Goin from skimmerless to efficient skimming - effect on sps?

[jcm1229]

I have a smaller tank with many sps. The tank is lit by VHO lighting. I get good growth and fair to good coloration. Plan to upgrade to halides later.

Question is: I've been running skimmerless for quite some time and my SPS are doing well. I'm adding a deltec skimmer shortly. Will having a highly efficient skimmer be adverse to my corals? will they get shocked in any way from the sudden removal of much of the excess nutrients in the tank?

Thoughts?

 

[tacocat]

Sounds like you just bought yourself a one way ticket to bleach planet. J/K

Seroiusly, I predict that your acros will lighten up. Keep an eye out for tissue damage. You may end up burining them. The skimmer will remove all your gelbstoff (yellowing compunds) and will make your water much more clear.

Although unlikely, you may have bacterial blooms from the increased oxygen. Perhaps try running the skimmer on a timer for now. Say six hours a day , then slowly ramp it up to 24 hours. Since you are skimmerless right now. This may help with the funky break in many MCE skimmer users experience.

 

[RichConley]

I say the opposite of taco, run the skimmer 24/7, run the lights on a shorter photoperiod, and raise them a bit

 

[NoSchwag]

Every coral I put in my tank goes thru a sudden removal of excess nutrients.

 

[ONEMANBAND]

I would follow normal acclimating procedures that follow a purchase of new lighting, since your water will be cleaner, the effective lighting the corals get will increase. Raise the lights up, possible use plastic screening material to diffuse if you have really strong lighting.

 

[Fliger]

Remember that whatever you pull out has salt, so on a small tank you have to remember to replace some salt - especially if your skimmer starts pulling out a lot of gunk initially. Your auto-topoff will replace it with fresh water. Just make sure you have an accurate refractometer.

 

[tacocat]

I'd be much more leary of physical and chemical changes to the tank than burning. True schwag, but thse corals may have adapted to higher nutrient levels, so it will be a shock. Watch your kalk.alk, and pH. No doubt the increase oxygen will affect that.

You may experience some die off from feahter dusters, algae and filter feeders. I think your coraline algae may slowly decreas, but you have VHOs, and VHO's grow coraline like nothing else.

 

[G-money]

Interesting.

Could you please elaborate on how "sudden removal of excess nutrients" shocks a coral? In order for something to "shock" a coral, it would have to have a fairly major impact on some component of its physiology.

How does moving something that grows naturally in low nutrients back to something low in nutrients shock it?

In what way do corals "adapt" to elevated nutrients and what makes it difficult for them to go back? That is, back to conditions closer to the ones they've evolved in for millenia, versus conditions they've been in for maybe months at best.

The reason I'm asking this is that I've never experienced something like this that I would attribute to "low nutrient shock" - and I'd guess my tank is about as low in nutrients as any "low nutrient tank". I'm curious as to the reasoning behind this conclusion. If you wouldn't mind...

 

[jackson6745]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6657027#post6657027 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by RichConley
I say the opposite of taco, run the skimmer 24/7, run the lights on a shorter photoperiod, and raise them a bit

Agreed.

With less nutrients comes great water clarity and decreases the corals threshold for intense light. I don't have a scientific explination but think of it like this:

Bake a coral under 400w halides 8 hrs per day in a tank with high nitrates + phosphtes and its still brown

Do the same in a tank with no nitrates and no dectable phosphates and you have yourself a bleached coral.


What always confused me about this is that I don't know if its because of the water clarity or lower nutrient level that makes the corals less tolerant to extened periods of bright light???

 

[tacocat]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6662577#post6662577 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by G-money
Interesting.

Could you please elaborate on how "sudden removal of excess nutrients" shocks a coral? In order for something to "shock" a coral, it would have to have a fairly major impact on some component of its physiology.

How does moving something that grows naturally in low nutrients back to something low in nutrients shock it?

In what way do corals "adapt" to elevated nutrients and what makes it difficult for them to go back? That is, back to conditions closer to the ones they've evolved in for millenia, versus conditions they've been in for maybe months at best.

The reason I'm asking this is that I've never experienced something like this that I would attribute to "low nutrient shock" - and I'd guess my tank is about as low in nutrients as any "low nutrient tank". I'm curious as to the reasoning behind this conclusion. If you wouldn't mind...

How do corals that are found in many different oceans at many different depths able to survive in a small body of water that is lit by artificial light. They adapt , rather quickly, to their environment. To understand the effects a skimmer has on a tank, we neeed to examine the environment as a whole and not concentrate on the acros.

From what I am to understand, corals and the stuff living in its tissue begin to rely on those nutrients, then you flip a switch and remove their food source. Next time you frag an acro, look at the cross section. It's a complex matrix that provides shelter for microscopic organisms (which is why live rock is great for biological filtration).

A few postulations to consider. Mind you, these are thoughts based on observation and do not reflect any real research.

A skimmer will increase oxygen in the tank, this may lessent the amount of available CO2 for photosynthesis. This can lead to coraline and nusiance algae dying off, which produces waste product.

A skimmer will remove food for filter feeders. This may lead to die off from sponges, dusters, pods, etc. These things are sometimes food source for your fish as well.

A skimmer will increase your pH which will effect the entire tank.

A peek in the posters gallery revealed that he had some algae and a healthy suppy of filter feeders. Sticking a Deltec on a small tank is akin to breaking a gun to a knife fight. The skimmer itself and increased light intensity won't hurt the corals, but those creatures that process waste will suddenly run out of food.