SPS Coral In Our Reef Aquariums
- Thread starter pauliwalnuts
- Start date
- Location
- Elizabeth, NJ
No problem buddy.
- Location
- Elizabeth, NJ
As a safety precaution Silverni2. If the float switch gets jammed and dumps whatever amount of mix you have made-up from your holding container into your system, can cause what they call a "snow storm" and possibly Rtn'ing most of your coral.
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- Location
- Elizabeth, NJ
Definitely not off topic. I've never tried using these methods for controlling PO4, but there's some users on here that do. Hopefully they can shine in on the matter.
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- Location
- Laurelton, NY
Never tried pellets , but I think there is a mixed feeling about them. Some folks have had great results using them and some had bad experiences... like most things in this hobby. Bottom line, is that you are referring to carbon dosing, which can be done via several methods now. All in all, be it, pellets, Zeo, vodka or vinegar, it is proven that the method works for achieving a very low nutrient systems a lot easier than with out it. Of course this is good for SPS as long as you don't over do it and strip too much from your system. However, most would say that it is unnecessary and maybe even dtrimental to a softie/LPS only environment. You can feed more when carbon dosing because of the boost in the bacterial population that will occur. You will also have better light penetration as a result of clearer water and far less algae problems. NITRATE is usually the first to go when carbon dosing followed by phosphate, which is much more stuborn. The choice for you really comes down to how much you want to pay. Pellets can be pricey and Zeo even more so due to all of the additives that you have to buy to go along with that system. Prodibio is another that can get pretty pricey over time. All the methods that I just mentioned with exception of the pellets have to be dosed manually and in some cases daily, which requires the time and a lot of patience to do so. Pellets go in a fluidized chamber like a phosban reactor and vodka and /or vinnegar, the cheapest of all the options can be dosed with a dosing pump. Hope this info helps a bit.
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I'm a little denser then most, and not at all a shame to admit it.:tongue: I find alot of this to be a bit confusing, and more to the point is the fact that I don't want to end up loosing animals. Biggest problem I have with my tank is this brownish coloration on the sand bed in some spots. Was much worse before I stepped up my gaming of 2 w/c weekly. Red cyano is gone so I'm dropping it back down to weekly w/c.
So what about those of us that keep a mixed reef, a little sps, a little lps, leathers, softies, clam, and of course lots of fish?
Last I checked my P04 w/Hanna Checker they were at .23. All are corals are doing well now that I got back in to w/c, and running both gfo & carbon in 2 TLF reactors. I thought of trying the vinegar dosing since it is quite cheap being that it is sitting in my kitchen cabinet, and hubby won't have a fit about my using his Vodka.LOL
- Location
- Brooklyn, NY
Awi .23 PO4 is VERY high. I'd check that gain.
Hi Randy, thanks for your concerns my friend. I do value your opinion as you know.
I know they are a little on the high side. Should've seen what it was months after changing to RO/DI, and running GFO once the gang switched out my non rr to the existing one.LOL You probably would've came out to the Rock, and gave me a beating.:lol_large
My tanks ran for years on tap water, and no gfo. I remember Kat testing with her Hanna, and they were upwards of 1.5 :bigeyes2:
That P04 of .23 is high, and I am trying to bring them down. I had been doing 2 w/c per week, and running BRS GFO in 1 of my TLF reactors. Hate to even think of what they were. I allowed the tank to go without maintenance for about 7 months while doing work around the house & yard. Who knows the lr may still be leaching P04 from over 10 yrs. of tap water.:bigeyes2:
At least the corals, clam, and fish are all doing OK. Some are even growing.
- Location
- Laurelton, NY
I'm a little denser then most, and not at all a shame to admit it.:tongue: I find alot of this to be a bit confusing, and more to the point is the fact that I don't want to end up loosing animals. Biggest problem I have with my tank is this brownish coloration on the sand bed in some spots. Was much worse before I stepped up my gaming of 2 w/c weekly. Red cyano is gone so I'm dropping it back down to weekly w/c.
So what about those of us that keep a mixed reef, a little sps, a little lps, leathers, softies, clam, and of course lots of fish?
Last I checked my P04 w/Hanna Checker they were at .23. All are corals are doing well now that I got back in to w/c, and running both gfo & carbon in 2 TLF reactors. I thought of trying the vinegar dosing since it is quite cheap being that it is sitting in my kitchen cabinet, and hubby won't have a fit about my using his Vodka.LOL
Listen, I still give blank stares when I'm learning new things/methods in this hobby at times.. LOL... Carbon dosing can work with any system especially one with a heavy fish load because it allows you to feed more with no buildup of PO4 or NO3 once you get to your maintenance dose. The thing with softies an LPS is that they like the water a little dirty. So, they will be OK in low nutrient system, but it is my opinion that they will not flourish the same as in a tank that is not carbon dosed. In those tanks it's probably a good idea to feed them some phyto and other foods like oyster feast and rotifers to make up for the low nutrients. Again, that's just my .02
vinegar is a great carbon source.. but remember, Vodka is 8 times more potent as a carbon source then vinegar. So, if you try vinegar, follow the vodka dosing program and just times the amount by 8 and that will give you how much vinnegar you should be using..
Thanks for the reply JBanks! I appreciate it very much. I will look into what the vodka dosing amounts are, and incorporate the vinegar dosing. I already feed oyster feast, roti feast, phyto feast at least twice a week so no change there, and no worries on with my softies & lps.
- Location
- Laurelton, NY
You're welcome.. Good luck and let us know how it goes for you
- Location
- Garden city
I'm having pretty good success using prodibo and dosing vinegar !!! I'm gonna stick with that for now !! Really love prodibo system it's easy and effective but can get expensive I have a 75 gal so it's not too bad but proably would be too costly for guys with larger systems !
- Location
- Elizabeth, NJ
My current PO4 level is 0.03 (tested with Hanna low range meter). I know this may sound crazy for some of you guys & girls, but I haven't used GFO media in my fluidized reactor for almost five months. From my experience quality equipment, good husbandry, and proper maintenance are the key factors to lower nutrient levels in our reef tanks. Here is a list of the things, and equipment used to keep my levels down.
- Good protein skimming. This is something you don't want to be cheap about. Your protein skimmer is like the backbone of your reef.
- Mechanical filtration. Using, and replacing filter socks before they start to spill over. Also, using a powerful pump that can give you at least a 10x turn over time to help remove waste from the DP. Remember, the faster water goes from your display to your filter socks, the faster these wastes can be removed from the water column.
- Refugium with a 24hr light cycle on it. Why ?Because I want my macro algae to work around the clock (lol). Chaetomorpha is my macro algae of choice. And instead of a deep sand bed, I use a 2" Miracle Mud bed. To feed the coral and keep the Chaeto clean, I'll skrunch it 2-3 times a week. I Also flip-it once a week so it can get more light on that side.
- Being more careful with your feeding hand. This is my weakest point. Fish always seem hungry and I have to sustain myself at times.
- RODI water, and proper maintenance of the RODI unit. Replace sediment and carbon cartridges when sediment starts to look a brownish color. Dual TDS meter are a must have when using 5 stage units. By having the TDS meters installed in between the different stages lets me know when it's time to replace any of the stages on my unit. Keeping the water pressure at around 60-70psi (this is from my experience with Spectrapure units) will help prolong the life of all the stages on the unit.
- Storming of the display tank. Not only doest it feed my animals, but it will get detritus from DP and into the filter socks. I try to do this at least twice a week.
- No sand bed (or nutrient pit as I like to call it).
- Kalkwasser. It binds PO4 so it can be easily skimmed out.
- The use of pharmaceutical grade salt and additives.
- When needed, and my last resolution, BRS high capacity GFO. Half of the recommended dose is what I do every time the levels need to come down. And it's only applied to the system when levels go beyond 0.04.
- Good protein skimming. This is something you don't want to be cheap about. Your protein skimmer is like the backbone of your reef.
- Mechanical filtration. Using, and replacing filter socks before they start to spill over. Also, using a powerful pump that can give you at least a 10x turn over time to help remove waste from the DP. Remember, the faster water goes from your display to your filter socks, the faster these wastes can be removed from the water column.
- Refugium with a 24hr light cycle on it. Why ?Because I want my macro algae to work around the clock (lol). Chaetomorpha is my macro algae of choice. And instead of a deep sand bed, I use a 2" Miracle Mud bed. To feed the coral and keep the Chaeto clean, I'll skrunch it 2-3 times a week. I Also flip-it once a week so it can get more light on that side.
- Being more careful with your feeding hand. This is my weakest point. Fish always seem hungry and I have to sustain myself at times.
- RODI water, and proper maintenance of the RODI unit. Replace sediment and carbon cartridges when sediment starts to look a brownish color. Dual TDS meter are a must have when using 5 stage units. By having the TDS meters installed in between the different stages lets me know when it's time to replace any of the stages on my unit. Keeping the water pressure at around 60-70psi (this is from my experience with Spectrapure units) will help prolong the life of all the stages on the unit.
- Storming of the display tank. Not only doest it feed my animals, but it will get detritus from DP and into the filter socks. I try to do this at least twice a week.
- No sand bed (or nutrient pit as I like to call it).
- Kalkwasser. It binds PO4 so it can be easily skimmed out.
- The use of pharmaceutical grade salt and additives.
- When needed, and my last resolution, BRS high capacity GFO. Half of the recommended dose is what I do every time the levels need to come down. And it's only applied to the system when levels go beyond 0.04.
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- Location
- Elizabeth, NJ
Next parameter, temperature. At least most of us can agree on the importance of its stability. On a natural reef there's a 2-6 degree fluctuation on a daily basis (in normal circumstances).
Where do some of you guys keep your temp at, and how do you achieve it ?
Here's a link to a good read on temp provided before by PrattReef. http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/100587-great-temperature-debate-part-iv.html
Where do some of you guys keep your temp at, and how do you achieve it ?
Here's a link to a good read on temp provided before by PrattReef. http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/100587-great-temperature-debate-part-iv.html
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Chris Jury
Experienced Reefer
- Location
- Kaneohe, HI
(bold added)
But, to be fair, my article which you cite and which Randy referenced previously goes into a fair bit of detail showing that temperature stability (within a tolerable range, that is) doesn't appear to be very important to corals or other reef animals and in many cases it can be undesirable to have very stable temperatures in a reef tank. Take a look at the section of the article entitled "The utility of stability".
cj
- Location
- Elizabeth, NJ
Very nice Chris. Hope you don't mind me posting it.
The Utility of Stability
A raise of hands for everyone that has heard that ?SPS? (an acronym meaning small-polyped stony corals) really should stand for ?stability promotes success?. I know I?ve heard it a lot. While I?ve written about the fallacy of basing coral husbandry decisions on polyp size (i.e., ?SPS? vs. ?LPS?) previously, suffice to say that temperature tolerances display no relationship whatsoever with polyp size. Some corals are tough as nails, and others will bleach and die if you look at them funny, but polyp size won?t tell you a thing either way. Nonetheless, the goal of stability in a reef tank is usually promoted not only for temperature, but for essentially every parameter we can measure. In fact, I have frequently come across the suggestion that the absolute temperature stability is much more important than the absolute temperature in the tank. Along these lines, it?s relatively common to run into aquarists that strive to keep their tank temperature stable to with 1 ?F. For example, an aquarist might have the heater set to come on at 77 ?F and the chiller to come on at 78 ?F. Such stability is often not easy to achieve, usually requires the use of a chiller in combination with a heater, and can be rather expensive as a result.
Despite the prevalence of this belief, it simply cannot be the case that stability is always more important than the absolute temperature. A stable temperature of either 60 ?F or 95 ?F will kill many reef organisms within a few days, or less. Granted, these are temperatures well outside the range of what most hobbyists would accept in their own tanks (otherwise they wouldn?t be hobbyists for very long) but the point remains that stability at a suboptimal temperature will yield poor results. For instance, many corals and other reef organisms can survive and grow long term at temperatures of 74 ?F and 84 ?F. However, many also grow more slowly at these temperatures than they do at intermediate temperatures. Temperature stability (as well as stability of any other parameters) is only potentially desirable if the absolute temperature is within a desirable range. From the criteria I developed last time, I believe that the most appropriate temperature for most reef tanks, most of the time lies within the range 77-82 ?F. A stable temperature is only potentially desirable if it is near this range, whereas a stable temperature well outside of this range is likely to result in lower growth rates, health problems and eventually death depending on how far outside this range the temperature reaches, the length of time spent at that temperature, and the sensitivities of the organisms in question. The question becomes, does temperature variation within our target range (or thereabouts) negatively affect corals and other organisms enough to justify the effort and expense that is usually required to keep the temperature very stable?
The degree of daily temperature fluctuation on a reef varies considerably from place to place. On an intermediate depth forereef exposed to oceanic swell and adjacent to deep water, the daily temperature variation is quite small?typically < 1 ?F. At the other extreme are tidally influenced pools, backreefs, and lagoons like those on Ofu Island in American Samoa. Here the daily temperature variation is often 8-10 ?F, and can be as high as 12 ?F (e.g., 80-92 ?F) with these swings in temperature sometimes realized in just a few minutes, as the tide comes in. These are the extremes though. On the average reef we typically see daily temperature variation of around 2-6 ?F. Coral reef animals of all sorts tolerate these conditions, granting that tolerance is one thing and the ideal may be another. The question of how daily temperature fluctuation affects corals is an interesting one, and one that has sparked a number of studies.
Photo Credit: Marcin Smok
One of the earliest such studies was performed by Stephen Coles here in Hawaii. In the early 1970?s the thermal outflow from a power plant on the western coast of Oahu was dumping seawater 10-12 ?F higher than ambient onto the adjacent reef (the outflow has since been moved further offshore). During the summer months this translated into a sustained temperature in the low to mid-90?s F directly adjacent to the outflow, which killed all the corals in the area. As distance from the outflow increased, the corals transitioned from dead, to bleached, to pale, and finally to normal in appearance. Within the zone of healthy-looking corals waves entrained the high temperature water from the power plant, exposing the corals to temperatures in the mid-80?s F at low tide, and then back down to the upper-70?s to low-80?s F (ambient temperatures) at high tide. The temperature frequently fluctuated 4-6 ?F within minutes, and many times per day, though the corals were not exposed to elevated temperature for more than a few hours per day. Compared to corals growing nearby in normal temperatures (< 2 ?F daily temperature fluctuation), the increased temperature fluctuation had no discernable effect on the health or growth of the corals. If this degree of temperature fluctuation negatively affected the corals, the effect was subtle and certainly not easy to detect.
Returning to the backreef corals off Ofu Island, with the extremely high daily temperature fluctuation, Dan Barshis, Lance Smith, and colleagues working from here in Hawaii have shown with various lines of evidence that the corals on the extreme backreef are clearly better adapted to tolerate a high-temperature, extreme environment than are corals growing on the more typical forereef. The temperatures on the backreef are not only variable, but are often quite high (90-94 ?F) for periods of up to several hours. These are stressful temperatures for most reef organisms, and can cause mortality in more sensitive organisms if sustained for as little as a day. Here I use the terms ?adapted? and ?adaptation? in their scientific context, which is more specific than the way they are often used in everyday language. An individual organism is well-adapted or poorly-adapted to a particular environment depending on that individual?s genes. Technically speaking it?s not the genes that differ, since all individuals of a species have essentially the same genes, but rather the alleles. Alleles are different versions of a particular gene, such the A, B, and O alleles that make up human blood types. In these backreef pools a coral that has the right combination of alleles which, for whatever reasons, allow it to tolerate high and variable temperatures has an advantage over corals with a less tolerant combination of alleles, and allowing the well-adapted individual to outcompete the poorly-adapted individual. An individual?s genotype never changes. As a result, individuals cannot possibly ?adapt??they are well-adapted or poorly adapted for a particular environment, and that?s what they are stuck with. However, because some individuals are more successful than others in particular environments, those individuals go on to reproduce at a higher rate, putting more of their successful alleles in the next generation, and shifting the entire population toward more well-adapted individuals. In other words, the population evolves in response to environmental pressure. In this context, adaptation and evolution are two terms for exactly the same process and it occurs at the level of the population due to differential success among individuals. This is an important point to understand, especially when we think about what to expect from corals and other organisms in our tanks. A population evolves (= adapts) over time; an individual coral, fish, etc. is stuck with the genotype that it was born with, and whatever limits or tolerances that implies. The backreef corals of Ofu Island have adapted to tolerate environmental extremes and higher temperature than have the vast majority of corals. The particular individuals in this population comprise tough genotypes?tougher than most genotypes growing on most reefs. If we were to keep a temperature regime like this in our reef tanks it would make many of the animals very unhappy, and some of them very dead. Don?t do this at home.
There are additional examples of coral responses to temperature fluctuation in the scientific literature, but these two embody the larger points I wish to make. Truly extreme daily temperature variation of 10-12 ?F likely will negatively affect many reef organisms, not because temperature variation is inherently harmful to them, but because a range this large implies that the organisms are spending significant amounts of time at stressfully high or low temperatures. Modest daily temperature variation of 2-4 ?F, and perhaps as much as 6 ?F, seems to have little if any discernable negative impact on corals (or likely on other reef organisms), as long as the temperature doesn?t go too far outside a tolerable range. Hence, going to the extra effort and extra expense that is usually required to keep the temperature extremely stable in a reef tank is probably unnecessary in most cases, and likely provides little reward for the effort and expense. For example, the corals and other animals in a reef tank that swings daily from 78 ?F to 82 ?F and back again are likely to be just as healthy and grow at a rate indistinguishable from those in a tank kept at a constant temperature within this range. Based on experience in my own tanks, and talking with other hobbyists, I would recommend that it is best to limit daily temperature fluctuation to a maximum of about 4-5 ?F under normal circumstances, since more fluctuation than this may begin to push some animals into suboptimal temperatures. If one is able to maintain the temperature in a reef tank consistently within the 77-82 ?F range I have recommended, I would call it good enough.
- Location
- Bay ridge, Brooklyn
Temperature in my tank fluctuate between 78.5-80 during the day with highs in the 82F range in hot summer days. I completely agree with what Chris wrote in his article, slight temperature fluctuation don't have a negative impact on the overall inverts health and replicate temp swings in the wild which make corals more hardy IMO.
Chris Jury
Experienced Reefer
- Location
- Kaneohe, HI
Not a bit. I just hope for it to be helpful to people, and hence the more people that see it the more it can potentially be useful for
cj
- Location
- New Jersey , 07057
very informative thread!
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