but going back to the eighties? Where the hell is PaulB... only guy I know here that likely had any experience back then.. but I bet a lot has changed...
Eightees? I have amphipods older than that. :eek1:
I have socks older than most of the members here.
And I still use a UG filter and dolomite anyone have a problem with that? :lol:
I not only remember Kennedy but Eisenhower too. He was after Lincoln.
Corals, all corals should live longer than we do. If they don't, it is our fault, not the corals. If the thing lives for a few years in our tank, it should live forever but it seems that our tanks are not as stable as the sea. Corals (and fish) in a captive envirnment are never as healthy as you see in the sea. If you do any diving and I don't mean resort diving, I mean real diving where you have all the time you want and you can lay on the bottom with two tanks for two hours to observe something close up then you will see that "wild" corals for the most part are very healthy. In our tanks they are living but these fragile animals never learned how to adapt very well to changing conditions especially the alien conditions in our tanks. We have fake sunlight, fake water, wierd circulation, changing calcium levels, obscure food and overwhelming pollution.
It is amazing that any corals survive at all in our tanks. Not too many years ago there were no corals for sale anywhere.
Not even in the store in Manhattan mentioned (It was Aquarium Stock Company, right near the Trade Center)
They were the first store in NYC to get salt water animals. I was one of the first people to but them. That was in 1971.
I also can only keep elegance corals for a few years and I know why. In my case anyway I have water issues, zinc actually but if it were not for that, I am sure some other accident or anomely would kill them. Underwater in the sea is a very stable ecosystem, chemically speaking, I am not talking tsunami's or thyphoons which are actually a good thing.
Another problem with corals is that they are constantly at war with each other chemically. Those chemicals were designed to kill other corals that invade their space. In the sea, they constantly get washed away but where do they go in a tank? That skimmer will not remove all traces of it and even if it does, how long do these substances stay in the water? I don't have a clue but I am sure it is an irritant. We also mix different animals from different seas. Maybe there is a reason why corals live where they do.
The seas have been there even longer than I have been but you don't find corals evenly mixed in all the oceans, why not?
Maybe there is something in different places that they need or something that annoys them. I doubt we will ever know all the reasons why Elegance corals die or why gonopora which do not come from the most pristine places are hard to keep for many years. I have a hard time with hammer corals but bubble corals grow like weeds, how come?
Anyway, have fun and have a great day.
Paul
My tank, circa 1970
) I think many tank keepers get past the "look" of variety and start finding satisfaction in just healthy colonies... I took this approach first with a "pulsing sinularia" that I was told did not exist initially (by an expert that did know what he was talking about).. Later turns out to be a newly described species and I sent him some.. 
