My weekly tank maintenance

 Ok , I don't know if this will help anyone, but at least it might give the new and learning reef addicts at least an idea on some tank maintenance.

Just a little after 8 am  every sunday morning I start by unhooking my powerheads so I can take my canopy off the top of my tank. Then before I shut my system down I take my turkey baster and squirt all of my rockwork and corals down to get any leftover detrious matter off.  Then I go to work on cleaning all the glass except the back, (which I leave alone for the snails), I use my magnet cleaner and my Kent scraper for areas that my magnet cant get to.

Then I take out my fish guard off the top of my overflow box inlet and clean it and the inside of my overflow with a scrubbing pad to get all of the algea that has started to form in there.  I then turn off my ozone generator and unattach my probe and clean off the algea and usr a soft brush to clean it off and then I soak it in a probe cleaning solution for at least an hour.

Today I took out one of my seios and soaked it in vinegar and water and let it run in this solution for about 15 minutes. (but I don't do this every week)

I take my air dryer off of my ozone and remove the beads which are pink by now andplace them in a bowl and put them in the microwave for 5 minutes. When they are done I let stand untill they cool off.

In my overflow box I have a prefilter sponge and I take this out and clean and rinse it , or like this week I just replaced it for a new one, I usually replace it after three weeks.

 Now I sit back and look to see if I missed anything , and if not , I am ready to shut the system down.

Once I do this, I clean my protein skimmer , replace my filter sock and take it down to my washer and immediately start washing it with a little bleach, nothing else.  I like to do this before Vickie gets up because I don't think she likes me using our washer for this.

Then I replace the sock with a new cleaned one, and return the skimmer cup after cleaning the cup and throat of the skimmer, and then I  get everything hooked back up.

Now I'm ready to take 10 gallons of old water out and replace it with 10 new gallons of Oceanic water. I have to siphon it from the top, but that way I vacuum a little bit of the sand that I can get to, which is not much.

Once this is all done I restart the system and then add one tablespoon of Kent superbuffer mixed with a cup  ro water into my overflow box, that way it doesn't go straight into my tank. I check my ph probe to see if it goes up and it usually goes to 8.0-8-1.

I replace my carbon  that is down by my return pump, about 8 to 10 Oz. and check my salinity .

Then with everything going now I clean my pendants with ro water and clean my fans and canopy and put the canopy back on.

Restart my powerheads and finally clean the outside glass.

Toatal time is about 90 to 120 minutes depending on cleaning my seio's

OK , I know what everyone is going to say......GET A LIFE!!!!

But this is my sunday morning routine before anyone gets up and I can sit back and enjoy my tank for the rest of the week.

Today my orp rose to 390 in 15 minutes.

Great info. As a newbie I find this info invaluable.

Mike

Suzy wrote: Uh-oh.....I think I'm a slacker maintenence wise......  I do feed my babies twice a day, making sure every body gets some...

Yup, Suzy is a slacker!  Suzy, you are only feeding twice a day?  I thought you were feeding the baby SH 3x daily.  BTW, I still like the looks of your tanks!