Fish Question???????

[15 year old reefer]

I have a 7 gallon nano with 49 watts of PC lighting. I had 2 small tomato clowns (1 1/2 inches) which I just got rid of due to way to much nitrate and bubble algae. Its been a month without any fish. And the tank is doing 10 times better than it was with fishes. No bad algae at all. Should I keep doing the gallon water changes? Or should I do less of them? Like one gallon every 2 weeks appose to once a week.

THANKS

[schemo]

you should read some books?

schemo

[cthedaytrader]

Well I dont think any books would answer your question anyway. Actually this website is the best resource out there, the books are nice but once you do extensive searches on here and throughout the internet I think th ebooks are actually quite general. So then you have to go out and buy more books and more books, and they still dont answer your questions specifically. The best information comes from experience and no author can think of all the problems thats arise and can answer all the questions.

The books do make good bathroom reading!! But once you have the basics of reefing down I think they are never specific enough.

As far as your question: If the water changes are pain in the neck, and you want to cut back on them then try it out, maybe do the gallon every two weeks and see how the tank does, see how far you can stretch them. The best thing is to watch yoru inhabitants and see how they react, I have a 15g nano and I break all the rules and everything is fine, the only thing I test for is ca, so I dotn overdose. I got a skimmer to prevent accidents but Im a 7 is a bit small for that. I dont do regular water changes, but I try and do one every 3 weeks or so unless I see a problem. The more live stock you have and the less filtration the more changes you will need. It also depends on what you dose, if you need the changes for supplements then they are more important not jsut for water quality but for th einhabitants.

Bottom line: Do things slowly, never shock a system and watch the tank inhabitants, they are the best indication of how things are going.

You should do research on here too, some corals and inverts react differently to different problems so if you have some of them they can be good initial indicators of problems

hope this helps, and keep reading!!!!!!!!!

[15 year old reefer]

Thanks for the help. To say the truth my dad bought me 3 books and a movie on reef keeping. And none of them even slightly talked about nano reefs or weekly water changes. They assume you have a skimmer and you do water changes every month. The smallest reef they talked about was a 30 gallon. I have learned so much more from these types of websites then from any book or movie I have ever read.