“Established” what that word means to you.

NaturalGothic · Jan 30, 2021

Hey guys!
I have two micro-nano tanks; one is 5 gallons and the other is 10 gallons. Lately, I haven’t had to do much (if anything) to my 10 gallon reef tank. I did a freshwater top off about a week ago, but, that’s all I’ve done in probably the last month.

It just turned 5 months old a few days ago and that got me thinking: at what ‘age’ did your tank stop making you crazy and become less effort? I’m curious what the consensus is.

*Worth Stating- I tested my water less than an hour ago and these are my stats:
Ph 8.4
Ammonia 0.0ppm
Nitrate 0.0ppm
Nitrite 0.0ppm
Salt 1.026

Unnatural · Jan 30, 2021

Message for boost, because I’m actually really curious about this!

dimitrinivo · Jan 30, 2021

I think "established" exists on a spectrum; at 6 months in, your tank could be considered newly established, but at the one year mark it gets even more established, and 3 years later, even more. I think the tank simply becomes more established the more time goes by.

Doglips56 · Jan 30, 2021

NaturalGothic said:
Hey guys!
I have two micro-nano tanks; one is 5 gallons and the other is 10 gallons. Lately, I haven’t had to do much (if anything) to my 10 gallon reef tank. I did a freshwater top off about a week ago, but, that’s all I’ve done in probably the last month.

It just turned 5 months old a few days ago and that got me thinking: at what ‘age’ did your tank stop making you crazy and become less effort? I’m curious what the consensus is.

*Worth Stating- I tested my water less than an hour ago and these are my stats:
Ph 8.4
Ammonia 0.0ppm
Nitrate 0.0ppm
Nitrite 0.0ppm
Salt 1.026

Do you have corals? If so you probably should be testing Calcium and Magnesium once in a while too. To me maturity (just like in people) isn’t an age, but a state of being. My tank is a 125g and at 10 months I just had the president of our local reef club over and he said it was fully mature. But a few months ago things went a little sideways and it was because our calcium had bottomed out. Now we supplement a small amount of ATI 2part to keep parameters stable.