Reefkeeping made easy- what was not explained.

i am not sure how i managed to maintain using most of those spellings. of course it did not help much living in Ireland for 7 months.

it depends on the reef. this is why it is important to define what type of corals you are trying to keep. the reef top biotope is extremely nutrient free. those lagoonal areas are nutrient rich. this is why it does not work well to mix and match the coral types in one system. the fuzzy sticks (SPS/tridacna clams) are looking for nutrient poor water to live in because this is where they have adapted. while softies and some LPS are looking for more nutrients. they have adapted to compete for space in each of these environments.

the zoax in the corals come and go. it is not once they are there they stay there. the corals can kick them out. hence coral bleaching. So, bonus question. why does the higher water temperature cause bleaching? hint: what happens the more active you are?

G~

Arwen is spot on. i will need to double check the thread that Vince posted earlier to see if that thread talked about some of the mechanisms involved in who has control of whom in the coral tissue. .

as the temp rises the metabolism increases and the Zoax can start poisoning the corals with O2. so what does this realate to what is going on in our systems? you hear about everyone trying to boost their temps, increase lighting, increase this, increase that to increase growth. how much do you think these corals can take? then you add the fact that we are running nutrient high systems compared to what is in the wild, it is no wonder people have bleaching/unhealthy corals.

which brings us back to how this all got started. how much light do you think is really needed in our systems if there are corals that live near the bottom of the Eutrophic zone? how do we know if our corals are getting enough/too much light?

G~

Example of low light.....

18w of T-8 50/50 liteing over a 29g.....

People told me the tank crashed from lack of lighting.... I beg to differ!
Images taken after 9 months of corals and anemone being in tank!



Right before tank crash..... See any Hard Coral Left?
(3 months later, total tank time 1 year 2 months)
this image was taken 2 weeks after adding a fuge!


Excess Nutrients is what I believe to be the cause!

bleaching can be caused by a lot of factors. it is really hard to tell which is the cause for bleaching if you do not know what the coral looked like before it bleached. as we know to much light and lots of nutrients can cause bleaching from the coral kicking out the zoax because of O2 poisoning.

hey EC- do the blocking proteins have a threshold limit? i am just wondering if the lighting is so low and the nutrients are so high that the sun is just not triggering the coral to produce the UV blocking proteins to block the zoax from overproducing O2 and getting evicted. this is the only thing that makes sense on why corals can also bleach when they are in low light, when we know that they can grow in some really low light areas in nature. thoughts?

in general if the coral is turning brown/green instead of the bright colours it had when you bought it, the phosphates are high in the system. if you remove the phosphates the colours will return. if you have great colour, then there is a chance you can go down in wattage and save yourself some money on the electricity bill. i know i was able to go from the 400w mh to 250w mh when i went to a low nutrient system and the colours were even better. the nutrients were just to high and the 400w were just barely keeping the corals semi-coloured up.

G~

what you are suggesting is referred to as an Algae Turf Scrubber (ATS). they were thought up in the late 70's i believe and hung around for a little in the 80's before they were determined to be not effective at all. they were however extremely good at making your water yellow.

the problem is that they are like the other phosphates binders. they are only good after you have a phosphate problem. if your phosphates are under control then there will not be any in the water column so your ATS would be empty. the algae will not be able to grow on it no matter how much light you put above it because the algae will not have any phosphates to use as energy. there will not be any in the water column.

algae do bind phosphates, but they are also leaky. they are like any other organism they have biological functions. they have wastes they need to get rid of also.

it is just better to remove all of the phosphates every week during water changes. if this is done then there will not be any phosphates available for either algae or any money sucking contraption you may feel like buying. more money for corals, and more time to enjoy them.

i can not remember if i went through this in this thread or not, but when i say water changes, i do not mean just changing the water. the point of water changes is to remove wastes. as you can guess from the discussions in this thread that there are very little wastes in the water column itself, so just changing the water does little, but replace trace elements, which of course are called trace for a reason, but that is another topic for later. when doing water changes you need to go after the biggest sources of waste, that is the detritus you see on top of the substrate. this needs to be siphoned up every week. it has to be siphoned up even if it is under the LR. if not you will start to see algae growing on the LR/substrate interface. this is your first clue that the substrate under the LR is full and is starting to leach phosphates. algae grows as close to the supply of food as possible. the deeper the substrate the deeper you need to dig down to remove the detritus. it all needs to be removed. do not worry about sucking up worms. it is harder to suck them up then you think, plus they will quickly repopulate.

here is a pic of what a sand bed looks like when it goes bad. i had thought i set it up correctly low flow, 9" deep, lots of critters. the extra Fe getting through my RO filter did not help either though.



G~