I will try and recap this thread a bit since it has been awhile
THESE ARE DISCUSSED ON PAGES 1-5
In the first post Peter listed the following misconceptions:
Common Misconceptions In the Hobby
A lot of things seem to come up on the forums that are a result of recycled information that has been passed down through the years. I want to start this thread in hopes that this information will start to be widely accepted and known and hopefully dispell some of those "old hat" ways of thinking in the hobby. Some of these have mostly gone by the wayside and some are till in full swing and commonly believed in the hobby. Please feel free to add some of your own, add to my explanations, or even dispute my contributions.
1.) You should keep your PH at or between 7.8 and 8.3.
While those are acceptable levels this simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've seen claims that the PH on Indonesian reefs (where most of the corals we keep will be found) is on average between 8.4 and 8.5. With readings often being higher and rarely below 8.0.
Conclusion: There is nothing to worry about if you PH is reading above the famed 8.3 mark. In fact, consider youself one of the lucky ones. If you're reading below 8.0 seriously consider betweer gas exchange and dripping kalkwasser to keep your PH higher in the acceptable range which should probably be more along the lines of 8.1-8.8. Maintaining a higher PH in closed aquaria is probably a good idea because of the greater amount of waste and acids that we encounter.
2.) Maintaining a KH of 8 is a good idea because it's close to what natural seawater is.
This one kind of goes along with the above suggestions. 8 dKH is perfectly acceptable, but it doesn't allow for a lot of wiggle room in out "dirty" aquariums. I've observed stress in various organisms when KH starts to drop much below 8. On the flipside there was a time when people commonly maintained a dKH as high as 18 in this hobby without any apparent stress from tank inhabitants.
Conclusion: While I wouldn't suggest striving for 18 dKH aiming for a little higher than natural seawater is a good idea because of the volatility of closed systems. I typically suggest people aim for 10-12 dKH. If you're using something that automatically replaces buffers in your system this is less crucial.
3.) 75-77 degrees is a good temperature for a reef tank or tropical fish only tank.
The majority of our corals come from corals and fish come from waters that range in temperature anywhere from 76-90 degrees with average temps in the low 80's. There are certainly creatures that are an exception such as those from Japan, Australia, and deeper waters which are more usesd to temperatures a little lower.
Conclusion: The old magic 76 degree mark has little merit and I'm not sure how it ever came to be in the first place. Maintaining temperatures in the low 80's is probably most natural and will suit most fish/coral available in the industry. Thankfully this has become more accepted in recent years.
4.) It's very important to keep temperatures stable.
This one pops up a lot on the forums. As you may have gathered from the above commentary, the temperature on your average reef isn't really stable at all. Temperatures can shift greatly with a simple shift of the tides or currents. There are also shifts between day and night that are close to 5 degrees on average.
Conclusion: Stop worrying about your daily swing in temperature from your lights heating the water. There's no need to go buy expensive chillers or controllers to always maintain the same temperature. In addition to being pretty natural the temperature swing may be good for your aquarium inhabitants and make them less likely to succumb should you have a more major temperature swing. In closed aquaria I wouldn't suggest testing the limits of this, but if your swings are under 5 degrees from day to night I wouldn't worry much.
5.) Any detectable amount of nitrates is bad in a reef aquarium.
While elevated levels are certainly a concern (20 ppm+) and I do feel it's best to maintain very low levels I think the toxicity of nitrates is highly exaggerated in this hobby.
Conclusion: If you're having problems zeroing out you nitrate tests don't fret too much. However, keep an eye on your nitrates levels and make sure they don't build up to levels that can start causing problems.
6.) Zoanthids are prefer low to moderate levels and flow, and they like dirty water.
As a group Zoanthids are very diverse. They can be found on the reef in pristine water conditions with incredible bright light and heavy flow. They can also be found at greater depths with lower light levels and less flow. Areas with turbid virtually stagnant water; check. Areas with huge waves crashing into them frequently being exposed to air, check. Dirtier water that may even be from sewage rinoff; check. Tidal pools with hugely varying conditions; check.
Conclusion: What's good for the goose may not be good for the gander. That's of course with the asumption that the goose and gander are both zoanthids. What the heck is a gander anyhow?
7.) SPS corals require huge amounts of light and flow.
Much like Zoanthids, SPS corals are a very diverse group. They are found at a wide range of depths in a wide range of conditions.
Conclusion: Just because you have an SPS coral does not mean it will appreciate being blasted with light and thousands of gallons of water per hour. Do a little research on your specific coral to get a better grasp of what conditions it might do best in. A good rule of thumb is that more delicate looking specimens come from areas with lower lighting and flow that would be experienced on the upper reef. More robust looking growth forms would probably appreciate being blasted with light and flow.
8.) The colors of corals are a result of the zooxanthellae which grows in their tissue.
While this is true to a degree, zooxanthellae is typically a shade of brown (think autumn colors). The bright colors often seen in photosynthetic organisms are the result of various proteins. Some of these colors are genetic, some are freak occurences that are related to light intensity levels.
Conclusion: A coral being brown isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least it has plenty of it's zooxanthellae symbiant. However, if you have ome crazy blue coral it is absolutely not because you have some freaky blue zooxanthellae growing in it.
greenbean took the ball from there:
9.) Animal X is a filter feeder. It's great for your tank.
Filter feeding is just a way to say that an animal's food is suspended in the water column. Hobbyists hear the word "filter" and make the erroneous assumption that these animals will improve their water quality. Like all animals, filter feeders turn their food into waste, which gets peed or pooped out. They turn often harmless particulates into dissolved nutrients (ammonia being the chief one). With the exception of those with zooxanthellae to uptake it, you're always going to end up with more dissolved nitrogen coming out than went in (poorer water quality).
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I do believe in keeping the temperature stable. Your comparison of the temperature of an aquarium to that of the ocean isn't really a sound argument. Once things start to go south, we are not afforded the luxury of having a gadzillion gallons of water volume and thus a temperature rise in the ocean will not equal to a possible disaster that could happen in your reef if you let the temperature creeps past a certain point.
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Whether in the ocean or in captivity, stable temperatures don't afford you any wider a margin of error in the event of a problem. The physiological tolerance of the animals is still the same in captivity or the wild. All stability does is narrow that window of tolerance.
10.) My cleaner fish/shrimp cured or helped my fish get rid of ich.
There is no evidence that any cleaner species eats ich in any real number, either in the wild or captivity. It's never been found in the gut of cleaners in the wild and in lab tests cleaners have never been shown to make a significant difference on parasite loads. The ich parasite is under the skin of the host and without harming the host fish, the cleaner only has access to the parasite for about the 5 minutes that it takes for the parasite to burrow through. Because that 5 minutes occurs in the wee hours of the morning, cleaners will never naturally encounter the parasite during that time. In the lab, even when cleaners were induced to clean during the period when the parasite was burrowing in, they ate very few of them and made no significant difference in the parasite loads of the fish. The white spots associated with ich are only damaged skin due to the parasite underneath and guess what a large part of the diet of most cleaners is.... dead skin and fish mucus. Picking off the spots doesn't cure the fish.
11.) A UV sterilizer will kill everything good or bad in your tank and significantly reduce disease, food, or filtering capacity.
Even when UV sterilizers have near 100% kill rates of the organisms passing through, in recirculating systems they don't make a huge impact on the overall populations. They are limited by the fact that the breeding population in the system is always much larger than the number of individuals being killed. They can also only kill those organisms that are in the water column. There are numerous experiments confirming that the use of UV sterilizers on recirculating systems either has no significant impact on parasite populations or on infection rates.
I just keep thinking of more and more.
12.) Mariculture and aquaculture are different methods of farming corals.
Aquaculture is underwater agriculture. Mariculture is simply marine aquaculture. In the context of the hobby, since all of our animals are marine, they are synonyms. Neither one implies anything about the culture method used or where it's done. To tell where the culturing is done you use in situ (in the original location) or ex situ (away from the origin) or sometimes in vitro (in captivity). To talk about the actual method used you talk about the intensity level. Extensive culture is when you have almost no control over the growth. Leaving frags on the reef to grow is an example of extensive culture. Semi- intensive is when you have some control, such as growing corals in a greenhouse but using NSW and sunlight. Intensive is when you have control over almost everything, like in your home frag tank.
13.) Trading frags helps save the reefs.
Reducing the demand for wild corals may help some, but it won't make a very big dent in the amount of corals being taken from the reef. As large as it has gotten, the live coral trade is still small compared to other uses for the reef such as construction. Regardless of the demand from the hobby, there will always be more demand for corals than supply and the collectors will always need jobs. To truly reduce the amount of corals being taken, economic alternatives to harvesting from the reef have to be offered and simply cutting our demand doesn't do that. Eco-tourism and responsible aquaculture are two possibilities.
And again...
14.) Inverts are short lived, so expect to replace your cleaning crew regularly.
It's hard to generalize about the lifespan of inverts since they make up the vast majority of animals on the planet. Some, like octopi and most sea slugs only make it a year or two. Many popular members of cleanup crews can live decades to centuries though. Some of the animals we keep are even theoretically immortal, meaning they don't grow old. They only die when something kills them.
