Thales":34qx4fdt said:
If we are going to play the 'expert' game (that is of course ignoring the pedegrees of some of those posting in this thread) Anthony says the exact opposite of Eric in the BOCP pages 161 and 162. But I hate the 'expert' game especially when the 'experts' bash each other like Shimek did to Delbeek in the 'article' linked earlier.
I care not for and pay no attention to such things and only take what to me is good information. And within that temp article, there is very good information, not simply because he says so, but also provides the links to the data if one wishes to confirm it.
I am also a little confused, you talk about temp ranges as being optimal, but you are only taking into consideration the mean, not the actual ranges. If your point is natural is better, I am unsure why you aren't advocating letting your tank drop to 75 for a few months a year.
I am taking actual ranges into account. And yet again, we seem to be stuck on the Cebu area, while I take such readings as this is where I live, I am also taking into account that the average, year round temperature for ALL the reefs in the world combined is 82. And since I still think its highly likely that the majority of the corals collected from reefs (given CITES export/import data) come from Indonesia and surrounding nearby other countries (be it legal or not) that its a good bet most of the corals in anyone's tank was exported from Indonesia with the exception of Australian and Tongan corals.
I do not drop my tank into the 70's simply because this region's reefs do not see such temps. During the dry season, my tank and the region's reefs see a daily average of 84 and a wet season's average of 82. I am NOT saying that to go below that temp is going to kill your corals, I simply stated that for a home aquarium, a temp swing is perfectly natural and of benefit, how ever slight that benefit may be. I also stated that a temp swing range of 80-84 is also perfectly natural and not one to fear as most of the world's corals are found living in that range and that its highly likely that most captive corals came from that temp range. So while a slightly lower temp range is fine, so is a slightly higher one.
Temp swings, regardless of its acceptable ranges in of themselves are of benefit to the corals. Its gives them a resilience in order to BETTER withinstand changes, and as you said, an aquarium is subject to rapid changes or things going wrong quickly compared to a reef. It is exactly for that reason alone I would want to allow an acceptable and known temp swing to occur, so when that heater or chiller gives out, a few degrees increase for a few hours is not going to be much of a stress at all. And given others statements about the monsters (bacteria/protozoa) lurking in our aquariums, why not have corals that are more resilient to stress events which would weaken less resilient corals making them more susceptable to the monsters?
It seems you are basing the entire south pacific on what happens in Cebu, which makes little sense since we don't get any legal corals from that area, but more importantly, different areas have different temps.
Please see the above...lol
No one seems to be saying that biological reactions are different on wild reefs or in an aquarium, rather that the conditions in an aquarium and a wild reef are different. In other words, the corals act differently because the conditions are different, and I think you are discount how different captive conditions are from wild conditions.
True, but my entire point of it all is that by allowing swings and a more natural average temp based on locality we are better recreating wild conditions.
I think you are wrong about diversity on reefs that have lower temps for at least part of the year. PNG and Tonga have huge diversity and lower temps at certian times during the year that Cebu.
Granted, the indo-pacific region has a huge diversity, but... the farther you get away from the center (Indonesia and the Philippines) the less species are found. (581 Indonesia / 512 Philippines / 427 Australia / 75 India / 65 Hawaii / 55 Caribbean as a stepped up example) The Philippine number is most likely going to change to include a great many more new discoveries such as the 75 or so new ones found recently around a single island.
IMhO, stability is desirable because of the captive environment. So many things can go wrong so quickly and can snowball into really bad things so quickly, that it seems to make some kind of sense to keep things as controlled as possible to avoid 'crashes'.
Keeping everything as stable as possible to me just does not make sense in that manner, variations as experienced in nature allows the animals to better cope with variations and could help to lesson the affects of a "crash". While at the same time giving the animals (corals) one of their needed cues to breed.
The contention that stable and stagnant are the same seems like hyperbole to me - even with chillers and heaters, there are temp swings, and from the very beginning in this thread people have been talking about temp swings.
Works for me. but again, going into the 80's which seems to have freaked a few people out is perfectly acceptable. Going down into the 70's to me though doesn't make good biological sense in terms of the animals metabolism and other bodily functions while at the same time not being what I see of actual coral reefs located where there are the most species, and if there are the most species, that to me is a big glaring hint that the conditions of the area are most preferred and of higher benefit. Is lower temps than those ranges going to kill your corals, obviously not, but higher ones are not going to do so either and is most likely providing better or more "natural" conditions. AS LONG AS THE CORALS HAVE HAD THE TIME TO ADAPT TO IT. I had to shout that one as I don't want anyone to go and crank up the temp in their tank thinking its a good thing to do right away.
I think the point you say you are trying to make, that 'reasonable fluctuations are nothing to fear' is one that people don't have much of an issue with. What people do seem to have issue with, is dogmatic generalized statements that don't seem to have evidence to back them up, the ignoring of specific questions regarding your statements, and that you are basing conditions for all captive coral on Cebu, when in reality, most people have coral from many different places in their tanks.
No, I am as I said, basing conditions for all captive corals on the year round average for ALL of the world's reefs, which is a good number to shoot for if one does have corals from many different places. And for indo-pacific coral tanks, Indonesia and the Philippines are good base lines to shoot for. If you have
red sea corals, or caribbean corals, you would of course want to either seriously raise the temps or lower the temps comared to the indo-pacific region.
Thanks for not going away from this thread.
You're welcome, but this seems to have gotten a bit out of hand, off subject and I can't see me being able to add anything more to it or being able to change my mind on what I know of and see on a daily basis. Ya all have a great week.
Chuck
