container.
After about two years there were six fish. The Blue tang had doubled in size. The Yellow tang was getting fat. The new fish were: a Naso tang, a Sailfin tang, and a Flagfin angel fish. The Sailfin tang is an extremely calm fish, like "The Dude" of fishes. Everything was going well. The corals are fake.
2013 tank after one year, photo taken in 2014.
Photo by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
The stand was at the correct height just matching the bed, which made for a perfect view. Since the tank was in the bedroom, it had to be silent - and it was! There were no air pumps, and no gurgling intakes for a sump below since sealed canister units were used instead.
Instead of a heavy closed canopy, the top of the tank has a "valence." This is much lighter, and easier to remove. It also doesn't trap heat. This valence was built from wood that was glued together.
Also, I later added a black acrylic panel to cover up the heater and pump intakes; you can't see any equipment visible in the tank (see the movies).
Initial installation - above and below.
Photos by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
Eheim equipment is silent and reliable, and I found two 2229 sealed wet/dry units on close-out from Petsmart (with free shipping!)
Wet/dry means that the water mixes with air. In the Eheim units the water level moves up and down to allow the biological media to "breathe." This increases its efficiency to remove ammonia from the water and convert it to nitrate.
Update: unfortunately these Eheim 222x filters are no longer available, but one can build a wet/dry filter in many different ways. The trick is to make it quiet if you want the tank in the bedroom. Wet/dry filters are usually noisy.
In this setup, the left unit has the wet/dry valve removed and the flow restricter off, so it runs silently at about 350 gallons per hour for mechanical and chemical filtration. The right unit has only the Efisubtrat "Pro" - those glass balls that look like Cocoa Puffs cereal. It's rated for 168 gallon tank, and this one is only 75 gallons, so there is a lot of filtering capacity - more fish, less stress for them and me, and maybe less water changes.
I replaced the ugly green intake/outlets with the Eheim "Installation Sets" which are also very modular and flexible and eliminate pump priming and cleaning problems.
The Magnum 350 is only used after vacuuming the black sand to clear up the water. It's powerful but somewhat noisy compared to silent Eheims!
The first set of lights was too blue, so I added a white and magenta "stunner" strip. Later I added more lace rocks and of course the fish.
Why no sump in my setup? (instead of the Eheims)
A sump is a second tank, usually smaller, placed below the main "show" tank. There is some plumbing needed, and a return pump. It's a little bit finicky, complicated, noisy, and adds a lot of expense. A sump is fine for most rooms, but not recommended for a quiet bedroom.
Most reef aquarium tanks will use a sump, mainly because reef tanks need to use a large protein skimmer. But my tank is a fish only tank.
A protein skimmer is a great device to remove waste completely from the fish tank. The downside is that it is noisy. However, it only needs to run for about 6 hours per day. The "hang on tank" design has the advantage that it is very accessible, and easy to clean, which is required several times per week.
An Eshopps PSK-100H protein skimmer hangs on the back. It works well, it's well built, and uses a very efficient pump, but I only run it during the day when I am not around since it does make a fizzing sound. A plastic shoe box is under it for the inevitable days when the skimmer barfs and overflows.
The Eshopps protein skimmer intake is routed through an add-on surface skimmer - they really ought to make that standard. Most of the fish waste floats so surface skimming is the best location, with some type of floating intake.
Protein skimmer and surface intake add-on.
Photos by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
A refugium is an extra tank that can house baby creatures, or live food, that you don't want the fish from the main tank to eat. Usually it is hidden from view.
A small hang on back refugium (made by Finnex) that came with an LED light has some macroalgae growing in it to hopefully eat some nitrates and phosphates, again this might reduce some water change labor and keep the fish happier and healthier. When the water exits the wet/dry Eheim unit it has low oxygen and more CO2 from the work of the aerobic nitrating bacteria in the Efisubstrat - which is good for the algae), then the water overflows back into the tank. A black foam-core box will cover it up for appearance.
Update: This was an experiment. The refugium was too small to help control nitrate and get full of brown algae. It was removed. The small hang on tank might be useful for raising brine shrimp for live fish food?
Hang on the back refugium - initial setup - not helpful
Photo by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
The main light is a white/blue/red unit. It was too blue for my taste, so I added a second LED strip with magenta/12K white. The end effect was good. Those two lights are on a sunrise/sunset timer from Home Depot. The low level fluorescent light is for evenings/mornings and actually looks really good; it is on a remote radio key fob switch (again from Home Depot). The lights are all attached to the sealed plastic box, and therefore are protected from the water.
Update: These lights might not be available anymore. They all get hot and need cooling, so version 2 was installed differently, outside of any box and with quiet cooling fans. All the lights failed after about 3 years from heat and saltwater corrosion.
one T5 "Powerglow" fluorescent and two LED light bars - initial lighting setup
Photos by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
Some of the products I found helpful for normal care of the fishes:
fish care products that I used
Photo by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
The aspects of the setup that might reduce the water changes, or allow more fish livestock:
DIY fishkeepers suggests a continuous water change system, but I didn't install a sump to keep the tank system silent.
Update: Over the years I learned a lot, and made changes to lessen the regular work - with good results!
The main reason to do water changes in a fish only tank is to 1) reduce nitrate and 2) to remove waste in the water.
For nitrate control, the AZ-NO3 Nitrate Eliminator worked pretty well, but later I changed to Red Sea NO3:PO4-X biological nitrate and phosphate controller which I think worked even better. Getting rid of the phosphate reduced the amount of brown algae that was often growing. The small refugium did not control nitrate at all.
To remove waste I used a skimmer about 6 hours a day, and also installed three sponge filters on powerheads in the back of the tank, hidden behind the rocks. I found it was much easier to clean those in-tank sponges than accessing the sponges inside a canister filter.
Eventually in this 75 gallon tank there was a community of: flame angel, coral beauty, blue and yellow tangs, sailfin tang, three spotted angel, and one 9" Naso Tang, (7 fish).
With these 7 fish, they were all big eaters, the nitrate was averaging about 100ppm, which didn't seem to bother the fish. pH control was key in keeping the fish healthy and happy, and was obtained by adding about one cup of Seachem Marine Buffer at every fresh water addition. This kept alkalinity high all the time.
The protein skimmer extracted the waste and nitrate which gets trapped in a bacterial film. The AZ-NO3 or NO-POX is similar to the carbon dosing (vodka dosing) method to feed the nitrate-removing bacteria.
The other benefit of this method is almost NO water changes were needed over many YEARS! The aquarium became almost a self-contained ecosystem.
All the fish thrived for about 4 years until I had to move to a new residence and did a tank tear down. The fish were returned to a local fish store in excellent health and resold.
Everything I learned is shared in an article I wrote at WikiHow: How to Keep Saltwater Fish Without Doing Water Changes
I found that the dark sand eventually was making the fish loose some color. They seemed to adapt to overall level of brightness. So, I changed it out to white sand. That looked nice, but it was getting blown all over the tank and rocks, and even got into the canister filters.
white sand vs crushed dolomite - both bright, but sand gets blown around everywhere
Photo by the author. No rights reserved - free to use.
Note also the changed lighting without an enclosed canopy and three PC 240mm 12V cooling fans. This change really helped to keep the heat down. The maximum temperature the fish seemed to tolerate was about 84° F.
I did not use a chiller aquarium unit, instead I set the a/c for the room to 84° F if I was away.
The aquarium heater was set for 77° F. Note also that it was important to remember to unplug the heater if the water level was going to go down for any kind of maintenance. Otherwise the heater would burn out if it is not in the water.
I also learned that if the fish are in good health (have been eating well and are parasite free for many months) they are quite hardy. When I had to move the whole tank to change residences after 2 years, all the fish were kept in a 20 gallon plastic tub with only a heater and air pump for about 48 hours. There were no losses. I filled the tank, cleaned and restarted the filters, and returned the fish, with no problems. Note that the biological filter media was only rinsed in salt water and kept in an open bucket to keep the bacteria alive during the 48 hours.
Thanks for reading this story!
You can email me at drsoaring@gmail.com
I'm happy to answer questions.