Common Misconceptions In the Hobby

[greenbean36191]

What are these "immortal" creatures that dont age and only die when they're killed? I have never heard of anything like that.

There are a few representatives from most of the major marine invert groups. Some you might find in your tanks are sea urchins, sea stars, corals, sponges, various worms, etc. That's not to say that these animal actually do live forever, even in the wild. Even theoretically immortal animals typically only live a few centuries at most before a predator, disease, or physical disturbance wipes them out, but there are some living corals that are known to be a few millenia old.

 

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12472698#post12472698 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul B
Some nitrates and phosphates are removed by skimming as are bacteria and some copepods. A skimmer removes water and anything that is dosolved in it but only because in the course of removing DOC, some water is removed. But this is a trivial amount. Water changes also remove some good things. You will find everything in the skimate that is in your water. A skimmer is not 100% efficient at removing just DOC.
Carbon also removes some good substances but the removal of the bad stuff outweighs the good stuff. It is a trade off and it depends on how you have your skimmer adjusted, how large the bubbles are, the contact time, flow rate etc. etc.
Many times I accidently adjust my skimmer incorrectly because I add fish oil to my tank which stops the skimmer from making bubbles. If I try to adjust it then, in the morning I find that my skimmer removed 3 or 4 gallons of water. Am I to assume that all that removed water is DOC?
A skimmer will stop skimming when all those split molicules I mentioned are removed. There are many things a skimmer will not remove like copper, ammonia, zinc. nitrate etc. but a skimmer will remove DOC which if left in the water will become ammonia and nitrate. We as yet do not have a perfect filter that will only remove the bad stuff. The only thing that comes close is algae.
:bum:

thanks Paul--as always your wisdom is appreciated--and of course the odd picture of your beer cans

What's you feeling on
"the amount of live rock in your tank is not important"
this was from Borneman

 

[pong]

i have been reading the first few pages of this thread about temperature swings and ideal temperatures...

has anyone been able to raise or maintain a reef tank at
an average temp of 86F or 30C?

this is the regular temperature out here and im about to
transition from fowlr to mixed reef

 

[Paul B]

has anyone been able to raise or maintain a reef tank at 86 degrees

My tank runs a few degrees hotter than that in the summer sometimes going up to 91. I never had a problem

 

[pong]

wow...

do u run a chiller or anything?

im planning on setting it up without a skimmer
and since my average is 84-86 during the summer

most probably in the 82-84 region during regular days,
corals will survive there?

 

[Paul B]

Those temps are fine.
I do not have a chiller. When it gets over 90 degrees in the tank I have frozen gallon Clorox bottles that I put in the tank. Each one lowers the temp by about 2 degrees.

 

[shred5]

Temps all depend on the coral... Usually at 86 degrees I see stress in some corals and some coral will bleach. I have seen some anemones that have started showing stress at around 83 degrees...

Another thing is allot of the thermometers used esp the digital ones like the coral life ones are not accurate so getting close to the edge means you really could be over or under. I am actually frustrated right now with digital thermometers.

I have been diving in the Caribbean where the water temps around 86 and everything looks fine. Sps seem less tolerant to high temps.

Dave

 

[pong]

which makes me think... my thermometer might be wrong... my anemone is not stressed and seems to be enjoying his stay in my tank... if anything changed... it
seems that it has grown...

 

[icy1155]

I have a myth that I would like to dispute:

# who knows what: Coral reefs are going to become extinct because of global warming in the near future.

I hate to break it to everyone but coral reefs have been around far longer than since the last ice age, and they have seen much more dramatic climate swings in their history than you will ever see as a result of human impacts. Are some corals going to die? Yes. Is it possible that one or two species might become extinct due to this new warming trend? Possibly. But under no circumstance are all or even a significant portion of the corals in the earth's oceans going to all go extinct, that is just another myth.

Speaking in terms of populations, even if corals have a remarkably low chance of an individual surviving, less than 5%, the sheer number of individual colonies of even some of the rarest corals on earth show that the metapopulations are almost impossible extipate. If anybody doesnt belive me, I can set up an excel spreadsheet that follows the principles of population dynamics, and give you some examples of the chances that any one species will become extict (about .003% chance of extinction after 1000 years, assuming a 3% survival rate and the current population estimates of one of the more rare corals, staghorn acropora in the carribean, Acropora cervicornis).

 

[Paul B]

I doubt that many corals will become extinct in the near future but I think it is forseeable that they may go extinct in the distant future.
Coral survives in a relatively thin band around the earth now, Your Excel spreadsheet does not take into account the full activity of human intervention. Coral is very fragile and the sea is not limitless. In my 40 years of diving in many different places I have seen too many dead and dying corals. In my last dive trip to the South Pacific almost all the tongue corals I saw were dead, and that was 6000 miles from any mainland.
The reefs off Jamaica are mostly dead. If reefs anywhere are dying and the trend continues, some or all "could" become extinct eventually.
I bet the dinosaurs diden't think they were going extinct.

 

[D to the P]

I'm ready for global warming. Good Bye New Jersey, hello brand new beach! :lol:
You're right, they won't all go extinct. But the combination of water temperature rising, salinity changing, more tropical storms, lower pH, the release of pesticides into the ocean because of flooding, and a couple of other variables will definitely put a hurtin on the corals.

 

[kar93]

Something else is that everybody else relates coral deaths and corals dying to global warming. That is not the only factor that contributes to this. I have been diving round Sharm El Sheikh and the reefs are good but all the building has caused them to decline. But when you go out away from all the building and hotels the reefs are incredible! I very much doubt it will be in our lifetime but i believe that one day corals will become extinct i also believe that one day humans could, we are by far the last stage of evolution.

 

[icy1155]

The dinosaurs were megafauna that were prone to extinction due to the relativley small size of their populations. In comparison, a single coral head can contain as many individual polyps that are just as able to survive as the whole as the total population of any one dinosaur. Bad example.

I dont mean to argue Paul, and I know that reefs have declined, I am just saying that statistically it is nearly impossible to make all of the reefs of the world go extinct. Do you know that in the pleistocine era the water level was over 30 feet below the current level, and corals survived that dramatic of a sea level rise. Corals as a family have survived countless cycles of sea level rise and decline, countless cycles of global warming and cooling, and have still persisted. The current estimates are that with the same meteor that struck the earth and is purposed to have killed off the dinosaurs caused a global warming cycle which was apporxamitly 5 orders of magnitude faster than it currently is.

On a side note, I am all for preserving the reefs as much as possible. I am an avid diver, have my bachelors in marine biology, and am currently working on a masters in Natural Resources Management. I know that reefs are declining, but I am speaking from a strictly population statistics standpoint.

 

[Paul B]

I dont mean to argue Paul,

Icy I don't feel you are argueing. Hopefully we will not have to find out if the corals go extinct. We could "argue" this until the next Ice Age and neither of us would win. There are too many variables. There's meteors, volcanos and Brittany Spears.
Who knows

 

[kar93]

Paul, I completely agree with what you are saying. Only time will tell what is going to happen. I know alot of religous people talk about saving the world and stop global warming, I am an agnostic personally but if there is a God. Wouldn't this be what is supposed to happen?

 

[shred5]

Some coral will survive. As water warms some will be able to move farther away from the equator. They are already finding reefs farther north than before..... I have been diving at the bottom of limestone quarries in Wisconsin and guess what coral skeletons in the limestone.... The problem is allot of corals will not survive the migration and the diversity will be low. Allot of coral will go extinct. Here is the loop how do they survive the decrease in salinity? Also this is the one things corals did not have to deal with millions of years ago and that is pollution… Pollution could wipe out corals…..


This is something that should probably have not been brought up in this thread because there is not proof to support any of it.



Dave

 

[Dante_JoseCuerv]

Forget Britney Spears, what about rap music?

 

[kar93]

I rememmber watching something with Ron & Valerie Taylor they found a diving zone called the twilight zone where I think a ship sunk or something. It was booming with mysterious life. Ribbon Eels, Stingrays, Corals and sea rods. It was amazing. Many people would think a sunken ship would ruin a part of the reef but fact is, in a sense it creates a new reef.

 

[D to the P]

well thats why they sink ships off the coast. to create an artificial reef. Remember, reef is just a nautical navigational obstruction, a coral reef is just one type.

 

[icy1155]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12499415#post12499415 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by shred5
Some coral will survive. As water warms some will be able to move farther away from the equator. They are already finding reefs farther north than before..... I have been diving at the bottom of limestone quarries in Wisconsin and guess what coral skeletons in the limestone.... The problem is allot of corals will not survive the migration and the diversity will be low. Allot of coral will go extinct. Here is the loop how do they survive the decrease in salinity? Also this is the one things corals did not have to deal with millions of years ago and that is pollution… Pollution could wipe out corals…..


This is something that should probably have not been brought up in this thread because there is not proof to support any of it.

Im sorry, but there is ALOT more proof that they will survive than they will go extinct. You dont think all those times that the earth warmed up that the polar ice caps didnt melt the same as they will in the future? There was just as wide of a difference in salinity then as there will be in the future. It is a cycle, and I agree that there will probably be some extinctions and some bottlenecking, however this has been proven to have happened quite a few times over the past hundred million years, and as the climate swings the other way niches are opened back up and new corals evolve into them... its the way of the world.

I agree that pollution is a negative impact, but there are also many corals that arent anywhere near humans, and these will persist just fine into the future. All this talk about reefs being extinct due to global warming is nonsense...the earth has been much warmer than it is getting and the ice caps have been much smaller... guess what, we still have corals. The proof is in the history... this has all happened before, and they didnt go extinct... why would they go extinct this time?