Turkey baster to rocks might be bad

Used to use a turkey baster all the time when first set up. When the little creepy crawleys multiply, you find less and less stuff to blow off the rocks, because they eat it. Not blown off the rocks for minimum 6 years now. I wouldn't stop all at once, wean the tank off it by doing it less and less, gradually, which gives the micro life time to increase its population slowly. Thats what I did anyway.

 

About 20 x tank volume for mine, but upto 40 x isn't unheard of for sps especially.

 

I like to use the turkey baster.. it blows allot of stuff out.. ive blown directly at sponges and worms and they are just fine.

This friday Im upgrading to an mp40. I will see if the turkey baster gets less stuff out. If it comes to a point where the baster is not blowing anything out then i will stop it.. but if it does even a little i will continue to use it.

There is a thread on rc about old tank syndrome and some study found that accumulated "reef snow" clogs the pores of the rock reducing the surface space of bacteria. Using a baster or a powerhead to the rocks can prevent this.

 

My tank has been scrubber only for a year.. got sponges, worms, bristle stars and worms everywhere.. i still have stuff blowing off the rocks.

 

I have seen my sponge population explode since running scrubber only. And interestingly about a month ago i started using a skimmer trying to incorporate garfs theories about skimmers and areation.. my sponges started to get blown off the rocks and die.. My polyp extension diminished and my growth slowed down noticibly on some of my corals.

I never liked skimmers but now Im 100% convinced i will never run one again.


Having said that, I still believe the baster is beneficial and keeping the rocks clean provides so much more surface area for bacteria to grow.

If you have algae in the rocks, It will die off when your tank doesnt need it there anymore.

My algae took 5months to completely disapear.

 

If your rocks are leaching phosphates the skimmer wont stop that, it will only remove food before it turns into nutrients. And if you have a scrubber capable of dealing with these inorganics then you dont need the skimmer.

The only added benefit woild be areation, which i will accomplish by feeding air into my scrubber pump once i prepare my sump to deal with the bubbles.

 

Ricky, I would check your other tank parameters if I were you. Two weeks of skimming shouldnt make your water that deprived of organics with an almost immediate starvation effect. I thought you was gonna set the skimmer just to aerate anyhow.

 

It didnt take two weeks garf.. It took an hour and i imediately started to see things reacting to the change. After two weeks my sponges started to blow off when I used the baster.. normaly they dont.

I check my parameters regularly.. they where perfect. It might have been corals adjusting to the change with less food available.. but either way i didnt like it..

I love the idea of my corals having plenty of food available.. and no one im my local club can come close to my growth.

 

Bingo!

 

At least the OP has been answered, don't use a turkey blaster on delicate sponges !

 

There is no turkey basters in the wild, just flow. I let mine be there until something in my tank moves it. I would say I have been better off just letting nature do its thing.

 

And did you know that "free food" produced by benthic marine algae (and scrubbers) is composed of a different ratio of sugar types than found in reefs, which can lead to problems in a reef system ?
http://www.int-res.com/articles/ab_oa/b010p131.pdf