Maturity Issues [Archive] - Reef Central Online Community

G-money

10/01/2003, 04:59 PM

We were discussing this in another thread (mainly SeaStar and I, the Crystal Sea thread on page 35 I believe ;)). I am of the belief that an aquarist with a considerable amount of experience who has had successes (and failures) and knows many of the reasons why, is able to prevent, eliminate many of the "newbie's" problems with a young tank.

As pointed out in the other thread, cycles happen regardless of the aquarist's experience, but their overall effect/impact on the system can be mitigated in many cases (avoid hair algae, wacky Alk/Ca/pH levels, elevated nutrients, physical disturbances, etc.). Some ionic and bacterial stability issues are largely invisible though...

I know Eric to be a promoter of letting the tank's "natural" flora and fauna proliferate for many months, and I agree that this is a very natural and safe approach. However, I think someone who has "been there" can modify these guidelines according to their experience. No, you can't rush quality - I agree that rushing things is not preferable. If I had the space and time, I would have waited longer than a month to put any animals in my tank. I guess what I'm saying is that experience can allow one to get away with some things :D. Then again, sometimes not.

This topic came up (most recently) when I mentioned I have had a couple older acro colonies (mine for close to 2 years) start to lose tissue on the tips about 2 months after my tank had been set up. The corals had shown growth in this time (new tips on branches). The corals had been in that tank for about 3 weeks before these negative effects were seen. The new tank is 100% Crystal Sea salt and the holding system they came from was about 75% CS and 25% IO. I was ready to put the ixnay on CS once and for all, but I decided to wait it out...I do realize my system is still young and there are likely more variables than the salt in question.

Needless to say, whatever is affecting these 2 acros is not showing up on any chemical tests and is not macroscopically visible (algae, cloudy water, etc..) All the rock I used was from my old system (and was housed in the holding tank with the corals). There was no die off on the rock after I moved it to my new tank, pod levels are visibly plentiful, and there is noticeable growth of animals on the rock (sponges mainly, also coralline and tube worms among other things). The main difference is a new substrate and 100% CS salt. The substrate was mature before the tank was (lightly) stocked - bubbles present, denitrification assumed to be occurring (no non-protein nitrogen appearing on any tests). I fed the tank from the day it was set up.

Anyhoo, I eagerly anticipate your dissertation, Mr. B
Go easy on my (reluctant) haste... ;)

MiddletonMark

10/01/2003, 06:15 PM

Yep, I'll be most definitely tuning into this one ... the major reason I posted in early and hasty as Graham so well put it [better than I, too] - now I'm subscribed after posting ...

Crawdad1

10/02/2003, 01:09 PM

I'm going on my 4th month of cycling with no live stock other then some turbo's and blue hermits. I have been feeding on the heavy side and will start to feed live plankton for the next 4 months. Then I will start to add corals. The fish will be added very last. The one thing that I have noticed is that the diversity of life is much great during the cycling process so far.

MiddletonMark

10/02/2003, 01:18 PM

Wow, that sounds pretty `mature' with your thinking at least.

Crawdad1

10/02/2003, 01:48 PM

I'm just following what I think is solid advise, and so far I'm very happy with the way things are progressing. :)

EricHugo

10/03/2003, 01:15 AM

Before delving on this one, a couple of comments:

>>I know Eric to be a promoter of letting the tank's "natural" flora and fauna proliferate for many months, and I agree that this is a very natural and safe approach. However, I think someone who has "been there" can modify these guidelines according to their experience. No, you can't rush quality - I agree that rushing things is not preferable. If I had the space and time, I would have waited longer than a month to put any animals in my tank. I guess what I'm saying is that experience can allow one to get away with some things . Then again, sometimes not. <<

I agree one can go much much faster depending on what one begins with in the first place, and depending on how many times you've done it before. that said, with the average start up, there are certain things, as mentioned, that cannot be hurried, and hurrying seems to make them worse rather than better. The experience plays a part when you are able to nip some of those things in the bud because you have dealt with them before even in a mature tank.

>>I'm going on my 4th month of cycling with no live stock other then some turbo's and blue hermits. I have been feeding on the heavy side and will start to feed live plankton for the next 4 months. Then I will start to add corals. The fish will be added very last. The one thing that I have noticed is that the diversity of life is much great during the cycling process so far.<<

Yeah, that is the amazing part...a shame most will never witness that.

>>Hi Eric, I was hoping you could help me to understand better what it means for a system to "mature" or "become established". Hobbyists (me included) are always saying not to keep that sps or this anenome for a least a year untill your system has matured.
What exactly are the differances between a tank which finished cycling a month ago and one that finished cycling 11 months ago.<<

more below

>>Does it have to do with water parameters being more stable?<< yes, nut ot necessarily

>>Does it have to do with natural food availability?<< Not sure but I don't think so.

>>Does "tank maturity" pertain more to those who utilze a DSB, because it takes 6 months for a DSB to become functional ?<<

no. Tank maturity seems to be even more of an issue without the sand bed.. The sand bed just takes some time to get enough nutrients in it to sustain populations and stratify into somewhat stable communities...seems like a longer period of time makes things go in the other direction.

So, here's the tank reason, and then I'll blow into some ecology for you.

When you get a tank, you start with no populations of anything. You get live rock to form the basis of the biodiversity - and remember that virtually everything is moderated by bacteria and photosynthesis in our tanks. So liverock is the substrate for all this stuff, and also has a lot of life on it. How much depends on a lot of things. Mostly, marine animals and plants don;t like to be out of water for a day at a time...much less the many days to sometimes a week that often happens. So, assuming you are not using existing rock form a tank, or the well-treated aquacultured stuff, you have live rock that has either relatively free of anything alive, or you have live rock with a few stragglers and a whole lot of stuff dying or about to die because it won;t survive in the tank. From the moment you start, you are in the negative. Corallines will be dying, sponges, dead worms and crustaceans and echinoids and bivavles, many of which are in the rock and you won't ever see. Not to mention the algae, cyanobacteria, and bacteria...most of whcih is dead and will decompose, or which will die and decompose. This is where the exisitng bacteria get kick started...

Bacteria grow really fast, and so they are able to grow to levels that are capable of uptaking nitrogen within...well, the cycling time of a few weeks to a month or so. However, if you realize the doubling time of these bugs, you would know that in a month, you should have a tank packed full of bacteria and no room for water. That means something is killing or eating bacteria. Also realize that if you have a tank with constant decompositon happening at a rate high enough to spike ammonia off the scale, you have a lot of bacteria food...way more than you will when things stop dying off and decomposing. So, bacterial growth may have caught up with the level of nitrogen being produced, but things are still dying...you just test zero for ammonia cause there are enough bacteria present to keep upwitht he nitrogen being released by the dying stuff....does not mean things are finished decomposing.

Now, if things are decomposing, they are releasing more than ammonia. Guess what dead sponges release? All their toxic metabolites. Guess what else? All their natural antibiotic compounds...prevents some microbes from doing very well. Same with the algae, the inverts the cyano, the dinoflagellates, etc. So, let's just figure this death and decomposition is gonna take a while. OK, so now we have a tank packed with some kinds of bacteria, probably not much of others. Eventually the death stops. Now, what happens to all that biomass of bacteria without a food source? They die. Ooops. And, denitrification is a slow process. Guess what else...bacteria also have antibiotics, toxins, etc. all released when they die. But, the die-off is slow, relative to the loss of nutrients, and there is aleady a huge population...so you never test ammonia..."The water tests fine"

But, all these swings are happening...every time, they get less and less, but they keep happening. Eventually, they slow and stabilize. What's left? A tank with limited denitrification and a whole lot of other stuff in the water. Who comes to the rescue and thrives? The next fastest growing groups...cyano's, single celled algae, protists, ciliates, etc. Then they do their little cycle thing. And then the turf algae. Turfs get mowed dow by all the little amphipods that are suddenly springing up cause they have a food source. Maybe you've boght some snails by now, too. And a fish. And the fish dies, of course, because it may not have ammonia to contend with, but is has water filled with things we can't and don't test for...plus, beginning aquarists usually skimp on lights and pumps initially, and haven't figured out that alkalinity test, so pH and O2 are probably swinging wildly at this point.

So, the algae succession kick in, and eventually you have a good algal biomass that handles nitrogen, the bacteria have long settled in and also deal with nutrients, and the aquarium keeper has probably stopped adding fish for a spell cause they keep dying and they started to visit boards and read books and get the knack of the tank a bit. They have probably also added abunch of fix-it-quick chemicals that didn;t help any, either. Also, they are probably scared to add corals that would actually help with the photosynthesis and nutrient uptake, or they have packed in corals that aren't tolerant of those conditions.

About a year into it, the sand bed is productive and has stratified, water quality is stable, and the aquarist has bought a few more powerheads, understand water quality a bit, corallines and algae, if not corals and other things are photosynthesizing well, and the tank is "mature." That's when fish stop dying when you buy them (at least the cyanide free ones) and corals start to live and grow and I stop getting posts about "I just bought a coral and its dying and my tank is two months old" and they start actually answering some questions here and there.

So, ecologically, this is successional population dynamics. Its normal, and it happens when there is a hurricane or a fire, or whatever. In nature though, you have pioneer speices that are eventually replaced by climax communities. We usually try and stock immediately with climax species. And find it doesn't always work. Now, the "too mature" system is the old tank syndrome. Happens in nature, too. That whole forest fire reinvirograting the system is true. Equally true on coral reefs where the intermediate disturbacne hypothesis is the running thought on why coral reefs maintain very high diversity...theya re stable, but not too stable, and require storms, but not catastrophic ones....predation, but not a giant blanket of crown of thorns, mass bleaching, or loss of key herbivores.

This goes to show what good approximations these tanks are of mini-ecosystems. Things happen much faster in tanks, but what do you expect given the bioload per unit area. So, our climax xommunity happens in a couple years rather than a couple of centuries. Thing is, I am fully convinced that intermediate tank disturbance would prevent old tank syndrome.

So, that's it for now...time for me to hit the hay...sorry for typos, I am typing too fast in a dark office.

MiddletonMark

10/03/2003, 05:59 AM

Thanks Eric!

That was probably the best description of this I've read. Explains a number of things I've wondered about; even factoring in `from another tank LR'.

More than worth the wait. Thank you very much for the time and sleepy effort.

MiddletonMark

10/03/2003, 05:59 AM

shoot, double post

ReefDiver

10/03/2003, 09:02 AM

Eric:

Next time would you mind going into a little more detail! LOL

Anyway, what did you mean by "intermediate tank disturbance"? How would that help to prevent "old tank syndrome"?

Now I understand why purchasing any organism from either an online source or a LFS has to be in a significant state of stress and survival rates so darn low.

As always, thanks for your time and expertise!

MiddletonMark

10/03/2003, 09:06 AM

I would hope/suggest that you could either re-write this or sticky it .... it's a great writeup.

That `intermediate' disturbance also has me wondering. How can I be a typhoon or severe storm in my tank or mimic that?

drtherc

10/03/2003, 10:33 AM

I would think that an intermediate disturbance would be more on the line of strong waves and thunderstorms. A typhoon would be an extreme disturbance (depending on the depth we're talking about) more along the lines of a forest fire. So possibly a wavemaker takes care of some of the minor disturbances, but how do we 'replicate' stronger disturbances?
I guess we could mimic the 'hand of God' by running our hands blindly through the tank every year or two (LOL)

MiddletonMark

10/03/2003, 10:37 AM

I would also think possibly this major disturbance would be like using a powerhead and tubing to blow everything around and possibly even hand-shifting some rocks too? [except corals which would be hurt by it]

Interesting to think of this as an important part of keeping a tank long-term. Does make sense now that I'm thinking about it ... just not sure `how much' is enough?

GTR

10/03/2003, 11:30 AM

Eric,

This is the best description of the beginnings of a tank I have seen in print.

When starting a SW tank many do not understand anything other than they need some "bacteria" in the tank.

The cycles you have pointed out are very enlightening and something I've never really thought about and I've had "fish" tanks for well over 30 years.

I also think the style in which you wrote it is excellent as it is in "Play by Play" type description. Made me feel like I was there and watching every phase.

I don't (nor ever want) to work at a LFS, but I think everyone who is going to start a SW tank should read this after the first fish or coral dies. (it wouldn't do any good before that, which is to bad, but true).

I started a prop / grow-out / no room in the reef tank, tank in the garage about 6 months ago. This was started with a couple of pieces of fresh LR every couple of weeks, some home depot lights and no fish, a few snails and nothing more. The diversity in this tank, in the sand, on the rocks and on the glass is unbelievable. I can not claim to have planned it this way, it just happened due to it not really being a tank I was focused on. Now I seem to spend more time looking into this tank than the one in the house.

Makes me want to start all over again, but my wife could not deal with a fishless tank for 6 months to a year sitting in the living room.:D :D :D

This should be included in your next book!

Steve U

G-money

10/03/2003, 12:12 PM

Thanks Eric.

I wonder how feasible "intermediate" disturbances are for a captive system? We can intermediately disturb our corals through fragging, harvest algae, etc, but many of the associated critters are present in limited populations with a limited capacity for replenishment and limited means of control without eradication (not to mention being outcompeted). If we put a typical butterfly fish in our tank with live rock, we are eventually going to be left with no tube worms (among others). The butterfly may not get every last one, but the breeding stock is so depeleted that replenishment is quite negligible, wouldn't you say? We can't easily remove 'X' numbers of any given niche-filler.

Another analogy is the avice to keep a mandarin with so much live rock. If the food item has no refuge and separation from the predator, they are toast in the closed system - unless they can reproduce on the level of bacteria...Here we see the sense in refuges providing more volume (read - surface area) than the main system. How can we expect a 20 or 30 gallon tank to maintain any type of critter populations when the main system is over 100 gallons? Sure, something is better than nothing, but probably isn't imperative to the survival of any given prey of that food item. Ten pods making it into the main tank from the refuge per day is but a morsel... Even large refuges are probably giving very limited benefit to their prey - if that is the intent. Anyone who's seen how most fish in the wild don't do much more than feed can attest...which is why we supplement.

That is why I see the sense in you playing down the maturity for the sake of allowing critter populations to build up ("Does it have to do with natural food availability?<< Not sure but I don't think so.") The only immigration in our tanks is due to whatever we put in there. In such a finite volume, most natural non-bacterial prey are not going to be able to sustain an eq.

ReefDiver

10/03/2003, 01:47 PM

Graham brings up a good point. I often wondered what role a refugium plays in the overall ecology of a reef tank. Given Eric's discussion, when would be an appropriate time to add a refugium? What about the refugium cycling as well? Is the real purpose of the refugium to act as a filter for the main tank? Similar to a mangrove along a shoreline? I always thought that the purpose of a refugium was to break down NO3, PO4 and other unwanted chemicals in the main tank water. Also, to supply some nutrition in the form of "live" critters to feed on.

Given the overall compexity of establishing a reef tank ecosystem, it's no wonder that each and every system is so different in terms of diversity and functioning.

Therefore, there can really be no "cookbook" formula on "how to do it" or, for that matter, "how not to do it".

saltshop

10/03/2003, 02:25 PM

I seem to "disturb" my tank about once every 3-4 years without really doing it on purpose...as I decide to move it to another spot in the house, move to a new house, or upgrade to a different tank. :) Each time most of the bed is replaced, get some new rock, trade out some rock and corals, get new detrivores, etc.. Come to think of it, in 12 years I have done this 5 times now so I guess it is more like every 2-3 years. :D

MiddletonMark

10/03/2003, 02:30 PM

Just call him Hurricane Justin :)

jersey

10/03/2003, 02:34 PM

Originally posted by ReefDiver
Graham brings up a good point. I often wondered what role a refugium plays in the overall ecology of a reef tank. Given Eric's discussion, when would be an appropriate time to add a refugium?

I added mine at the same time I started my tank. Since it was to be part of my filtration system I saw no reason to delay. After reading Eric's comments I believe I made the right decision.

Thanks for the info Eric.

saltshop

10/03/2003, 02:35 PM

Originally posted by MiddletonMark
Just call him Hurricane Justin :)

LOL, or there was the time when I had a 300 gallon vat filled for about 6 months and the bottom suddenly blew out....thank heavens for pond liners and some extra support strapping otherwise it would have all been on the floor and it REALLY would have been as if a hurricane struck. :D That was a fun few days trying to get everything out of there before it completely let loose!

G-money

10/03/2003, 05:13 PM

Saltshop,

Yours is probably the best example of "intermediate disturbance" I think we can get, though the new sandbed and (I assume) large percentage of new water is basically what I have done in my move. I have not, however added any new live rock (but added a few large pieces of sub-substrate base rock). I was actually amazed at the proliferation of life on the rock in the month the new tank was empty. It was a major factor in my going ahead with stocking what I had to stock in the tank.

While I am seeing largely desirable progression of the tank, the 2 acros receding at the tips kind of bother me. I am not going to lose either, as I have fragged a couple of unaffected tips that seem to be fine (after 5 days), but I have to consider them negative results. Nonetheless, nothing new will be going in the tank until all animals are progressing.

Someday I hope to be able to do the 6-9 month LRWSO (live rock with substrate only) tank! Next time...I plan on moving again in about 4 years anyway...:D

As for other "intermediate disturbances", sifting up the substrate has been largely frowned upon (especially the DSB)...I would love us to figure out some other possibilities of introducing this periodic disturbance to the tank without sabotaging the whole system...I guess some live rock replacement is good (even small amounts of uncured?), perhaps minor substrate replacement...blowing the rocks off with powerheads/turkey baster. Some of the things some of us consider somewhat normal "maintenance". While I usually place my corals with enough room to grow, I rarely intervene in their growth unless a neighboring colony is either a single unit (fungia/brain types) or getting wailed on.

SeaStar

10/03/2003, 05:47 PM

Eric, Thanks for taking the time to respond in the manner in which you did. There is alot of good and eye opening information in your response that I am sure will help all hobbyists have a better understanding about what the heck is going on in our tanks. I unfortunatley only had about five minutes early this morning to rush through it, but am looking forward to sitting down and really take it in this weekend.

My immediate question has already recieved some discussion above. "Intermediate disturbance" What would be your definition of this term. I thought not so much as a small hurricane in our tanks as was mentioned (I don't think this would serve much purpose as all the same elements still remain in a closed system), but more along the lines of actually swapping things out in our tanks. Remove (or greatly frag) certain corals, swap out different fish, maybe replace a small portion of a DSB (if one is installed in a tank), replace some LR. That sorta thing.

Weatherman

10/03/2003, 05:55 PM

Since Ecological Succession may be used as a model for how our tanks evolve over time, maybe it would be valuable for us to understand the succession of species in the real world a little better.

Unfortunately, for our critters, we have a tendency to want to have our tanks have the climax-state look almost immediately (like old-growth forest in a bottle).

Are there any on-line references that describe the succession of species on, say, an artificial reef?

Maybe that would allow us to plan the introduction of species to our tanks a little better and, as a result, reduce the stress on and mortality of our inhabitants.

fahz

10/03/2003, 10:05 PM

Eric wow what a bedtime story for newbies and established reefers alike. I have tagged it for the next time I read a post on whats wrong with my new setup.

Fahz

MiddletonMark

10/04/2003, 07:01 AM

When discussing this with my fiance, she suggested a tank is mature -
`when it starts cleaning up after itself'.

Which is accurate in a sense ... no more weird successions ... things in balance which means less aquarist work [or leaving things] as diatoms/algae/etc etc go with only quick regular cleanings of the glass.

It also was nice comparison to humans, rare when this works for reef tanks :)

SPC

10/04/2003, 07:32 AM

Originally posted by Graham
As for other "intermediate disturbances", sifting up the substrate has been largely frowned upon (especially the DSB)...I would love us to figure out some other possibilities of introducing this periodic disturbance to the tank without sabotaging the whole system...I guess some live rock replacement is good (even small amounts of uncured?), perhaps minor substrate replacement...blowing the rocks off with powerheads/turkey baster. Some of the things some of us consider somewhat normal "maintenance". While I usually place my corals with enough room to grow, I rarely intervene in their growth unless a neighboring colony is either a single unit (fungia/brain types) or getting wailed on.

Good morning Graham,

You might want to check out this thread, Peter replaces 50% of his substrate/ year. The longer I am in this hobby, the more I believe that measures such as this need to be taken in order to avoid old tank syndrome.http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24940
Steve

SeaStar

10/04/2003, 07:38 AM

Good Morning Eric,
Finally had time to read through your response more thoroughly. Again very well written and I really feel it helps to fill in a several pieces of this 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle we opt to call "captive marine systems". I apologize that in my previous post I duplicated some of the questions and points already brought up by other members responses. I had limited time to read and post.

I would like to touch on some other points:

Pioneer corals and climax corals -can you give examples of each for our tanks.

You have shown many of the benefits of letting a tank "cycle"/"mature" for many months prior to the addition of any animals . One added benefit is that critter populations are allowed to flourish without predetation or at least from predetation much higher up the food chain(such as the experience Crawdad is having by letting his tank mature without livestock). However once 6 months or a year is up and the hobbyist starts stocking this tank, will the additional numbers and biodiversity of life in that tank really make any impact 6 months or one year latter or will the end result be the same.

Graham brings up refugiums and that even though good to help out with nutrient uptake, bacterial populations and such, they may not be all that beneficial in helping to maintain critter diversity/populations (unless I misread you Graham). Do you agree with him or does that fact that there is no preditation in a refugium make it a substantial, beneficial addition to our systems when it comes to suppling our main tanks with a continuing food source or to help keep a system stocked with diversity.

Thanks again for your time and insight:)

EricHugo

10/04/2003, 09:42 AM

>>Thanks Eric!

That was probably the best description of this I've read. Explains a number of things I've wondered about; even factoring in `from another tank LR'.

More than worth the wait. Thank you very much for the time and sleepy effort.<<<

Thank Mark, Steve, etc. for all the flatterign remarks....

this thread bloomed big-time, so let me get down to brass tacks...as much as I cna before I have to leave to give a talk to our aquarium club this morning.

>>Anyway, what did you mean by "intermediate tank disturbance"? How would that help to prevent "old tank syndrome"?<<

Well, we see how ecoogical principles are pretty much happening in our tanks...and over time, systems tend towards fewer species as competition, resource limitation, habitat utilization, mortality without recruitment, etc. take hold. If we disturb populations, we free up these opportunites for "repressed" species to again have a chance. Better yet if we can periodiclly introduce new species at this time. Live rock, new sand, corals with base material, etc.

I think something like a big rock rearrangement and a big water change and some refugium work, and some coral trades and some new material added would probably qualify.

>>I would think that an intermediate disturbance would be more on the line of strong waves and thunderstorms. A typhoon would be an extreme disturbance (depending on the depth we're talking about) more along the lines of a forest fire. So possibly a wavemaker takes care of some of the minor disturbances, but how do we 'replicate' stronger disturbances?
I guess we could mimic the 'hand of God' by running our hands blindly through the tank every year or two <<

Seriously, that might be closer than you think.

>>I would also think possibly this major disturbance would be like using a powerhead and tubing to blow everything around and possibly even hand-shifting some rocks too? [except corals which would be hurt by it]

Interesting to think of this as an important part of keeping a tank long-term. Does make sense now that I'm thinking about it ... just not sure `how much' is enough?<<

I'm not sure either, but I do know everytime I've had a "disaster" - and I mean every single time, the tank is absolutely ripping about two to three months later.

>>When starting a SW tank many do not understand anything other than they need some "bacteria" in the tank.<<

I know. Its from very limited and basic beginnings that we seem to all get started and the fish stores and bottles we buy just tell us about those nitrifiers and how they eat ammonia and make it "safe" - once we are beyong that point, we rarely concern ourselves with it or revisit the facts because it won't happen to us again unless we start a new tank and then we "are prepared" for it...

T>>he cycles you have pointed out are very enlightening and something I've never really thought about and I've had "fish" tanks for well over 30 years.<<

Well thanks...and, tosome degree fish tanks are less of a problem because you don't have all the other things happenings....plants, gravel and filters are about the limits of other species diversity. When you throw live rock in there, you've complicated things immmensely by the tropical marine environment -

and being visual animals, we usually consider mainly things we can see rather than things we cannot.

>>I started a prop / grow-out / no room in the reef tank, tank in the garage about 6 months ago. This was started with a couple of pieces of fresh LR every couple of weeks, some home depot lights and no fish, a few snails and nothing more. The diversity in this tank, in the sand, on the rocks and on the glass is unbelievable. I can not claim to have planned it this way, it just happened due to it not really being a tank I was focused on. Now I seem to spend more time looking into this tank than the one in the house.<<

Uh huh - I know - seen the same thing a few times myself. We highly underfactor the roles of what predators like corals and fish do in tanks. Corals,in the load they exist in tanks, are extremely efficient killing machines of things whch would otherwise be playing significant roles in the ecology of our tanks.

To Grahm's good post:

By disturbance, i am thinking less in terms of loss of a taxon or two, but I do see the difficulties imposed by the tank volume and the examples you cite. I was thinking more of a freeing up of new opportunities and re-introduction of species otherwise lost. This probably entails partial population mortality, but maybe not "on purpose" - I'm not sure fragging or algae removal qulaifies as anything except maybe space - and maybe not even then...might actually reduce habitat...not sure.

Anyway, the tanks don;t act like entire reefs but little tiny pieces of reef, which to some degree is a small representation of the whole reef without entire ecosystem level dynamics - many of the same principles hold, though. My comment to your coent about food and playing down of aspects thereof is I don;t think we are anywhere near prey availability anyway, so I think the effect while ideally important is probably not so important in small water volumes with negligible availability even under the best cases.

Steve, refugium has changed...the deifinition and we've talked about before....we actually keep a refuge, not a refugium and the idea was to provide areas for growthof critters otherwise preyed upon. Now, however, people equate them to filtration areas, which is kind of silly since the rock and coralss and main tank are probably doing far more than a small box with some macroalgae in it. Still, even that provides a function. If these areas were much larger, they would be far more functional.

saltshop: A tank move ro change, I think, is exactly the sort of thing that qualifies as intermediate disturbance. take it all apart, and put it all back together again.

Seastar - same thing, I think.

Weatherman, remind me again and I will get all those references for you...I have a lot. I can probably .pdf or link some of them for the board.

EricHugo

10/04/2003, 09:51 AM

>>Pioneer corals and climax corals -can you give examples of each for our tanks.<<

For our tanks...yikes...probably different from the wild due to closed system nature, but I would think Xenia would qualify - and star polyps. I would say something entirely different were people to actually wait to add things for longer than they do. the other big downfall here is that these things grow so fast they would actually decrease space availability and not offer habitat for much in a tank. Ideally, we want the same species as in the wild to start off with...Acropora, Pocillopora, etc. Then add a smattering of rare head corals (faviids, Porties) and a few relatively non-toxic soft corals - for a "reef tank" - if we got even smarter, we would avoid the reef tank and do the tiny "part of a reef tank" with each part considered seprately as to how the community should progress.

>>You have shown many of the benefits of letting a tank "cycle"/"mature" for many months prior to the addition of any animals . One added benefit is that critter populations are allowed to flourish without predetation or at least from predetation much higher up the food chain(such as the experience Crawdad is having by letting his tank mature without livestock). However once 6 months or a year is up and the hobbyist starts stocking this tank, will the additional numbers and biodiversity of life in that tank really make any impact 6 months or one year latter or will the end result be the same. <<

with the way most people stock, no...but that's where the "intermediate disturbance" could come in, right? It would also allow for refuge populations to exist prior to that one tiny growth of a red turf being lost forever by one nip of the yellow tang added the day after ammonia drops to zero...chances of losing establshed populations is much lower than chances of losing a single organism, you see? Plus the stability present would limit dramatically those early mortalities that plague most new aquarists. ...that in itself is worth the price of admission, you know?

>>Graham brings up refugiums and that even though good to help out with nutrient uptake, bacterial populations and such, they may not be all that beneficial in helping to maintain critter diversity/populations (unless I misread you Graham). Do you agree with him or does that fact that there is no preditation in a refugium make it a substantial, beneficial addition to our systems when it comes to suppling our main tanks with a continuing food source or to help keep a system stocked with diversity. <<

See repsonse to steve...

SPC

10/04/2003, 10:39 AM

Originally posted by EricHugo
Well, we see how ecoogical principles are pretty much happening in our tanks...and over time, systems tend towards fewer species as competition, resource limitation, habitat utilization, mortality without recruitment, etc. take hold. If we disturb populations, we free up these opportunites for "repressed" species to again have a chance. Better yet if we can periodiclly introduce new species at this time. Live rock, new sand, corals with base material, etc.

I think something like a big rock rearrangement and a big water change and some refugium work, and some coral trades and some new material added would probably qualify.

Hi Eric,

I know that in the past you have said you don't believe we need to disturb the DSB on a regular basis. Would you consider the DSB in this intermediate disturbance, and if so, what exactly should be done with this area? I ask this question because I have noticed that on the natural reef sand is shifted (and I would imagine sifted) on a regular basis.

My comment to your coent about food and playing down of aspects thereof is I don;t think we are anywhere near prey availability anyway, so I think the effect while ideally important is probably not so important in small water volumes with negligible availability even under the best cases.

Just to clarify, are you saying that the average refuge most of us keep, are not supplying enough food to our main tanks to be of any real use?

Thanks,
Steve

EricHugo

10/04/2003, 02:15 PM

Hi Steve:

>>I know that in the past you have said you don't believe we need to disturb the DSB on a regular basis. Would you consider the DSB in this intermediate disturbance, and if so, what exactly should be done with this area? I ask this question because I have noticed that on the natural reef sand is shifted (and I would imagine sifted) on a regular basis.<<

I thnk disturbing a sand bed can have disastrous consequences - I commented in another thread about that - if you disturb and/or move the sand bed, it shold sit nicely for a couple days before sensitive corals are put back or a lot of mortality might occur....that sais, a "careful" disturbance like that might qualify...I don't think sand beds are the ideal way to do this.

>>Just to clarify, are you saying that the average refuge most of us keep, are not supplying enough food to our main tanks to be of any real use?<<

No. I think they are useful (though I confess I am not sure what the average size is), but no way near enough in every case I have seen (my own very definitely included).

SPC

10/04/2003, 04:55 PM

Originally posted by EricHugo
I thnk disturbing a sand bed can have disastrous consequences - I commented in another thread about that - if you disturb and/or move the sand bed, it shold sit nicely for a couple days before sensitive corals are put back or a lot of mortality might occur....that sais, a "careful" disturbance like that might qualify...I don't think sand beds are the ideal way to do this.

Thanks for the reply Eric.

Would you mind elaborating a bit more on why you feel this could have "disastrous consequences".

I agree with you that we need to shake things up in our tanks (although we might have a some what different opinion on why this is imporatant), but I am having trouble understanding how we can leave the DSB out of this equation. As I previously mentioned, it seems to me that the substrate in direct contact with the natural reef is shifted and sifted as a result of high energy. I would expect to find a DSB with the same energy level as my reef tank to be associated more with lagoons, or even more swampy areas. When I consider the high organic load I am putting on my DSB,coupled with low energy and a lack of sand fauna diversity, the result could end up being what I see in magrove swamps and mud flats, high organic sediment.

(though I confess I am not sure what the average size is)

LOL, yea thats the same thing I thought of when writing that:D . From the reading I have done on others systems, it seems like about 20% of the total water volume of the system might be devoted to a refuge, but this is just a guess.
Steve

Crawdad1

10/04/2003, 11:40 PM

Originally posted by SPC
Thanks for the reply Eric.

Would you mind elaborating a bit more on why you feel this could have "disastrous consequences".

You are comparing 8 inchs of sand in a glass box to the ocean. In the ocean the layers are way deaper and, with a lager volume of water that is constantly washed across it that cannot be a compared or duplicate in our glass boxs. Am I making any sense here?:(

G-money

10/04/2003, 11:49 PM

Perfect sense.

see: dilution effect. :D

SPC

10/05/2003, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by Crawdad1
You are comparing 8 inchs of sand in a glass box to the ocean. In the ocean the layers are way deaper and, with a lager volume of water that is constantly washed across it that cannot be a compared or duplicate in our glass boxs. Am I making any sense here?:(

Uh, thanks Crawdad, I think you and Graham might be missing my point, however.

I am well aware of the differences between the natural reef and our tanks, in fact, I think I pointed that out:confused: . The point I am trying to make is that if we indeed are going to "shake things up", then why has the DSB been left out of this equation?

First of all Crawdad, it makes little difference how much deeper the layers of sand are in nature as far as the nitrogen cycle goes. As long as there are aerobic, anaerobic, and anoxic zones present, then the nitrogen cycle will occur. It is my contention that a DSB on the natural reef is subject to different dynamics than our glass boxes, and therefore must be treated as such.

Second, it is this large volume of water, along with other aspects (which I already pointed out) that do indeed make a huge difference in why a DSB might function long term in the ocean, but have a limited life in our tanks.

HTH explain my point a bit better.
Steve

EricHugo

10/05/2003, 09:02 AM

Steve:

you are very right, and your comments are also the answer.

The sands around reefs are coarse and well sifted - and they are pretty functionless, too. You can dig your hand up to the armpit in sands in a reef spur and groove area and see nothing but pur white flakes of carbonate and very little life. The sand in our tanks aesthetically looks like the sand there, but fucntions like the seagrass/mangrove/ lagoon sands - that's where the action is in the wild in terms of excess production of the reef in the wild, and also where all the nutrient processing is in tanks. If it were constantly highly stirred in tanks, it would be fine to do this but not very functional. As it is, if you moved a chunk of the real reef to a calm organic-laden sand area near a mangrove and then disturbed the sediments, same thing would happen. Probably why you don't have many pathc reef communities in these areas, and why areas that get high organic sedimentation have a limited variety of corals that can thrive there.

I'm not thinking the sand bed in tanks doesn't need "attention", but that attention probably has special requirements and that having sensitive corals around during that time might kill them.

SeaStar

10/05/2003, 09:26 AM

Eric, do you think that it would be benificial to syphon a small portion (couple sq. in. ) of the DSB with every monthly water change after say the one year mark. Could it be done without harm to tank inhabitants.

Mr.Jingles

10/05/2003, 11:25 AM

do we need to syphon our tanks at any time?

Mojoreef

10/05/2003, 12:31 PM

Hey Eric great posts as always. I have a couple qustions relating to this.
Knowing that nitrification occurs in the areobic zone and Denitrifications occur in the anerobic zone (by facultative anaerobes) what purpose do you feel the huge anoxic zone does for us that keep a reef tank.
Concidering the drawbacks of the biproducts produced by bacteria in this zone, is it even woth trying to keep one???

thanks buddy

Mike

SPC

10/05/2003, 01:38 PM

Originally posted by EricHugo
Steve:

you are very right, and your comments are also the answer.

The sands around reefs are coarse and well sifted - and they are pretty functionless, too. You can dig your hand up to the armpit in sands in a reef spur and groove area and see nothing but pur white flakes of carbonate and very little life.

Hi Eric,

I agree, and this is the point I'm trying to get at. If the natural reefs have this kind of substrate, then there must be a reason for this, which IMO is greatly related to high energy cleaning this substrate. It would seem to me that the sand around reefs would work more along the lines of a fluidized bed filter (highly aerobic).

If it were constantly highly stirred in tanks, it would be fine to do this but not very functional. As it is, if you moved a chunk of the real reef to a calm organic-laden sand area near a mangrove and then disturbed the sediments, same thing would happen. Probably why you don't have many pathc reef communities in these areas, and why areas that get high organic sedimentation have a limited variety of corals that can thrive there.

But I'm not sure I agree with you that the substrate would have to be strirred in these in shore areas to affect corals. When I think of these areas, the first thing that comes to mind is the sulfur odor that one can smell from miles away. I have also noticed that during tide changes, the water will often cloud up with a dark grey or brown color that to me indicates detritus in suspension. This being the case, I would think that these areas would be extremely high in organics (sulfates, phosphates etc...) and wouldn't think that the substrate would need to be stirred to realize this.

The sand in our tanks aesthetically looks like the sand there, but fucntions like the seagrass/mangrove/ lagoon sands - that's where the action is in the wild in terms of excess production of the reef in the wild, and also where all the nutrient processing is in tanks.

Again I agree that the DSB's in our tanks act like "seagrass/mangrove/ lagoon sands", but is this what I really want in a reef tank? My DSB is white for about the first 1". After this it goes from grey, to some dark (sulfer?) areas that appear in lower flow areas and under rocks.

From the reading that I have done, it seems to me that one of the major contributers to pollution on the reefs comes from these "functioning" sand bed areas closer to shore, is this correct?
Thanks,
Steve

fahz

10/05/2003, 04:29 PM

EricHugo

10/05/2003, 08:31 PM

It would make sense to me (and is sort of what I do anyway, though could improve it) to keep coarse aerobic sands in the reef area and have a large find bed remotely (large refugium, separate area, ehatever) that is rarely or difficult to disturb where the anaerobic processes occur.

I don;t really want to jump back into the sand bed discussion which we covered quite in depth a while back. As for answers on long-term sandbeds and what keeps them acting efficiently, I cannot say with any assuredness except for my own case where I do not see any nutrient buildup. Also, I think the functionality of them far outweighs any downsides. Like I said, I think the way we appraoch them and the way we install them could stand some improvement.

Steve, I'm with you on the inshore areas. There is aplethora of literature to describe all of this...we're both on pretty firm ground here and I think on the same side.

Mojoreef

10/05/2003, 09:38 PM

It would make sense to me (and is sort of what I do anyway, though could improve it) to keep coarse aerobic sands in the reef area and have a large find bed remotely (large refugium, separate area, ehatever) that is rarely or difficult to disturb where the anaerobic processes occur.
Yea Eric this was my thinking to. For me you loose to much keeping it in the main tank. just with the loss of flow and the ever present danger of digging to deep did it for me. I went with a coarse substraight in the main (about an inch) and the created a lagoonal refuge in a remote location. I found with strong flow most of the detritus was removed via the skimmer and the demand on the 3 inches of sand in the refuge was really easy to deal with.
I agree with the areobic and anerobic zone mimicing, thier use as a denitrifier and a place to house planktonic critters is a big plus, but I just dont understand the need to go beyond it with the large anocix zone???

Mike

EricHugo

10/06/2003, 06:33 AM

Because that's where the majority of denitrification and remineralization is occurring. Reductive areas.

ReefDiver

10/06/2003, 09:46 AM

Eric:

Would it make any sense to use a "course gravel" (bottom layer), "soil" (middle layer), and "fine gravel" (top layer) in a separate "refuge"? The "layers" could be varied in order to see which type of stratification would work best at reducing NO3, PO4, etc... the object being to produce the most variety of benthic & other organisms that would be beneficial in "stabilizing" the water environment in the "main tank".

Question is would this also take care of the organic matter produced in the main tank, or, would you still need to run a protein skimmer as well?

I guess that the size of the refuge would be dependent on the set up in the main tank, i.e., majority of SPS species, vs. LPS, vs. combo of the two, vs. fish stocked in either, and varied combinations, if you know what I am getting at?

I think that this is the idea with a "Mangrove" type of setup. But how do these systems function overall. There is really no real research being done in this area. OR, is there and I am missing it?

Mojoreef

10/06/2003, 12:37 PM

Because that's where the majority of denitrification and remineralization is occurring. Reductive areas
Dentrificating bacteria being facultative are dominate first in that line arent they. since the are facultative they would reside in the anerobic zone above the anoxic reducers such as sulfate/methagene and carbon reducers which highly dominate the anoxic zone.
Do you really think we get much in the way of remineralization in the DSB?? I have no idea if that is viable or not.

Thanks fo the conversation.

Mike

Bomber

10/06/2003, 08:10 PM

Psst Mike,
It's aerobic (respiration in the presence of free O2) on the top.
Anoxic (O2 level between .05-2.0 mg/l) in the middle.
Anaerobic (absence of free O2) on the bottom.

and reminerialization happens too s-l-o-w-l-y to do you any good in these closed systems.

Everything you want to happen is going on in the anoxic areas. In the middle. ;)

Hey Eric :wave: :)

Mojoreef

10/06/2003, 08:41 PM

You know that is the 3rd time this month I have written them down backwards...duh

saltshop

10/07/2003, 09:35 AM

Originally posted by Mojoreef
You know that is the 3rd time this month I have written them down backwards...duh

At least you are consistent :D

Mark

10/09/2003, 11:42 AM

Eric
Awesome write up! I'm bookmarking this one.

In terms of DSB's and the subject at hand, here's my take on it:

The current in our tanks is usually pretty dismal relative to the flow on an actual reef. In fact, the flow required to mimic a real reef crest would blow a fine particle size DSB out of the water. It's also accepted in this thread that our DSB's mimic the dynamics and meiofauna of a seagrass/mangrove habitat. So, along with the low flow, aren't we basically trying to keep corals in a microcosm that overall more closely mimics a mangrove habitat? Furthermore, isn't there a reason that many types of corals we like to keep do not occur in those habitats? And lastly, is it really so surprising that our tanks with DSB's and low flow begin to look like a mangrove habitat(without the mangroves) after 4-5 years?:) The various algae communities have a greater competitive advantage over corals in these muddy areas due to a greater presence of nutrients which are usually limited in a reef community.

Eric, you make a great point about corals being efficient predators as well. I never thought about that. We worry so much about the effect on microcrustacean communities after adding a mandarin, yet don't think twice when adding a euphyllia. I will keep that in mind with my new tank.

I remember talking with Adey about the presence of predators in an aquarium. We both agreed that if the goal is to have a long term diverse tank, predators are a tricky equation. At the density that we keep corals and other predators, refugiums do nothing more than act as a food source. Refugiums don't seem to serve as source for critters to repopulate the main display, when the main display is full of predators. So, even in the presence of a fuge, we lose the significant roles these critters serve in a ecosystem. After all, they do more than just act as a food source.

On a side note, a few years ago I helped my brother set up a reef system. He loved watching mine so much, he wanted one of his own. We set it up with only a tang. After just a year, his tank was extraordinary to look at. The tang obviously prevented the opopportunityor some types of algae to prevail, but the diversity of critters, sponges, and other algae was impressive.

Mark

10/09/2003, 11:51 AM

SPC,

Thanks for the link to Wilkens tank. It great to see a successful reef tank that old. It's also nice to read that he simply accepts and lives with the fact that his tank over time does not support certain corals, and embraces the fact that others are succeeding. While it's difficult to prove, I'm willing to bet that his yearly 50% substrate change acts a positive disturbance effect on the diversity and nutrient processing dynamics. Probably why he has avoided the OTS.

Bomber

10/10/2003, 10:42 AM

http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/info/press-releases/ancient-coral.html

And here's my take on it. You guys are nuts! LOL :D LOL

The next time someone tells you "it's just like nature" "It's natural" etc, point them to any articles/papers on Florida Bay - the worlds largest DSB/refugia/algae filter. Because it hasn't been cleaned out, it's crashed. So tell them it really is just like nature.

:lol:

Mark

10/10/2003, 01:57 PM

The next time someone tells you "it's just like nature" "It's natural" etc, point them to any articles/papers on Florida Bay - the worlds largest DSB/refugia/algae filter. Because it hasn't been cleaned out, it's crashed. So tell them it really is just like nature.

Today's word is Eutrophication! Everyone say it with me! :lol:

Bomber

10/10/2003, 07:54 PM

Hypereutrophic ;)

Scuba_Dave

11/21/2003, 08:53 AM

Great thread, thanks Eric & to everyone else. I think I've followed Eric's layout, except at a faster pace, due to spending all day here. It's the only nice thing about Tech support call center, no calls, I get to surf!
I'm moving in about 2 weeks, then I finally get to setup the 125g that has been sitting in my mom's basement. We will be adding an addition in the spring, so next summer I will be adding a 180g to the system.
So 1.5 years after starting in SW the tank I wanted (actually want a 340g) will start to cycle.
Talk about hurry up & wait!! Thanx

skylsdale

12/18/2003, 10:39 PM

Thanks for the read thus far guys.

skylsdale

12/20/2003, 03:38 PM

I've decided that I'm going to try some of this longer period waiting setup in my new system. I'm setting up a 30 gal later today in my office. The rock has pretty much been sitting over the last couple months, and it's grown more foraminaforms, etc. than I've ever had on my rock (I've always kept nanos, so things get predated pretty easily).

Anyway, due to extremely low budget constraints for this tank, I have no other option than to wait painfully long periods of time before major equipment and livestock additions...so this will be quite a drawn out project compared to many of the systems I've seen put together. Eric, this is based off the leeward rubble type environment I asked about a couple months ago. I plan on stocking some Pocilloporids first, then maybe a Porites specimen for the "focal point." Fish will probably be some chromis and maybe a dascyllus. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this develops over time. My hope is to just let the corals run rampant, and actually do the occasional "storm by hand" to create some friction in the tank.

I'll keep you guys updated if anything noteworthy seems to happen.

commandertekki

12/23/2003, 10:49 PM

Im a newbie... just wanted to tag this discussion thread so that I can keep up with the readings.

Before this, jumping out of a plane was my idea of enlightment, and I never really thought I'd find myself interested again in marine biology.... But I do love to learn and I wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your discussion and comments on reef ecology.

Phillip

EricHugo

12/26/2003, 12:14 PM

:) Good...although some of the dives I have done are every bit as crazy as jumping out of a plane...crazier, probably.

commandertekki

12/26/2003, 11:13 PM

I'm too claustrophobic to be diving into a medium in which I cant see more then five feet in front of me... maybe I'm just scared of the dark. I think puff the magic dragon was the root cause.

I do have a question though concerning the sandbed since we've been on that topic, and I'm sure your tired of answering the same questions over and over again... but...

in reading this discussion thread over twice, I'm still confused about the benefits of 'intermediary distubances.'

It sounds like its good to have, but for someone as new as me to this hobby, would it be wise to create these intermediary distubances when my tank is less then a year old?

What benefits is it to have it. Maybe I just cant see what your answer to it was.

I forgot who it was that talked about moving their tank and not having too many problems with his corals and fish dying off and this can be considered a disturbance.

but I've witnessed a person move from one house to another and what I saw was all his acros dying because of that 'intermediary disturbance.'

So I guess what I'm wondering is...

1) Is it wise and practical to even have these intermediary disturbances when you risk losing the livestock and investments you place into this hobby?

Its great to see that nature has these distubances and creating bio-diversity. But I dont see the practical application in a reef aquarium.

2) What's the big deal if Dawin's idea of one bacteria dominating a tank and not allowing the weaker one to have a chance in the system even though it is a fraction of what you see in nature.

IMO if the weaker species (bacteria) was meant to have a chance it would have already found its way in surviving and even dominating that other.

Maybe I just had too much beer trying to read three pages of discussion (which is very interesting and cool if I may add that).

I have 4 small fishies in my tank. All of them are very small for the 55 g tank.

and I will call them my children... and I shall be God

ciao

Phillip

commandertekki

12/28/2003, 11:11 AM

ignore my post I had too much to drink that nite.

Phillip

harmonic

01/06/2004, 02:13 AM

:eek1: Whoa...

This has been the most informative piece on captive reef ecology I have seen anywhere.

Spectacular! :beer:

tlp

01/08/2004, 02:19 AM

Eric,
I very much like the idea of waiting and maturing the tank before adding predators - its a shame that I didn't have the patience when I started.

However what I do have is a large 8ft refugium with sand and a few pieces of live rock and no deliberate predators. I feed this refugium with live phyto almost on a continuous basis as well as some of the food I feed the tank.

Initially the refugia was buzzing with pods and all sorts - however, since I left it to grow "wild", it is now dominated by aiptasia and I have noticed a significant drop in the amount of life in there.

So going back to the theory of letting the tank mature without predators, say setting up a tank then wait 6-12 months before adding fish/corals, wouldn't you just end up with the same thing where some hitch hiking species higher the food chain dominate the tank?

Wouldn't you just end up with a tank full of algae and aiptasias?

EricHugo

01/08/2004, 08:29 AM

I definitely do not think a new tank should "grow wild" and especially without herbivory. However, addition of herbivores should be a balanced thing, not stocking with so many herbivores they starve and not a scrap of algae is in the tank and not so low that algae dominate. Also, Aiptasia are usually introduced and are a known pest organism in tanks, as are oher things. Tanks can be reasonable facsimiles of nature, but becuase of their inherent limitations, require aquarist intervention. But, my point of this post is to allow for the stabilization and development of desirable species at reasonable population levels in a fashion that is more pragmatic than those usually employed..

tlp

01/08/2004, 09:45 AM

Thanks - that makes sense. It is hard though to judge the right "balance" - especially if you're impatient.

Now I'm stuck with a dilema though - the hundreds of Aiptasia in my refugia are predating on all the lil critters I'm trying to give refuge to.

I do not want to add predators like butterfly fish nor peppermint shrimps to the detriment of all the life in there - but how do I remove and keep a control on the Aiptasia?

MiddletonMark

01/08/2004, 09:50 AM

A fair amount of people use Kalkwasser to inject them. Other things I've heard as well, just a little more sketched by them [lemon juice, etc]. Some are now raving about a product `Joes Juice' ... but gets expensive, and what I've heard is that it's probably darn close to Kalkwasser slurry.

As for how ... do a search.

Yep, it's a pain, but I've gone from having them in my 58g tank to not having seen one there in 6 months. Manual injecting most of them, and the addition of one peppermint shrimp has mean total extermination :D
Could probably remove the peppermint when they're all gone, but one of ours has been very helpful by eating the little aptasias. [I also have two slacker peppermints, don't do squat in the 40g tank ... but that's another story].

tlp

01/08/2004, 09:56 AM

Erm... there are hundreds of the buggers - of all sizes! I can't keep up with them, by the time I've reached one end the other end have started again... this is 16 square feet worth of tank to cover!

May be I'll sacrifice a few of my snails to put some peps in there. Perhaps the spawn they produce make up for the predation a little. Hopefully they'll leave the sponges/sea squirts/feather dusters alone... :0

MiddletonMark

01/08/2004, 10:03 AM

I've had no problems like that with Peppermints ... mine don't touch snails, sponges, tunicates ... the only thing I really seem them hassle is corals ... stealing food from the polyps right after direct feeding.
As with anything, I'd go minimally, stocking the fewest possible - and with most of these `nuisance eating' critters ... the less you feed the tank, the more they tend to eat what you'd like them to.

I'd still manually remove the big ones, but I've had luck with peppermints taking care of aptasia [and no other problems].

SPC

01/08/2004, 10:22 AM

Hi Tip,

I do have is a large 8ft refugium with sand and a few pieces of live rock

If it were me I would remove this many by hand (I wouldn't let them die and decompose in the system, or allow predators to eat them only to excrete them as feces). If you only have a few pieces of L/R in there, then that can be addressed seperately from the rest of the refugium. If they are on the sides of the refugium container, you probably can use a razor blade to dislodge their basis. If they are on the sand, well you would just net them out with a thin layer of sand.
Steve

Crawdad1

01/08/2004, 08:29 PM

Heres a picture of my sump.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/42733663-med.jpg

I'm in the middle of my 7th month. I just added 10 corals (Acropora, Montipora (digitata and plating), Pocillopora, Stylophora, and Heliopora) into the main (240) tank. In the sump there is Xenia, Heliopora some zoe's and a medium size Gorgonian on the 28th of December 2003. This system will be skimmerless I have no intention at this time to add a skimmer. Personally the corals are showing (to me at least) noticeable signs of growth since being put into the tank.

craw.

Laura Boyle

01/30/2004, 03:24 PM

Eric,

As I'm reading through this I'm wondering about lighting during the maturation process? I may have missed it in one of the earlier posts on this subject. What should the duration & quality of lighting be? Thanks!

EricHugo

01/30/2004, 10:57 PM

I would provide the same light as will be present after this time. Otherwise, you will wind up acclimating things once, and then again if you change it. I know a lot of people cure live rock in the dark, and I think this is a crazy practice. The thought is to reduce algae, but there will not be any nuisance algae if the water is well managed and herbviores are present. I know when I cure rock, I may wind up doing 2-3 100% water chnages a day until things settle down a bit...I skim heavily, and have even used ammonia blockers to keep levels from becoming toxic to the surviving life. But, that's the very early stages, and probably not what you were referring to...was it?

Laura Boyle

01/31/2004, 05:39 AM

Correct. I was referring to the overall process, not just the very early stages. Thank you!

lil_mikey69

02/13/2004, 02:45 AM

I'm on my 5+ month of having only LR in my tank.

Go me :)

Laura Boyle

02/13/2004, 08:49 AM

Lil Mikey69,

How are you finding it? When are you planning on adding corals & fish? (I'm taking notes here! LOL).

Laura

lil_mikey69

02/13/2004, 01:14 PM

I really don't have any plans at this point. I'll be getting my canopy in a few week's, so after I get my MH light's up I'll probably be adding some coral's. Right now I've got a bit of cyano, so I defentinally won't be adding anything untill that goes away. I have a small amount of a clean up crew in there, but I do plan to add a larger number. There's actually still a lot to look at. There's been a huge increase in the number of snails. There's always little snail egg sac thing's on the glass.

I'd really like to get a Protein Skimmer before I add any fish though. Ill probably start getting things in it within the next 2-3 months.

Laura Boyle

02/13/2004, 01:21 PM

Thanks! I'd like to know how things come together for you.

commandertekki

02/13/2004, 02:10 PM

how are you dealing with the cyano?// just adding a clean up crew?

lil_mikey69

02/13/2004, 03:49 PM

I'm just letting it run it's course at the time. I'm going to try and add some left handed hermits which I've heard will eat cyano. Theres really just a small patch in the middle of my sand bed.

When there is a really large strand, I will usually just pull it out and throw it away.

Ronald

02/19/2004, 01:43 PM

Isn't it interesting how the tank cycle described by Dr. Borneman included changes in the aquarist? The bacteria reproduces, and dies, populations change and the aquarist reads, asks questions etc. Perhaps a description of the cycling of the aquarist should be included in texts, too much reading or worry may lead the reef never to form for fear of a crash...too little and the discouragement and cost leaves to a failed in land reef. The proper balance and a reef grows far from any ocean in the basement or living room of a primate's lair. The new aquarist may also mature and if complacent with husbandary contribute to old tank syndrome (part of the cycling of the aquarist) then there may be compensation, appropriate or excessive and on it goes...

commandertekki

02/19/2004, 03:23 PM

momma always said to eat your wheaties

kunio

02/29/2004, 07:45 AM

can anyony tell me where can i find more information about it

skylsdale

04/06/2004, 10:50 PM

Use the search function.

The Escaped Ape

04/08/2004, 03:15 AM

Eric,

I was reading your article in Reefkeeping Magazine which suggested waiting 3 months before adding herbivores to the tank. Does the defintion of herbivores also include hermits/snails? I have some pretty good live rock which came together with plenty of corraline and some hitchhiker corals (some green and orange zoanthids, some mushrooms, a frag of Tubipora musica and a couple of bits of finger leather coral) and would be a bit worried that the algae would smother them without some janitors in there (the tank already has 6 hermits who have been tranferred from the old tank, though I assume they won't make much of a dent in the new tank's algae growth on their own).

Would it be OK to add some more hermits now and some snails as well, or should I wait it out?

Tom

EricHugo

04/11/2004, 08:09 AM

Sure its ok...that is a guideline rather than a rule. The point is to make sure that the water chemistry is stable enough that the herbivores don't have a hard time surviving, die, and make the situation worse rather than better.

The Escaped Ape

04/12/2004, 01:02 PM

Thanks Eric! Hopefully the exceptionally fresh LR (taken out of the sea in Okinawa and shipped overnight to my door) helped.

Crawdad1

04/12/2004, 10:25 PM

Originally posted by burntom
Thanks Eric! Hopefully the exceptionally fresh LR (taken out of the sea in Okinawa and shipped overnight to my door) helped.

Careful on what your saying. Their watching the boards.;)

EricHugo

04/13/2004, 08:22 AM

Well, since he lives in Japan......

birdman204

04/14/2004, 10:20 AM

Originally posted by EricHugo
Before delving on this one, a couple of comments:

>>I know Eric to be a .........../.............. I am fully convinced that intermediate tank disturbance would prevent old tank syndrome.

So, that's it for now...time for me to hit the hay...sorry for typos, I am typing too fast in a dark office.

I think I read that in a book once :strange:

I was just linked to this thread, and this explanation is beautiful.

I agree it is hard to explain exactly why tanks need to mature, but once you've seen it happen, you pretty much become an advocate. My tank here at work has been running since Oct 8th, and I added my first few zoanthids , hermits and snails within the past few weeks. Battling algae was a matter of reduced photoperiods and nutrient control.

reef10

05/04/2004, 10:51 AM

Good topic. I have a question. My tank has had hair algae very bad for a long time. I have done all the stuff you find when doing a search on it and I have not beat it yet. The tank is 2-3 years old. The hair algae has been with me now from the 6 month mark on... I know my snails and hermits are low. I do not want to add the 5 million snails only to watch them starve when the algae is gone. (side note: I can not keep the big snails all that long anyway 2-3 months. ???) Last December I went through a bit of effort to get stuff that reproduces in the tank - stomalla snails, mysis shrimp, and ensuring a copepod collection. Now at 5-6 months later the populations are growing (or maybe stable?) but not really making a dent it the algae. How long is a reasonable time to wait for a balance to occur? I was hoping the population would peak with the HA almost gone and then be self limiting. Sort of changing the darwining outcome of the tank - from HA to snails.

birdman204

05/05/2004, 03:17 PM

I will say that I have seen the Sea Hares TEAR through mair algae. They can be found online a few places... I believe IPSF.com has them and if you are frustrated enough... those giant Trochus are quite the constant grazers... day and night.
Also looking into Algae eating fish helps. Bicolor blennies , orange spot gobies , they sound like a good size for your tank.

qwiksilver

05/05/2004, 07:39 PM

Yep, hair algae sucks. I tried a lawnmore blenny and a kole tang and a foxface but they all turned away from it. Then I got a Sea Hare. Within two days he had cleared about 75% of the HA:rollface: I already have two guys willing to share him cause once the algae is gone I don't want him to die and release his toxins into my tank. It's a machine.

birdman204

06/02/2004, 03:20 PM

Can you say stream of consciousness posts....
colnel, I wonder if that could all be said in 1 post ;)

another couple of unsuspecting books I like are Calfo's BOCP, and tullocks Natural Reef Aquarium. Lots of info in both of those books.

EricHugo

06/03/2004, 10:21 AM

Colnel:

Please refrain from doing the again..I do not like my time taken up deleting posts.

Whiterat

06/06/2004, 08:52 PM

This thread has really been quite astounding and has offered insights into a variety of issues regarding tank maturity and sandbed maturity that I hadn't had previously realized or considered.

I am a a follower of the theory that OTS is primarily caused by sandbed saturation, and as a result am setting up my next system to include a DSB 'fuge in-line to the sump which I will be able to fully detach from the system, strip and replace. I haven't done this yet (still setting up) but I've thought about it a bit.

I had to move my 29g last October, and since the 2" deep crushed coral (TBSW LS) sandbed was going to get stirred, shuffled, shoveled out and replaced anyway, I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that any layers of nitrification, denitrification, et al., bacterial would largely end up in the wrong places and would mostly be destroyed. Oddly, I didn't see any increase in algae growth that I would have expected. It may be that my sandbed is so shallow that stirring it really doesn't have much effect.

It would seem that the act of upgrading aquariums (moving, as I'm planning, the contents of a 29g to a 54g+sump system) would reduce some of the maturity of the tank. The amount of sandbed disturbance, repositioning of rock, larger water volume, etc., represents a really large environmental change. Unfortunately, when this sort of thing is being done, one wants to put all the critters from the old tank into the new.

Do you have any suggestions or thoughts on this, given that some of the creatures we have stewardship for definitely require a mature tank, and the act of moving the contents of an aquarium in which they are settled and doing well might disturb or endanger them?

Thanks,

Ratty
(Click the little red house to see my 12g and 29g reefs!)

EricHugo

06/08/2004, 10:53 AM

Well, in your case a lot has to do with the crushed coral. I doubt there is much an an anoxia problem given the particle size and depth, so you probably were getting denitrification within the grains and perhaps on surface layers a bit, but probablynot stratified through the bed as you would tend to find with fine sediments. If I were you, I would mix in maybe 1/4 of your current CC with a new finer sediment and let it settle for a few days or a week before adding any animals. I'd add rock after any dust settles, and let that go for the remaining days of that week. Then you should be fine, and I think you'll be surprised at how well things will go from there.

Narkon

06/17/2004, 01:57 PM

Eric, you make a wonderful description of how the cycles run, and include that the aquarist starts to read, but how does the cycles change if the aquarist reads before starting?

If I am not having the fish die for I am not adding them, which feed the continuation of the cycles, then how long should one wait before starting to introduce the small clean up crew, then some of the other stuff, and do I want to start with corals before fish right?

jgreen1025

07/19/2004, 11:50 AM

I hope this thread isn't too old to add to it. I'm still in the research and planning stage, but will be setting up my 50g tank soon and plan to follow this method as well as I understand it.

One concern I have is that my wife and kids won't be as excited as I will about a tank without any fish in it for 6 to 12 months. Is there a good herbivore I could add shortly after adding snails? All the fish I'd planned on adding are omnivores (clownfish) or carnivores (firefish, neon gobies, cardinalfish). I had thought about some yellow tangs but I get the impression they'd be too aggressive on the algae growth. What can I add to keep the family as excited about this as I am?

John

GTR

07/19/2004, 12:29 PM

John,

I think your situation is common and without any answers which will improve both your tank and the other family members opinions.

I have to keep some fish in my reef which I would prefer to omit. With all the time and community property I spend on this I feel I must compromise.

If you introduce the carnivores or herbivores you know what they'll eat so you just have to decide which you want to put at risk.

Steve U

EricHugo

08/01/2004, 10:08 AM

I think a 50 gallon tank is kind of small for most if not all surgenfishes, but herbivorous blennies are a good choice.

fd235158

08/08/2004, 10:46 PM

Eric, you said that corals would be helpful if they're the one's that would be tolerant of tank conditions. What kinds of corals are you refering to.

EricHugo

08/29/2004, 08:17 AM

That would depend on the tank.

obarrera

10/10/2004, 12:59 AM

Originally posted by EricHugo
That would depend on the tank.

Which will be helpful in a 10 gallon tank?
Also a 40 gallon tank?

gruiz1122

10/12/2004, 12:02 PM

All I can say is WOW! This thread has become the most informative I have seen on RC in regards to the evolution of our captive systems. I truly wish I would have had access to this info when I started with my system. I would also like to know what type of corals would be the appropriate "first corals" to go into our tanks. Thank you again Mr. Borneman for all the info!!!!

gruiz1122

10/12/2004, 12:02 PM

gruiz1122

10/12/2004, 12:31 PM

obarrera

10/12/2004, 07:57 PM

Hahaha why did you post three times?:D

gruiz1122

10/13/2004, 07:51 AM

Woops! It said that the connection timed out! Sorry 'bout that...

skylsdale

10/15/2004, 08:35 PM

I would also like to know what type of corals would be the appropriate "first corals" to go into our tanks.

He already said that it depends on the individual tank.

Which will be helpful in a 10 gallon tank?
Also a 40 gallon tank?

Size is far from the only condition in something like this.

shellnut

11/18/2004, 07:31 PM

Thanks so much for all the info! I started researching this website after two of my fish died, in a new tank (about a month old), and am now beginning to understand it a bit more. Will still have plenty of questions but am bookmarking this page to come back and re-read. Thanks, again!
Shelly

july865

11/18/2004, 10:24 PM

that was AWSUM eric. thank you.

Semara

11/23/2004, 12:57 AM

Eric, you said that corals would be helpful if they're the one's that would be tolerant of tank conditions. What kinds of corals are you refering to.

Don't mean to resurect a dead post, but this thread has been really helpful. If you have the time to answer, i'd appreciate clarification of this point. Does the answer to this question have more to do with something like export of nutrients, or with outcompeting specific algae or some other organic nuisance? or both? or neither?

Also, how much does hobbiest experience and system planning (i.e. someone wanting a SPS tank v. a low-light biotope focused on corrallines and deepwater Anithias) factor into an answer?

I'm sorry if this question is too general, and it can't be answered reasonably well as is. But, I've enjoyed the curing process of my LR and the aftermath much more than I anticipated (my friends think I'm crazy when I get excited about seeing such ugly things as Amphipods crawling arond my LR), and I've really become more interested in the growth of my tank than I'd ever have thought.

Thanks.

pelagic

12/01/2004, 12:29 AM

Has anyone experienced this? After getting a reef tank established for a few months, things get settled in, grow, expand, divide, look great; then six to eight months into this success, things don't expand like they did, shrink and just fade away. No crash, just a gradual atrophy.

Thanks for the ongoing discussion.

C.J. S.

jgreen1025

12/01/2004, 12:18 PM

Originally posted by pelagic
Has anyone experienced this? After getting a reef tank established for a few months, things get settled in, grow, expand, divide, look great; then six to eight months into this success, things don't expand like they did, shrink and just fade away. No crash, just a gradual atrophy.
C.J. S.

Can you give some more specific information:

- What specifically is shrinking/fading away?
- What kind of animals/fish/coral do you have, and when did you add them?
- What are your tank specifics, ie. size, lighting, skimmer, sand, LR, etc.?
- How often (and how much) do you do water changes and feeding?
- Have you run any tests on the water?

Nap

12/01/2004, 12:28 PM

Pelagic I have the same question. I have a system that has been set up for two years (actually a six year old system that was moved two years ago) and has been incredibly healthy until recently. Things arent expanding as they were, and one group of ricordia (I had four years) just shrivled up and wasted away. I have been doing water changes weekly (was doing monthly ones prior) as something seems to be affecting the system. Even my 6 year old hammer is not expanding as it did and my rose BTA has decided to start roaming around the tank.
I am at a loss. My test kits are old so I am going to get new ones and run a boat load of tests but I cannot figure out what is wrong.
One thing...About the same time that all of this started I also noticed the appearance of what looks like a small patch of black/green cyano. I have never seen this in my system before and as much as I try to clean it up it comes right back (although it never gets larger than a 2 inch patch). My system is a 100 gal with 30 gal sump. Lighting is 2 400w radiums and it is being skimmed by a euro reef 8-2. As far as corals go its got a little bit of everything from my basketball sized hammer to a couple acros and even the Tyree green polyp leather.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
-Ian

Philwd

12/01/2004, 09:10 PM

I hate to ask but are you running a DSB?

Phil

tomterreefic

12/22/2004, 03:06 PM

I think my brain just went numb. I am finally getting a better understanding of my tanks. I set up a 10 gal. LR tank about 6 months ago and am amazed at the life running around on the rock. I've put no fish in, only a few snails and hermits. Since the LR seems to be teaming with so much more life than my display tank, I swap out rocks from time to time (i.e. "intermediate disturbance". I always thought of it as kind of a re-fueling of the rock. Since I began doing this I've noticed a dramatic increase in both the growth of my existing corals and a great reduction in the death of my fish and corals. I realize this also has to do with the maturity of me and my tank. Thanks Eric for your time. I feel like I can finally see the forest despite the trees.
TOM

gruiz1122

12/23/2004, 09:48 AM

I think I understand now what Eric is trying to get across. In my haste and excitement after reading this thread I foolishly thought that there was the "perfect" mix of corals that would go into our tank to provide that utopian habitat we are all striving for. I know now that that is far from feasible with the limited amount of reasources we are provided with at our LFS or even from online stores. We can only look to re-create a very small slice of the reefs that we know. To think that there is such a diversity on the reefs that if we tried to duplicate it we would fail miserably is very humbling.

One thing I think we might have to take into consideration is the fact that we might have to go "DSB-less" GASP! to be able to maintain a really nutrient poor system for those precious Acros and Montis and other "clean" water corals OR on the flip side possibly setup a "mangrove" type system with the DSB to keep our soft corals such as the 'shrooms and various other "dirty water" corallimorphs that require higher nutrient levels to survive. Reason I say all of that is because of the experiences I have seen other hobbyists go through in trying to keep a "mixed" system with both "dirty" water and "clean" water corals and the horrific results that are obtained i.e. shrooms and rics and other softies dying when a new, more powerful skimmer is introduced or that new Tunze stream shooting out 3000 gph blowing the crap outta everything. I think we need to rethink the whole DSB thing and apply it to our particular situation or habitat that we are trying to recreate, I mean I am only thinking about what I have seen and read over and over again and am only repeating the observations that I have made.

Then again I might be totally and completely off and might as well go stick this where the sun don't shine! :D

jgreen1025

12/23/2004, 12:45 PM

Originally posted by gruiz1122
One thing I think we might have to take into consideration is the fact that we might have to go "DSB-less" GASP! to be able to maintain a really nutrient poor system for those precious Acros and Montis and other "clean" water corals OR on the flip side possibly setup a "mangrove" type system with the DSB to keep our soft corals such as the 'shrooms and various other "dirty water" corallimorphs that require higher nutrient levels to survive. Reason I say all of that is because of the experiences I have seen other hobbyists go through in trying to keep a "mixed" system with both "dirty" water and "clean" water corals and the horrific results that are obtained i.e. shrooms and rics and other softies dying when a new, more powerful skimmer is introduced...

I think I've misunderstood something. I had the impression after reading Eric's comments on skimmerless tanks that corals like Acropora and Montipora would do better in water that isn't scrubbed perfectly clean. In fact, I thought he'd called those types "pioneer" or secondary species, and that it would be better to start a new tank with them than things like mushrooms or zooanthids. I didn't realize there was a "clean/dirty water" difference. Can someone clarify this for me?

John

obarrera

12/23/2004, 01:39 PM

All I wanna know is what should I start with.
Corals,fish,inverts?
I have 152 watts(T5 HO) of light on a 40g breeder,I have nothing in there right now.

I have had success with my 10g tank,but I wanna do better with my 40g.

gruiz1122

12/29/2004, 08:00 AM

Jgreen, go ahead and set up a tank with a DSB, and no skimmer. Let it cycle and introduce your Acros. Wait a few years and stir up the sand bed "by mistake" i.e. a fallen powerhead or something along those lines. Stand back and watch how fast those acros RTN. There is just too much that can go wrong with a DSB. I understand that there are people that haven't had any problems with their DSB's but I just think that there is too much that can go wrong to justify the use of a DSB......

There is another thread in the Advanced topics forum (I think) that shows a diver going down to the sand in a coral reef and digging a hole. Guess what he found....NOTHING! No cyano no algae, no little nitrogen bubbles, NOTHING. Pure white sand. What I'm trying to say with this is that on the typical "reef", you wont find any nitrification, denitrification, or any other process going on within the sand. It all happens in those little interstisces in the rock and the dead coral skeletons that form the reefs. NOT in the sand that surrounds the reef. That raises the question, where does the detritus, and dead organisms and other "polluting" matter go? It goes into another organism, falls to the bottom of the benthos and gets eaten there, or it gets blown off of the reef and into the lagoonal and mangrove areas where it is processed by something else like your mushrooms and other corallimorphs which like "dirty" water. And where is the "clean" water? Back on the reef where the Acros and Montis grow.......

jgreen1025

12/29/2004, 12:05 PM

Originally posted by gruiz1122
Jgreen, go ahead and set up a tank with a DSB, and no skimmer. Let it cycle and introduce your Acros. Wait a few years and stir up the sand bed "by mistake" i.e. a fallen powerhead or something along those lines. Stand back and watch how fast those acros RTN...<snip> That raises the question, where does the detritus, and dead organisms and other "polluting" matter go? It goes into another organism, falls to the bottom of the benthos and gets eaten there, or it gets blown off of the reef and into the lagoonal and mangrove areas where it is processed by something else like your mushrooms and other corallimorphs which like "dirty" water. And where is the "clean" water? Back on the reef where the Acros and Montis grow.......

Thanks for the clarification but I'm not interested in debating the DSB issue - I just misunderstood your comment. I've never seen anyone growing soft corals in "dirty" water (I assume you mean relatively murky water) and they seem to grow well enough in "clean" water. So I (wrongly) assumed that by "dirty" water you meant an unskimmed tank, as opposed to a tank with heavy skimming where the water is perfectly clean.

But just as an aside, have you read Ron Shimek's articles regarding how the sandbed should be set up? You said the detritus "goes into another organism, falls to the bottom... and gets eaten there." According to Dr. Ron, a healthy sandbed should contain lots of little worms, bacteria, and other organisms that will do exactly what you said. Obviously, you still don't want to stir your sandbed (accidentally or otherwise), but since we don't have the luxury in our relatively small tanks of the large volumes of water that naturally wash over coral reefs to dillute the pollutions, it seems like a sandbed capable of processing the detritus is the next best option. (But I've probably misunderstood your comments again!).

John

gruiz1122

12/29/2004, 12:57 PM

Problem with that theory is that all those litter critters produce poop of their own! Which in turn gets sucked into some magical wormhole that shoots it out into the galaxy never to be seen again! (pardon the sarcasm :D)

liusteven

02/14/2005, 05:51 PM

great thread.. thanks Eric! :)

EricHugo

06/21/2005, 09:20 PM

I can't really comment on which corals go into which tank first.

In any given habitat, various distrubances open up various susbtrates for growth and settement. Evebtually predation and competition set in, and you see the evolution of communities. I am not at all against this in tanks either. I have had corals thrive for years, and then failto thrive. It doesn't mean there is something wrong with my tank, just that the tank is changing to support somethings and not others. While it might be sad to se the loss of a speciimen, its also possibly a normal happening. When I see this happen and reall care about saving the species, I typically move it to another tank where it often recovers and thrives again.

As for the DSB discussion, I stay away from it. I have used them for over a decade and feel the benefits far outweigh the downsides. I dare anyone to say my tank doesn't rock and is nutrient poor and supoortss just about any coral (except the azooxanthellate species). Ideally, I think they should be remote. It is true that sand surrounding coral bommies where most divers take trips is quite clean, but thats because of wave action and other physical disturbance. Go towards shore. Go down the reef slope. Its a mess of enriched sediment, often foul with hydrogen sulfide within mm of the surface (and often with corals including Acropora) growing right on top if there is some hard substrate) and that's where the waste of the reef is processed, and that's what is accomplishedd by sand beds in captive systems. Anyone who claims that extremely productive and high rates or organic decomposition, remineralization, denitrification, nutrient regeneration, and biodiersity doesn't exist in areas 50-1000x the area of the reef really needs to learn more about reef ecosystems.

sihaya

07/16/2005, 06:52 AM

Hi... when you say that disturbing the sand bed is usually not a good thing, does that mean sand shifter stars are not favorable?

I have four sand shifter stars in a 65g. I like them a lot. They keep the algae off the top of the sand and make every thing on the bottom look so "clean" for lack of a better word. (It also cracks me up with they try to climb up the side of the tank) I hope they're not messing things up. I was told they were actually good for the tank because they pushed stuff down into the sand. Is that just BS?

I do have a small 4g refugium with an undisturbed sand bed... but it's not much really.

(My tank is 3 months old... I had the cyano blum about 2 weeks ago, now I guess I'm at what you'd call the "turf stage.")

I was also wondering... it seems like you wouldn't recommend obsessive cleaning of algae off tank walls and such? I typically clean the glass twice a week. Should I not be doing that?

EricHugo

07/19/2005, 12:41 AM

Cleaning the glass is great - provides "phytoplankton" of sorts.

The tank is very young, and the stars are probably going to starve eventually - even one in a 65 would have a rather tough time of it. THey don't push things down in the sand...they consume it. It takes a lot of food to sustain them - one in a mature 65 with lots of detrital material and associated flora and fauna and a lot of exposed sand might do it...four in a 3 month old 65....yikes.

Personally, I don't clean the glass that often...not until the coralline is too thick so see through, anyway! You sound like your algal successions are going very normally and right in order. Time to make sure you have enough herbivores, now, though so it is well grazed at this point and doesn't become overwhelming.

sihaya

07/22/2005, 07:26 AM

Thank for the advice! Is there anyway I could feed the starfish? I wouldn't have gotten them if I knew they needed a really mature tank. I only have one fish, so I don't put a lot of food in there as it is. Would it help if I burried some dried seedweed or something in the sand?

EricHugo

07/28/2005, 12:26 AM

You might want to ask in Ron's forum what would be a good food for them - maybe sinking shrim pellets or something?

Jiddy

07/28/2005, 03:14 AM

Just curious on how long my tank (220) should cycle with 300lbs of base rock and 100lbs of cured LR, and 50gallons of used water and 170 gal of fresh RO water? When can i add fish?

EricHugo

07/28/2005, 08:50 AM

You could add fish shortly after the cycle is over. If I were you, though, I'd wait 8 months or a year.

Dudester

07/28/2005, 10:47 AM

OK, now I'm curious. Why did you say you'd wait 8-12 months before adding fish, just being facetious? Sorry if this was obvious, but I've only had one cup of coffee so far today.

EricHugo

07/28/2005, 11:02 AM

no, not really...did you read the initial post here? I think that adding fish should come after adding herbivores, tank stability, and the addition of corals.

sihaya

07/31/2005, 11:41 AM

Not to change the subject... but I read a few of the posts here about "old tank syndrome." I worked at this family owned LFS that has a 200g reef tank that's been around since before I was born. It never got ots... and I think that might be because every month it has a few different corals in it. People buy a few, the owner puts a few new ones in... so it's never the same tank. (except for the few semi-perminant residents... basically corals that no one wants :( ). THe turnover isn't that fast though because there aren't a lot of people buying coral in that area.

I know that a household reef tank could never have that... but it's a cool tank to look at and think about. THere's a fat mandarin fish in there that's like 5 years old.

socalreefer73

09/30/2005, 03:17 PM

bump

EricHugo

09/30/2005, 05:56 PM

Sounds like "the intermediate disturbance hypothesis: in action. I think my tanks doesnt get OTS o=for the same reason...always changing things around, if not only to keep the fish "not bored"

socalreefer73

09/30/2005, 06:13 PM

I'm no chemist, but my thoughts on OTS would be related to the fact that waterchages can't ever remove 100% of minerals/metals, etc, unless you change 100% of the water, which would have disastrous effects, for the most part, not to mention the impracticality in large systems. So, if there is something in your salt mix (or from any other constant input to the system) that isn't uptaken by any organism (that is then removed or harvested from your tank) and would be toxic at some level, you will eventually get to that toxicity.

I tried to keep it to two sentences.. lol

jgreen1025

09/30/2005, 06:36 PM

Originally posted by socalreefer73
I'm no chemist, but my thoughts on OTS would be related to the fact that waterchages can't ever remove 100% of minerals/metals, etc, unless you change 100% of the water, which would have disastrous effects...

Hi Matt,

I don't think that even a 100% water change (if possible) would remove all minerals/metals within a tank, because a lot will be sequestered within the sandbed. But if OTS were caused by minerals/metals accumulating within the system, simply changing some corals etc. from time to time wouldn't do anything to remove them either. So, following that logic... could it just be that new corals/frags bring in new (different) bacteria or other tiny critters that help keep the tank from stagnating? You might say it prevents too much inbreeding within the bacterial populations...? Just a thought...

John G.

Paul B

09/30/2005, 06:39 PM

It makes perfect sence to me about tank disturbances. Every 6 months or so I stir up my tank gravel and all. I don't have a DSB,
But after 33 years with the same tank I still have no large visable
Old Tank Syndromes. I do get cycles that last a few months to a year or so but most things seem to thrive. I never thought the stirring up had anything to do with it but everything looks much better after my man made typhoon. My reef is in a gorgonian phase now, the hard corals are shrinking and all the mushrooms, leathers and gorgonians are growing like weeds. 6 months ago it was the opposite. I think I will make typhoons more often.
Paul

Paul B

10/01/2005, 02:31 PM

I got so excited that early this morning I stirred the entire tank up with a large diatom filter. Visability was about 6" but now it's clear as gin and everything is happy. I love it when I get excited.
Paul

CDGreenEyes

11/03/2005, 08:33 AM

Back to our regularly scheduled programming on maturation ...

I think home aquarists not only miss the point but also miss the fun and a wonderful educational experience when they jump straight to the "Old growth forest" stage.

My daughter (she is 5) went with me to MACNA this year. When we returned, she wanted to set up a reef aquarium in her room. I said ok. We set up a 12 gallon nanno and added some cherry-picked Fiji live rock, about 2 dozen snails of half a dozen species, some amphipods, mysids, etc. All in NSW.
She looked at her "Empty" tank and said "When do we put some stuff in it?" I told her we were just going to watch it for a little while. After about a month, she quit asking about "Stuff" because she loves watching her shoals of "Baby shrimp" and all the very busy little critters that make their home in her tank. We will, eventually, be adding coral to her tank when it is ready.

sihaya

11/03/2005, 09:39 AM

If I remember correctly... when you're 5 years old, even 2 weeks is an eternity. ;)

EricHugo

11/03/2005, 05:50 PM

Carl - with the right live rock, I'd bet it would turn into one of those tanks such as in Nilsen and Fossa Vol 1. where nothing had been added and it was a true reef tank. I've always wanted to collect my own rock and do that.

CDGreenEyes

11/03/2005, 10:44 PM

Originally posted by EricHugo
Carl - with the right live rock, I'd bet it would turn into one of those tanks such as in Nilsen and Fossa Vol 1. where nothing had been added and it was a true reef tank. I've always wanted to collect my own rock and do that.

Eric,
You could probably get away with it in your position at the university. If I went and got my own rock off the reef, Fish & Wildlife would confiscate the boat, fine me & maybe even put me in the pokey. :mad2: ... Ummm and if you DO go collect some rock for your research, I'll just come along and be your dive buddy, ok? :cool:

BTW, you met my daughter at MACNA. You can perhaps imagine how "Into" reef aquariums she has gotten. Its really cute.

CDGreenEyes

11/03/2005, 10:47 PM

Originally posted by sihaya
If I remember correctly... when you're 5 years old, even 2 weeks is an eternity. ;)

Oh good grief ... she has even started the "Are we there yet" on drives to the beach. Five minutes is an eternity for this girl ... much like it is for the average marine aquarist. LOL.

EricHugo

11/04/2005, 07:41 AM

Carl, I am going to work on putting together a pre- or post-MACNA field trip to the Flower Garden Banks. I sure would like to dive with you after all these years. I don't have any "research" ongoing that would entail live rock, although I'm sure I could come up with something. ;)

bobt2

11/04/2005, 08:12 AM

eric, sorry i'm jumping in late, but ,if you started with aquacultured rock and true live sand shipped in water and in the tank 36 hrs after being collected would that change the time to maturity? bobt

CDGreenEyes

11/04/2005, 10:09 AM

Originally posted by EricHugo
Carl, I am going to work on putting together a pre- or post-MACNA field trip to the Flower Garden Banks. I sure would like to dive with you after all these years. I don't have any "research" ongoing that would entail live rock, although I'm sure I could come up with something. ;)

Count me in! I'll be on that dive.

CDGreenEyes

11/04/2005, 10:12 AM

Eric,

Do you remember Kathy from Reef Encrustations? She had several reef tanks that were just that ... LR collected, kept in live wells on the boat and put into her tanks within just a couple of hours. Those tanks were amazing to look at.

EricHugo

11/04/2005, 05:22 PM

Yes, of course I do. I remember the "to drool over" ads in FAMA, too. Whatever happened to her...drug related, as I recall?

CDGreenEyes

11/04/2005, 07:48 PM

Originally posted by EricHugo
Yes, of course I do. I remember the "to drool over" ads in FAMA, too. Whatever happened to her...drug related, as I recall?

So I hear. It was very sudden in any case. She and I used to keep close contact by phone & then suddenly one day no more calls & her shop was closed. I really don't know more than what I have heard beyond that.

CDGreenEyes

11/04/2005, 08:08 PM

Eric,

You have mentioned you have not experienced "Old tank syndrome" and I have lamented it still happens to me. Interestingly, I have found over the years that the "Cure" for old tank syndrome is to take one third of the live rock out of the tank and throw it in the dumpster. Then I replace it with fresh, cured, live rock leaving 2/3 of the old LR in the tank. Then I take that 2/3 of old rock & BLAST it with a pressure washer (I can see you cringing) fed by old SW from the tank. Then, if its a shallow sand bed, I replace it. Finally, I do a 100% water change and replace the LR and corals to the tank. The tank then acts like a new tank for the next 3 to 10 years. ... And then I have to do it again.

I guess what I have "Discovered" is also what you are calling "The intermediate disturbance hypothesis." If you look in my book, its what I called "Resurrecting" and old tank.

Anyway, this is not actually my point ... What I was wondering is what your maintenance routine is...including additives. I know you have said you use handfuls of Ca & buffers but I don't think I have heard you say what you use and how you dose. I would like to see if something you are doing (that I am not) may extend the time before I have to become a hurricane in my tanks.

EricHugo

11/05/2005, 07:27 AM

Carl,

I don't have an explanation other than what I suspect. More or less, I may make rearrangments often enough to change species distribution patterns and thus change water flow, sand areas, light, etc. In my puffer tank, I get Valonia because I cannot put any grazers in the tank besides fish who don't eat it becuase the puffer will crunch any snails or crabs or urchins (but she doesn't touch corals), so I have to manually remove rocks to do it. I think it is close to the same observation you make, and Ron Shimek suggested about a year ago that live rock may become to "stagnant" with coralline coverage to have the same porosity, effeectively sealing the rock to all the different beneficial organisms. I decalcfied a bunch of rock for him to sort through the critters (old, new, and in-between) and although I don't think he's gotten to it, I didn't see any obvious differences...but then again, my rock may not be the rock to use. Maybe we need rock from someone with old tank syndrome. But, it makes sense, even f the pores become packed with detritus instead of coralline. Alternately, it may be the disturbance or "new rock" that winds up shifting the propensity of competitve dominance over time.

My routine is feed ( my food mix above, cyclop-eeze, and DT's oyster eggs, at present) several times a day, and I only add either kalkwasswer (in the small tanks) or calcium chloride and sodium carbonate/bicarbonate to the big tank and the culture tanks - the big tank takes several cups full of dry pellets a day and about 1 cup of carbonate a day! No way to keep up with that using kalkwasser. I do water changes in puffer's tank, but don't do them in the big tank, although sometimes I draw water from the tank for various reasons, and then replace it but we're talking about a very insignificant amount of water in the scheme of the tank. I do use carbon heavily, and have started using ozone - which although I was thrilled with for awhile, am perhaps slightly less thrilled with now as over the past year I am starting to see some declines in sand bed populations and with filter feeding inverts - going to try and circumvent that by feeding even more. I have a calcium reactor on the big tank, but it is (like all my past experiences with calcium reactors) a disappointment and basically a "supplement" to the calcium demand of the tank and just kind of a pain.

The products I use are a commercial soucrce of really great carbon I found that comes in 90 lb bags, calcium chloride in 55 lb bags (usually the 97% pellets, sometimes the 77-80% flakes, depending on prices at order time), and 55 pound bags of a high grade of washing soda (I use Arm and Hammer from the grocery store when I run out in a pinch) and my kalkwasser in Mrs. Wage's pickling lime. Other that the oyster eggs and the cyclop-eeze, I don't add anything to my tanks made by the aquarium industry.

CDGreenEyes

11/05/2005, 08:15 PM

Eric,

Hmmm, well, other than brand differences (I use 25 lb bags of Arm & Hammer from the warehouse stores for instance) we do not do anything all that different except that I have recently (in the past 18 months or so) begun using activated carbon much more heavily. I now use 5 lbs of activated carbon in a 400 gallon tank (1.25 lbs per 100 gals) and change it out every third week. The acceleration of coral and corraline growth has been more than a little noticeable since I started socking to carbon to the tanks. It will be many more years though before I notice if any of these tanks are slower to develop "Old tank syndrome" due to the heavier use of carbon.

What I suspect personally is that the much lower organic load due to heavy carbon use will extend the periods between "Hurricanes". I can say with confidence it appears to improve calcification.

EricHugo

11/06/2005, 10:58 AM

I think our carbon use is about the same, gallon for gallon. I'm using 7 pounds in 600 gallons through one of the Ocean Clear carbon canisters. I agree on the calcification part, too. Or at least, that's what it appears to do ;)

Mogrash

11/06/2005, 06:53 PM

Is it possible that the amount/quality fed to fish/invertebrate size/type differs greatly between the two of you? I for one wish I had a better idea of how much to feed my fish/inverts rather than the 'enough so they eat it all within 2 minutes'. Just seems very highly variable and something where someone could easily overfeed...

CDGreenEyes

11/08/2005, 09:01 AM

Originally posted by Mogrash
Is it possible that the amount/quality fed to fish/invertebrate size/type differs greatly between the two of you? I for one wish I had a better idea of how much to feed my fish/inverts rather than the 'enough so they eat it all within 2 minutes'. Just seems very highly variable and something where someone could easily overfeed...

Mogrash,

Unless Eric is doing something very different recently, I suspect he and I still feed about the same. We both have our own formulas which amount to a raid on the local fish monger and both formulas are very similar. My formula is never quite the same from batch to batch but the ratios of the different ingredients are similar in each. In my case, it depends on what the local fish market has in stock that day. Then I add Cyclopeze, oyster eggs & some other stuff. As far as quantity, I use the "Jewish grandmother" standard. That is, "Here, eat ... you have only had three helpings ... yes, try some of this too. Oh, there is always room for a little more."

BTW, I spot feed for the most part too. That is, I use a pipette and waft the food over the corals to let them each eat. I feed the fish at the same time in a more open water area to try (usually unsuccessfully) to keep them from stealing from the corals. A whip and a chair is useful to keep the shrimp back. :rolleyes:

I am coming to the conclusion that the real difference between my tanks & Eric's are that his do not age in the same way mine do: I set up tanks and stock them over the course of a year or two then I just let them remain and grow. After about eight to ten years, I see the beginnings of "Old tank syndrome" and I revive the tank as noted in an earlier post.

Eric seems to piddle with his tanks constantly. He changes things in and out, frags, trades specimens, etc. His tanks are therefor in a state of constant change and renewal and thus do not "age" in the same way mine do.

This weekend, I was watching my wife re-pot orchids. She is an orchid fanatic and takes great care of them. As I watched, I began to think of her routines. Are the corals & critters in our reef tanks the same to a wild coral reef as her orchids are to the rainforest? Maybe we should be "Re-potting" our reef tanks every five years or so?

Mogrash

11/08/2005, 11:01 AM

Heh, this all sounds reasonable.

On the other hand, I have often heard many people say that those that have their 'hands in the tank' all the time often have problems. But that might stem from them already having problems and are just always in the tank trying to fix the problem..

I like the analogy of the old forest presented in this thread. It's like a stagnant forest where there is so much old growth that new growth can't compete. Trees/bushes are growing into each other and haulting their growth. Compare that to a recently burned area (like mentioned in previous threads) and the new growth coming up is rapid and fast. Are we saying, if left unchecked, the corals grow so close to each other they are shading/chemically competing against each other and as an end result compromising their growth?

Instead of the 'repotting' you merely need to do something that gardeners also do. Trim/cutback/prune. Perhaps merely fragging corals and providing an urchin to chew up the coralline growth and thereby opening up the live rock so it can 'breathe' better would help considerably.

Plants regularly seem to grow faster after pruning/cutting. My parents have a forest and they made a path through it. Quite amazing how quickly some bushes sprung to life when downed trees provided better light penetration/air flow.

EricHugo

11/08/2005, 11:08 AM

Hi Carl:

I say rearrange with a bit of tongue in cheek for there is not massive rearrangement very often, and if you look at my tanks, its obvious they are pretty much set in place simply by the growth of the corals. I'll email you a recent photo. But, there are maybe once a year or so big rearrangements. simply due the size the corals become with resultant brakage. I think your way is probably better, but I can never bear to get rid of any of my live rock because it is too pretty and has too much life on it.

Another thing - although my tanks have changed and many others have been set up over the years and also disappeared, and I have experimented a lot, my main system is more or less a result of your teachings. It was successful in 1992 and continues to be so today and I try not to mess with the basic success, just tweaking, modifying, and expounding bit by bit, as I am sure you have done, too. I almost never fragment out of my big tank unless theintegrity of other corals is being compromised, mainly because I likebig sexual mture colonies...now I want regular spawning and that is the next major goal for me.

By the way, I was cleaning out a drawer this morning and found an old folder that is directly relevant to this thread. IT was written on an old dot matrix printer, so I know is is old. But, check this out...I quote
"Eric,

Dick Perring offered this recipe, saying some corals absolutely need to be fed - i.e. Favia spp., which go into recession if they aren't fed in his tanks. This seems to be a great thing to add to the feeding chapter.

Would you call Dick and confirm this recipe and see if we can provide a bit more guidance on quantities, types of fish roe, etc.?

Dick Perrin, prioneer coral farmer and founder of Tropicorium in Romulus Michigan uses and recommends this formula as an all-purpose food for corals

Table shrimp
Fish roe
Egg yolk, boiled and mashed
Liquid Multi-Vitamins
Vitamin B12 (crushed tablet)
Reef Plus (SeaChem)

Perrin recommends blending or shredding with the shrimp, then mixing in the other ingredinets with a small amount of clean artifical seawater. The coral chow can then be fed immediaely, using apoultry baster to direct the mixture to the individual corals. It can also be frozen in cubes in plastic ice cube trays for future use. Perrin believes the Reef Plus supplement (vitamins, amino acids, and fatty acids) makes the food more palatable to corals, triggering a feeding response.

This is, of course, a version of my coral food with the addition in my food of a more diverse group of foods, including newer and better products, and the Selcon being the better substitute of Reef Plus. I will repost this part in the coral feeding thread, too.

Interesting, isn't it?

CDGreenEyes

11/08/2005, 07:27 PM

Eric,

Whatever happened to Dick anyway? I have not seen or heard from him since I decided to become "Public" again. Yes, I remember those early discussions on coral / fish foods. Seems like a very long time ago now. Chas had a recipe, Dick had one, etc, etc. Its funny, when I developed my formula I basically went down to the seafood market and got some white fish, some fatty fish, lots of mollusks, shrimp, crabs, lobster, etc and I came home, added Super Selco, earthworms (washed), nannochloropsis, brine shrimp nauplii, copepods. B-complex and vitamin C. (the nanno, BS & pods all grown here at home). Then I put the whole smelly lot in the blender and punched "Liquify." The truth was, I had absolutely no idea what the corals wanted to eat so I figured if I put everything in, there would be something for everyone. It seemed to work so I stuck with it.

Well, darn it Eric, I had an article all outlined in my head about the watchers VS the piddlers and how the idea of re-potting should be expounded on. Rats ... back to the drawing board. LOL

EricHugo

11/08/2005, 08:57 PM

It probably still has merit, and I sure would like to see some articles coming from your head and pen (or keyboard as the case might be).

EricHugo

11/08/2005, 08:59 PM

Oh, and as for Dick, I would ask some of the guys up in that area. Dick seems to have largely given the business to his son, and I have heard confirmation that this is true..so he is sort of semi-rretired I guess and spending time with his million and one other hobbies, I imagine. I should drop him a line and see cause I miss hearing and seeing him. I'll be in the area next spring for a lecture and will try and stop in and see him. I hate losing masters like that.

CDGreenEyes

11/15/2005, 08:38 PM

Since I previously mentioned the educational value of watching a tank mature, I thought I'd give you an update on Ally's 12 gallon reef.

Ally is very excited tonight because her 6 Stomatella snails are now around 600! The glass, live rock and every other surface in the tank has 4 or 5 babies per square inch. She thinks its very cool and she has already noticed that no algae cell is safe.

barryhc

11/30/2005, 01:52 PM

I have read through much of this thread, and the information offered here is quite excellent. I have learned about the benefits of allowing the "fauna" to develop over a period of time like 6 mos. to a year, and balancing "predatory" inputs carefully.

However, I have already made the "mistake" of "firing it up" in a hurry, as is typical of us newbies, before I got into "reef surfing" research. I have done a tremedous amount of "research" on every aspect of reef keeping, and I expect that will go on forever.

I am trying to keep enough of the bethnic critters and substrate fauna, to at least keep the substrate properly functional "for itself".

I have a 16 gal. tub for a "refugium", with a small amount of barely alive rock from the display tank, and an inch of misc. aragonite, but no significant macroalgae in it yet. It has spawned some stomatella and amphipods on it's own, not a lot, but it is happy and at least offering "dilution" to the 27 gal. hex display. The intent is for the "refugium" to supply food for the main tank primarily, and any nutrient processing it produces is welcome. I have snails and hermits in both the main tank and "fuge", no other predators in the fuge.

I'm giving this info. to set-up for several questions that I have. So a little more:

I am running about 25X flow in the main tank, and all of this thru the fuge as well. It is well dipersed in both ( no laminar flow problems ).

I have an unusual layering in the main display substrate, intended to avoid any "sand storm" problems, which it does, hopefully not to the detriment otherwise to the "sandbed".

The substrate is all aragonite, with 1 1/2" of 1-2mm at the surface, and 3" of oolitic sand under that.

I have a little bit of everything in the display tank, as this is an experiment in preperation for a much larger tank, that and typical newbie excitement with everything, before having learned enough to know better.

Anyway, I have Xenia ( prolific ), Montipora, Acropora, mushrooms, open brain coral, 2 clowns, 2 damsels, 1 bangaii cardinal. The tank has been up for 10 mos. I am just barely getting away with 96 watt pc lighting, and a seaclone skimmer ( not too happy with the seaclone ).

And so now I have a question. I basicaly want to reestablish the "fauna" in the substrate, but I have my cart in front of my horse. I started with Inland Aquatics "kit", and I still have some thick and thin legged microstars in the tank, although mostly in and on the liverock, not the substrate. A few pods, a very few pods, in the display tank, more in the fuge, and worm tracks in the oolitic sand, and everything is working fine so far. I even have several tiny featherdusters, that grew up out of the substrate.

The interesting part here is that I also have a peppermint shrimp, two quite large brittle stars, and a goodly number of blue legged hermits, a couple of scarlet hermits and lots of snails. Just recently, also, a good sized black cucumber who does not burrow, but very slowly "vacuums" the surface of the substrate.

The surface of the substrate and live rock is always clean, no algae, no detritus, no anything!

I have found very little during my "searching" in the way of predation on substrate fauna, and so now the questions.

Firstly, and this is primarily for Eric, but anyone chime in of course, am I shooting myself in the foot with this coarser 1-2mm gravel at the surface?

Secondly, can I reseed the substrate for the purposes of keeping the substrate functional, or am I in trouble because of predaton from the shrimp, stars, and cucumber, as well as any of the fish? I never see any of the fish within an inch of the substrate while the lights are on ( I am viewing ).

I would love to have a goby-shrimp symbiosis, or mandarin in the near future, and I need to keep the substrate healthy and supply food for the new animal. I will also eventually move the sps out and stick to soft and lps in this tank.

Should I seed both the display and fuge, or only the fuge?

Any suggestion as to the specific fauna I should seed with. Hopefully I can make up somewhat for my original error.

Sorry this got so long, hopefully I didn't leave anyone guessing about my conditions.

Thanks to anyone who made it through this terribly long post. and everyone else who posts here regardless. This is one of the best threads I have stumbled upon. > barryhc :)

EricHugo

11/30/2005, 10:58 PM

The sand grain size at the top is fine. What is happening, IMO, is that you have too much predation and not enough food to sustain the populations of the small critters you want. Hermits, also, IMO, are bad additions to mot reef tanks and especially in refugia. I don't think you need to reseed - I think the "seed" is there, but it is being eaten too quickly, or there is not enough food for them in the substrate to reproduce fast enough.

nov8tve

12/13/2005, 11:07 AM

Eric,

Do you have any pictures of your tanks that you could share? I would love to see a few whole tank shots!

Thanks,
Paul

BTW....Great thread....very informative!

EricHugo

12/13/2005, 02:53 PM

There are some in my gallery

galleon

12/22/2005, 09:05 AM

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=5173320#post5173320 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EricHugo
. I dare anyone to say my tank doesn't rock

Eric, your tank doesn't rock.

;)

EricHugo

12/24/2005, 10:02 PM

LOL...ok.

Reefski's

12/24/2005, 10:29 PM

Eric:

how long has the tank in your gallery been up and running? why aren't your corals bigger with all the feeding? what's up with the white coral in there? is it a skeleton?

Could you describe what else is on this system? refugium, lighting, etc?

Carl

jrodscout

12/25/2005, 12:08 AM

Great thread

EricHugo

12/25/2005, 06:49 PM

Carlos - what white skeleton? There is no dead skeleton in any tank photos. One of the Acropora I recently took outof my tank to fragment weighed over ten pounds and several of them are 16 inches across with 12" branches...I have a photo of my wife holding it from her waist to her chin.

My main tank is lit with a 1000W Sunmaster bulb, 3 Tunzes, a surge tank and a DSB. It is 4 x 4 x 2.5. The other tank is 4 x 2 x 2 lit with 2 400 watt bulbs - curently 10K but has always been 6500K and I will return to those when these burn out. There are two Tunze's plus the overflow from the main tank. I have a 40 gallon refugium, a 40 gallon surge, and a 65 gallon sump with a Dolphin running the skimmer and flow to refugium and a Sequence running a carbon fileter and the surge tank.

My tanks were almost completely wiped out while I was in Australia in 2000, though I was able to save bits and pieces of many of them. My oldest coral is twelve years old. Most of the Acropora are from 2-5 years old. Mind you, I also have 700 gallons of fragments all taken from just the corals in those tanks - several thousand at this point. That's all since May of this year.

Reefski's

12/25/2005, 08:29 PM

thank you. i am rereading your book for the third time. learn something new each time. i still have a long road to go.

the picture of your tank with a white "skeleton" about lower 1/3 and 1/3 from left, what is it?

can you post some pictures of the mature tank with the huge corals.

is part of the maturity of a tank all the secondary critters, sponges, foraminifera, DSB critters? also the ability to feed your corals and process the waste?

Carl

tankgirl2

12/26/2005, 09:20 AM

I have to admit I have real reservations about the feeding article. It's not that you aren't right, Eric - but what I think will happen is that most reefkeepers will come away from that article with the idea they should feed their corals, but will not 'get' that they're going to have to do massively more frequent water changes to compensate for additional nutrients.

In truth, I thought that article should have been titled "If you want to do 10x more water changes, feed your corals and they'll be happier for it".

I think that it's necessary to give equal weight to the downside (much more maintainance). But, you only mentioned the downside one time and indirectly, at that. As if the need for additional water changes were not the direct result of the additional nutrients. So, while you can tell yourself you did explain the consequences, I don't think you did, adequately.

It also bothered me that you chose untypical stoney corals that happen to be fairly happy in a lagoonal (nutrient-rich) biome, rather than typical reef-crest acros most of us want to keep, for your example in the article.

I realize that the vast majority of reef-keepers have relatively small tanks with a few pieces of decorative live rock - and that those tanks probably don't adequately provide a diverse microfauna or cryptic zone.

I think you've understressed the contribution bacteria makes towards providing coral with the tiny amount of additional food they require, beyond what the zoox provide.

Would welcome your comments, Thanks

Thelonius

01/06/2006, 02:30 AM

At the stage of the cycle that you start adding herbivores, would an algea grazing fish not compliment other herbivores, while not stopping the tank maturation?

I wanted to cycle my tank for at least 8 months and wanted to add a small cleanup crew and a lawnmower somewhere in the middle. With already cured rock, the initial cycle should be quite short.. would it hurt me in the long run if I added the fish?

DaveG99

03/13/2006, 08:18 PM

Wow, this thread took a while to read. I am probably going to get flamed from what I am about to say. I have had fresh water tanks for many years with great success. I have had friends that have salt water tanks and I finally started mine up at the begining of January of 06. I started with a 50 gallon (4'x13"x19"). I was using the stock lighting hoods with 2 15watt bulbs. I also had an aqua clear 500 on there for filtration. I went to the intercoastal here in florida and got a 5 gallon bucket of sand. I put the sand in and added about 20 gallons of water from my friends 2 year old 90 gallon tank. I also gathered some live rocks from the shallow waters in the intercoastal. I had some crabs, a blenny and a sucker type fish that all hitchhiked on the rock. After two days my tank went nuts. The water got cloudy and it started to stink. I had some sponges dying and the rock I gathered had lots of barnacles on it. I shouldnt have thrown everything in there so quickly but I am very impatient. So I took all the rocks out and put them in my back yard. I did a 50% water change and amazingly the blenny, the sucker, and the crabs lived. So I let the tank run a few days and the water actually started to clean itself up. So after about 2 weeks after starting the tank I built a 10gal refugium with three chambers. The first has the new skimmer I bought and the second is a 5" layer of live sand and the third is the return with a mag 3 pump. After about another week (3 weeks after starting the tank) I bought 2 clown fish and some live rock and I put the sucker fish and the blenny back in the ocean. Then I ordered a 260watt PC light setup and added the 15 watt PC on the refugium. Everything is going great and then at the 4 week point I buy a coral beauty and some more live rock. Everything is still great. I do about another 50% water change at the 4 weeks point because I have to move the tank to a new stand I built. So at about 6 weeks I buy some live rock covered in coraline algea and a yellow tang. So I let things sit for about another week or two and then I make a trip down to the keys. Its only about 4 hours from here. So I get some rock with macro algea on it and some brittle stars and decorator crabs and some emerald crabs and I also buy a skunk shrimp. I just did a 20% water change at the 8 week point 2 weeks ago and I also got a auriga butterfly. Everything is doing great. Then a week later I got a sand shifting goby. I have done water tests. I did get some brown algea bloom in the refugium but everything is still doing fine. The skimmer is doing a great job and all the fish are happy and healthy. I feed them mysis shrimp and flakes twice a day. I bet you people must think I am nuts doing this so fast. I always joke around with my buddy who has had a tank for years and he calls my tank the "fast tank". I guess the key to my success is the water changes and only buying live rock from local places instead of getting live rock that needs to be cured. I might have not done this the "conventional" way or the "right" way but so far its working. Its been about 9-10 weeks and everything is just fine. Nothing has died and hopefully nothing will. I am going to let the tank sit for about a month or so. I will post back on here and update my progress.