How much harder is two tanks?

[Chris A H]

We bought a 75 gallon F.O from one of my wife's friends who was moving about four months ago. Since then I've upgraded it to a FOWLER with liverock, a sump, a skimmer, and a cleanup crew. Everything is doing very well.

I have one son who would love to add an urchin, another son who would like to add a green brittle star, a wife who would like to add a lemonpeel angel and a daughter who would like to add a Sally Lightfoot crab. Which means this can never be a reef tank because none of these animals is reef safe.

My wife and all five of my children are very excited about our tank and all of them would like me to start a second tank as a reef.

My question is, how much additional work/time/frustration is a second tank?

Chris

 

[Anonymous]

Well, first let me say "welcome to reefs.org!"

I hate to be the one to tell you the obvious answer, but I am afraid that it is almost twice as much. In fact, it may be twice as much. Alot depends on how you go about doing the chores, such as a water change. If you could mix up 40 gallons of new saltwater at the same time, and change out 20 gallons on each of your two tanks, that is considerabally less then setting up to do two seperate 20 gallon water changes.

So, either way, it's about double the work, less your own ingenious ideas to cut time.

Louey

 

[Anonymous]

Well you have six helpers. Get them all involved.
It's not any more difficult at all just a few more minutes a day that's all.
At one point I had 19 of them going and did a little work on all of them every day. Never did I not have time for them. Power outages were another story though.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

If you can, plumb them together. Then it's one big tank. A friend of mine did this by drilling a small hole in the wall between two 125 g. Then you only have to topoff, dose, change water, etc. on one big tank, rather than two.

 

[Expos Forever]

I'm with Matt. Keep your bio-load reasonable in your FO, and plumb the two together if possible.

 

[sawyerc]

Yay! ONE BIG TANK! This is probably your best bet unless you have messy eaters in your FO that will foul your water.

 

[Anonymous]

I disagree with plumbing them together. If you have a toxic event in one it will take down both tanks instead of just the one.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

What kind of 'toxic event' do you mean David? Unless he plans on sticking a boxfish or soapfish in his FOWLR, I don't see a problem.

 

[Tackett]

I agree with matt on plumbin them together. We all know one basic principle, the larger the water volume...the more stable the water conditions, eg. less work other than changing a larger volume of water once instead of a smaller volume of water twice, if that makes any sense. You also have more time to catch something going wacky if you have a larger volume of water. You can catch it before it has a chance to negatively affect your inhabitants. If you need help plumbing them together, just ask us, be glad to help.

 

[nice1bruva]

I disagree with plumbing them together. If you have a toxic event in one it will take down both tanks instead of just the one.

Regards,
David Mohr

totally aggree. as much as a centralised system is convienient, it would be a nightmare if the worst were to happen.....disease...pollution...heater sticking....etc.
if you keep two systems seperate worse case scenario is that the one system with the problem will be the only one affected.

 

[Tackett]

If you keep the jump on your maintenence disease and pollution will not and should not happen barring an accidental cleaner drop or, like you said, the heater sticking. (althought Ive never had it happen to me.) Two systems together is also CHEAPER and I like cheap. Instead of buying two of everything like two canisters, two skimmers etc. You can buy one big one and save a few beans. But you are right, two will be safer in the event of a catastrophe to one or the other.

 

[SpicyBalls]

i have two setups.. my main 44 gallon tank and two 10 gallon tanks plumbed together.. def a lot of work maintaining the two setups.. sometimes it becomes a choir instead of a hobby... but in the end.. my two 10 gallon act as the quarantine, place for propogations etc... guess it's really up to you, twice the work or having the assurance that if one crashes the other is safe.. in my opinion, if you quarantine all your new fish and what not before putting in the main tank, i'd go with one tank setup.. more time to enjoy.. for your second tank, maybe you can just setup a nice big refugium 30-40 gallons below your main tank and put the inhabitants in there...
_________________
Honda Ballade

 

[nice1bruva]

if i had to put a price on disaster,then it would always to be the livestock that will give the biggest figure in $ or £
skimmers etc are not cheap but 2 tanks worth of livestock runs to a lot of cash.
not only that but imagine you are running two tanks seperatley for two years set up on the same day.
disaster strikes....heater failure....tank collapse....pollution etc.
both tanks die together...period!!
i would rather pay out a little extra on hardware in the beggining.
which is worth more on the AVERAGE tank the hardware or the livestock?
sure enough there are set up's out there that run into tens of thousands of dollars....not the norm' though.

 

[Carpentersreef]

I vote for plumbing them together. Less equipment, more stable, larger capacity to absorb a "toxic event" and have NO losses.

...maybe plumb in a 500 gallon sump while you're at it.... :twisted:

Mitch

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, on the off chance you want your two tanks in close proximity.
I disagree with plumbing together anyway. The feeding needs of one tank might be drasticaly different than the other. It would be silly for me to plumb my trigger tank to my reef tank.
Just not a good idea IMO.

Jim

 

[Tackett]

yeah thats probably true didnt think about that.

 

[Anonymous]

But he's not talking about a trigger tank, and he's not sticking sea apples in or anything that needs drastically different water conditions or feeding or that could nuke his tank. He want's to put in an urchin, a dwarf angel, and a sally lightfoot.

Heater sticking? Get two that are undersized for your tank capacity. If one sticks on, it doesn't have the wattage to overheat your tank, and the other just won't come on.

 

[Anonymous]

What kind of 'toxic event' do you mean David? Unless he plans on sticking a boxfish or soapfish in his FOWLR, I don't see a problem.

Let me reword it. He stated he wants to put a Sally Light Foot, Urchin, Green Brittle Star and a Lemon Peel Angel in his FOWLR system, he has not stated what he's putting in his Reef Tank.
A catastrophic event instead of toxic event event could be a pump failure, lights breaking, algae going sexual, anemone getting caught in a power head poluting the tank, disease, leak, etc. I'd much rather have separate systems so if something does go wrong I have options to where I can move the critters from one tank to the other.
It happens all to often.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

A catastrophic event instead of toxic event event could be a pump failure, lights breaking, algae going sexual, anemone getting caught in a power head poluting the tank, disease, leak, etc. I'd much rather have separate systems so if something does go wrong I have options to where I can move the critters from one tank to the other.
It happens all to often.

All of which can and should be prevented to the best of our ability in every tank. What do you do if you only have one tank?

Pump failure--use two small return pumps, rather than one large one.
Lights breaking--mount em good, and have spares ready.
Algae--don't use caulerpa.
anemone--don't stick PHs in the tank if you plan on keeping one.
disease--quarantine...
etc. etc.

I know that tragedies can happen even in the most well planned out tank. But I disagree with relying on a second tank as a backup if it's going to cause one to skimp on the main tank because of cost issues. I'd much rather have one expensive and very reliable dosing pump on 2 or 3 connected systems than rely on three float switches that are cheap but prone to failure. I'd also rather have one large skimmer that works well than 3 cheap ones. I guess my point is that the cost of these types of items does not go up linearly with the effectiveness they provide.

 

[Anonymous]

Something that I considered as an option on my 125 system, but never did:

Plumb in a large refugium or sump or other tank with LR and pumps that is capable of processing waste all on its own. Have ball valves or gate valves on the inlet and outlet side of this tank, and you can effectively disconnect or 'quarantine' it if necessary and let it run fallow or connect it and have it be extra water volume.