The Importance of Consistency

I have been contemplating writing about this for a long time now and decided to finally just go ahead and do it. I have seen many aquariums over the years that should have the ability to be way better than they are and i used to wonder why they just never got there. I believe over the last few years I have stumbled or discovered at least one aspect which is usually overlooked and to me very important when keeping an aquarium...so here goes!

The back story:

A few years back I looked at many different setups and compared them to mine and it always made me feel very down. While others had a beautiful clean green aquarium filled with plants I had a dark murky cauldron barely able to keep a few java ferns alive. I spent ages changing this and that and anything I could to try get my plants to grow or fish to look better etc.

After getting very tired of all this back and forth with no success I ended up getting disinterested and my intimacy with m aquariums began to wane. I sold some fish off and started slacking off with my duties. Would feed my fish once a day, would switch the light on my tank on and off as I left home and before bed and only did a water change every two weeks…. this is where my success surprisingly began!


My tanks began to accumulate significantly less algae than previously and my plants started growing! Once again, my interest in my aquariums picked up and I began changing a few things in my setups. I hated the daily chore of remembering to turn lights on and felt guilty getting my mother to always do it if I wasn’t away which was often as I was in Matric and days started early and ended late. So, what did I do? I added geyser timers to all my lights and could perfectly tune in how long my daily lighting period would be. I also began to do water changes every Saturday morning as a habit and would stick root tabs in my substrate every 3 months for some nutrients.



[my one low tech on a geyser timer]


[my shrimp low tech with no ferts and a wc every 2 weeks, only because the water level would drop too low]


[my 100 low tech with no ferts and a small WC every 2 weeks]

I eventually became fairly successful with this low-tech setup I had with only two 3ft T8 bulbs to support my plants (this on a 4ft setup) and I wanted more. From here I decided to change it all up and setup my first high tech tank. I knew I wanted all the bells and whistles so I got everything together and built my stand etc. This tank had CO2 injection, high wattage LED lighting and it was all on timers. I admittedly ran out of cash and ended up doing my own DIY soil with PFS. For the first 2 months I was adjusting and changing water and adding fertilizers and doing everything the pros had talked about and my tank was growing plants well but at the same time algae was taking over and it was a constant battle.

As you may have expected from me, I lost interest and my constant interfering on the tank reduced to almost nothing. I would go 2 weeks with no water change sometimes even 4 weeks!! And guess what? My tanks algae reduced and the plants grew like crazy! I pumped the lights to full volume, cranked the CO2 up and stop dosing ferts and I ended up never touching the tank coz it looked…. well perfect!! (To me anyways) Not much algae to speak of and plants were always healthy.

[staghorn (or so I believe) in my high tech]


[my high tech before I tore it down with no ferts added, just co2 and high light and a WC every 3 weeks, I had not a speck of algae]


What am i trying to get you to see from this long drawn out story?

Consistency in an aquarium is key! Balance in an aquarium is key!


When I was constantly messing around and playing with my aquariums and adjusting, I was having the most problems. As soon as I left the tank to settle and reach an equilibrium so to speak I began to have success.


Water changes

Now before you think I’m advocating less water changes, I’m not! What I am advocating is consistent water changes. What I am suggesting is that instead of doing 2 water changes in a week then nothing for 2 weeks then suddenly another 80 percent water change then a bit of ferts etc., rather create an easy to follow schedule that you know you can stick to and go from there. If your water changes of 25% per week are not keeping your nitrates down enough then do 35% per week. Don’t do one big water change then continue as before as levels will just rise again. Keeping an aquarium is not about maintaining fish, but maintaining water! Keep levels consistent and you’ll have much better success than swinging parameters all over the place.

Dosing

Some tanks do need supplemental dosing. Now it is very possible to do manual dosing. But don’t expect a random dose here and there to give amazing results. Create a dosing schedule you can maintain. For example, dosing trace elements of 10ml every Saturday morning after a water change (this is not a recommendation but an example) . It’s an easy regime to follow and doesn’t upset equilibrium if done consistently.

The best method to dose effectively would be a daily dose manually or via auto doser if you struggle to remember. Once again if you are doing heavy dosing, it needs to be consistent. Missing a 10ml dosage 3 times a week is not going to give great results. As your nutrients are going to swing all over the place. I eventually stopped my dosing as I couldn’t stick to a schedule and I didn’t see any tangible benefits.

Lighting Automation

Now believe it or not this aspect here is the reason I decided to write this article in the first place. There are many threads covering how much light to use etc. so what I will be talking about here is automating your lights.

My best success began when I started putting timers on my aquariums. It is very easy to get a geyser timer installed on your lights and I will now never ever set up an aquarium without automated lights. I noticed, on my low-tech tanks specifically, that after putting timers on my setups I began to get better plant growth and lessened algae growth. I believe the reason for this is because the plants began to know when they were about to be able to start photosynthesising and when they were about to end. This meant they could prepare for lights on and utilize it efficiently therefore outcompeting the algae. It will take a week or two before the plants dial in on the times but I assure you they do.

I would eventually notice that before lights out on my high-tech aquarium my ludwigia glandulosa would begin to fold up about 20 minutes before the lights turned off every night and I am certain it was because they “knew” lights out was coming.

Let me ask a quick question. Do you have a daily routine of when you wake up and go to sleep? I can assure you that most do and you may be perfectly comfortable waking up at 5am and going to bed at 11pm every day no problems. But suddenly one day you go partying and got to bed at 1 the next morning or have an early morning at let’s say 3am. After one or two of these out of the norm days, you can feel nackered! This is exactly how your aquarium inhabitants will feel if every day the lights go on and off at different times.

Looking at it from this perspective I see huge benefits not only for the health of your plants, but also for the health of your fish.

Im saying it now. I advocate a timer on any aquarium setup regardless of how simple! I believe it to be very important and its not a difficult thing to include. You can get mechanical timers which plug into your outlet (usually Waco) or my personal favourite used most often by me was the good ole geyser timer. You do now get fancy lights like the Zetlights which can be controlled via an app or you can go completely bananas and get something of the likes from Kessil, AI or Ecotech.

[image from http://www.mica.co.za/product/waco-plug-timer/ ]


[image from https://www.makro.co.za/diy/major-tech-digital-industrial-timer-83753ea ]


On a closing note. I believe success with an aquarium is achieving results as close as possible to what you initially wanted taking into account the abilities of your equipment. Don’t expect unrealistic results to be achieved, but make sure that you always use what you have to its maximum capabilities.

Consistency is key! We’ve all heard it. The trick is to practice it.



I hope that you enjoyed this read and that you may take something from it.

I would appreciate any comments that you might have good or bad

 

Awesome advice. Thanks

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

Very good article @Drab808 !!!

And you are absolutely right.. consistency is the main thing to keep fish and plants happy
Many fish will happily live in parameters that are slightly off their natural habitat providing you keep them stable

Your tanks look stunning!

 

Good read man

 

Good read man! Very very true.
I miss some of those setups..

 

Finally got a chance to read this. And yes first thing i purchased was timer and it controlled some of algea especially on glass.