Learning from experience

[Paul B]

I don't know where I am going with this thread but I was looking at my tank and I was thinking about how I now know how to keep anything I want to keep and all the failures I had in the past with the same animals. I don't think it has anything to do with DSB, BB starboard, NSW etc. It has to do with patience and observence. I remember my first copperband butterfly. It didn't live very long and neither did the second or probably the third. I had a fish only tank in those days and I would read all I could, the problem was that there was no information out there and since the hobby just started, no one kept one for any length of time. I would feed it some clams, or chopped fish but no matter how much I tried the poor fish would get some malady or just drop dead. Of course it was not the fishes fault, it was mine. Then I started diving and observing fish on the reef. After a lot of this you can almost feel what the fish is thinking (well not exactly) but a little at a time you begin to learn what this fish needs. Unfortunately for moorish Idols they are arguably the prettiest looking fish in the sea and the first ten or so that I had were unluckier than the butterflies. I would feed they mussels, seaweed, amphipods and anything else that I could think of. Don't forget there was no internet or even computers.
But after diving with them and following them around I gained valuable knowledge and so far I have been a little lucky.
I think we have to figure what these animals do in the sea and where they hang out not just feed them some frozen mysis and hope for the best. Fish in the sea eat all day long and almost never get one large meal like we like to feed them.
People talk about tangs especially hippo's as ich magnets. This may be true but it is our fault and not the fish. All tangs live in schools, you will never see a lone hippo or yellow tang, if you do it is sick and will soon be eaten. If someone collects one of these fish and puts it in a tank alone (like we usually do) it is extreamly stressed and constantly looking for it's cousins. That is also why they hide a lot. They are very scared. All fish also know what depth water they are in. You would never see an adult tang in water a foot deep like some of our tanks. Royal grammas live in very deep water, I have seen them many times over 100' down. When we keep them in very shallow water they know it and they don't like it. We can't have 100' deep tanks but I just want to demonstrate why fish seem to be prone to disease in a tank. We also feed our fish commercially prepared food like mysis or clams. Wild fish never see mysis, wild fish eat predominately, wild fish, and they eat the entire fish, bones, guts and all. They get their calcium from the bones and their vitamin A from the liver of their prey. We should try to find these foods if we would like our fish to be as healthy as they can in our very stressed tanks.
Just a thought.
Paul
:dance:

 

[Travis L. Stevens]

Paul B, luckily, your philosophy is EXACTLY how I feel about the hobby. Unfortunately, you've had a good 30+ years of experience behind your belt than I do. Plus, I've never even seen the ocean. But, if one truth be told about the hobby to any new aquarists, I would tell them this: "Though we make our tanks look nice, we cannot replicate nature in it's fullest. All the small things about the hobby don't matter unless you can provide the correct environment for a specific organism in order for it to survive". All those little things would refer to methodologies, equipment, theories, etc. And by correct environment, I mean husbandry, food, room, etc.

 

[sunfishh]

I think you are trying to say that when keeping aquatic life nature is the best teacher. If so I totally agree.

 

[outy]

most convicts are not happy behind bars

our fish are no different, i lightly stock for that reason. make there stay in prison the best you can. be a good warden

i dont do the best i can in the food department, thanks Paul for the reminder

 

[Paul B]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WE also have to learn to think outside of the box. There is a reason why we don't see all kinds of fish in all habitats. Some live on sand flats like jawfish and some prefer coral reefs like tangs. People still put horseshoe crabs in reefs. It's the same with corals, we see some types of corals in very turbulent water and some in almost stagnant water, these can't be intermixed or you would find them like that in the sea.
I think one of the biggest problems or setbacks is the lack of plankton in a tank, again we can't fix that but we can try to imitate it as best we can. Most people who dive just dive for the sake of diving to look at the pretty fish but if you just lay on the bottom for a while the fish will not notice you and you will become one of them (to them anyway) then you can observe them in detail and see how they interact with each other. Also there is an unmeasureable amount of baby fish on a reef around the base of corals and under rock ledges. Coral fish just dip down when they are hungry and take a bite. They don't always succeed but at least when they do, they are getting fresh fish. I try to feed my fish whole fish whenever I can but the only way I can do that is to collect them in the sea. As far as I know they do not sell frozen food small enough to feed a 1" royal gramma. The sea is full of these fish and it would be beneficial if someone would make them available. I can't seem to find any anyway just frozen silversides which are about an inch long.
At least we have newborn brine shrimp. I hatch these every other day and put them in my reef, again they are not a natural food for reef fish but it's the best we have.

Paul :dance:

 

[Fredfish]

Very true Paul. There is actually a growing body of knowlege out there on various fish and other critters and some very knowledgable people. What I find most unfortunate is that many folks are so focused on the technology, skimmers, test kits, techno=lighting etc, that they don't look at the specific requirements of their organisms.

Some of the most knowledgable people in this hobby are consistantly ignored because of all the techno-noise.

In my current set up I have a 40g refugium feeding into my 40g main tank. Why such a large refugium? Because I want my seahorses to get as much live, natural food as possible. They feed on frozen mysis once or twice daily, but during the rest of the time, they hunt. So far, I have very healthy horses, and have had two fry grow into 3+ month old juveniles in my tank on the available live food.

I unfortunately also have one male Bangai in the tank that is very skittish and probably not very happy. These fish usually live in very large schools, larger than I could provide in my tank. Won't do that again.

Does anyone even know how many of one tank species one needs to keep before agression is spread enough to have a stable group?

Fred

 

[electraglide]

I don't reply often to posts, I usually use this forum to maybe help a little from knowledge I have gained over the approximately 20 years of reef keeping experience I have obtained.
I often think to many people get to technical and forget about the nature of this hobby, which is just that nature. To many people try chemicals and rush through cycles. I have never relied on any chemical to rid myself of hair algae, red slime algae, or even to get a tank to cycle quickly. I rely on the nature of things. I study and learn what can help or hinder these particular issues, in a natural reef.
I thought I would reply to your post and thank you, as I can see that others in this hobby/lifestyle appreciate the natural side of maintaining a reef.
Thanks again, I will definately keep an eye out for further posts from you Paul.

 

[Paul B]

Very true Paul. There is actually a growing body of knowlege out there on various fish and other critters and some very knowledgable people. What I find most unfortunate is that many folks are so focused on the technology, skimmers, test kits, techno=lighting etc, that they don't look at the specific requirements of their organisms

This is true, I first learned about keeping saltwater from "Robert Straughn" He wrote "The Saltwater Aquarium in the Home" in the fiftees or sixtees. I still have the book. The man collected and kept just about everything. There was no books at the time so everything was hit or miss and a lot of his information is very outdasted today but he kept everything with just an UG filter and a bowl full of carbon. Lee Chin Eng was another one.
I do not fault the new authors today like Moe and Sprung, they are very knowlegable but If you read their books they rely very heavily on technology which is not necessarilly wrong just in my opinion un- needed in many situations.
Most hobbiests go crazy if they see a little algae, algae is fine and is not an omen of things to come. IMO if you have no algae in your tank it is either not old enough or it is not as healthy as you think it is. Your fish will also do far better with some algae as will pods, amphipods, worms etc.
Of course we don't want everything covered with hair algae either but there are natural ways to eliminate this too.
In the sea it is vast schools of tangs and urchins that eliminate it but it does grow on every reef and it would cover everything if it were not for these fish. These fish will not help much in a tank because unfortunately they also poop in the tank which becomes algae food. They will help but the algae or it's by products must be removed. Your rabbitfish or turbo snail will not clear out a pound of hair algae. I read a post where someone said their copepods ate all the algae. Thats some copepod.
In the sea there is only a few fish per square mile of water, in our tanks it is more like a fish per foot if that. Thats why we can't eliminate algae using fish. Also don't forget a "clean up crew" is also more animals that are manufacturing fertilizer.
Have a great day.
Paul

 

[WarrenG]

Nice insights here. I've been scuba diving about 12 years now. The main reason I went to Fiji was to see clownfish and SPS in the wild, and schools (hundreds) of blue (hippo) tangs, and I've spent hours watching Flame Angels around Kona, Hawaii.

I think (most) technology is an attempt to create the very stable conditions found in the wild in spite of the relatively high bio loads we impose on our aquariums.

One thing I see overdone in aquariums is water movement and lighting. Most of the corals we keep do not live in the surf zone! Our corals live 20-60 feet down where they encounter currents that last for hours in one direction, then hours in the other direction. In shallower water it may be surge-goes one way for half a minute and then the other way, but usually the turbulence is still lower than what I often see in reef tanks.

For lighting, many of our corals live in the wild with less light than what we see in many reef tanks. Some get more, but most get less than 4-5 watts/gallon of MH.

What the corals and fish do get is more or less constant feeding, as was mentioned here earlier. Maybe we should be spending time, money and technology to address that need.

What about feeding juvenile mollies? They survive in saltwater (if raised in brackish water like where they live in the wild) for hours and a few females are prolific. (My first aquarium experiences 30 years ago were with mollies.) Brine shrimp are certainly good too if fortified.

 

[Sk8r]

I'll chime in, in a modest way: my own take, though I don't dive, is to try to keep everything in the scale of my little 52g. I get fish [mostly gobies and blennies] that are not going to get above 2 inches long, and I concentrate more on keeping a huge population of pods, with rubble piles and lots of phyto feeding. I have sandsifting fish, pod-eating fish, an algae eater, and the smaller ones [chromis, firefish] that like to be fed. Most of my population takes care of itself, given enough pods and light. And I have a few that like the cyclopeeze that also helps the corals. And a lot of bristleworms and snails that clean up the residue. The corals which started out as my prime concern are actually growing very well. I didn't choose the firefish, the chromis, or the clam, but hey, they're fat and happy. So I can't manage perpetual food for everybody, but I can keep a certain portion of my tank busy hunting and feeding at all times, and while my tank is far from a pristine coral tank, which is what I'd started out to create---I've had corals double and in the case of one acro--triple its size in 6 months. I can't say it's ever going to be tank of the month, but it's the most disease- and problem-free tank I've ever had.

 

[Paul B]

Warren I do have to agree with you about the current. Some corals need very little current. In some places though like Cozumel there is extreme current that can't be reproduced in a tank, that is where sea fans predominate.
Lighting is tricky in that although we use MH in conjunction with actinic or VHO, whatever, it is still no substitute for sunlight which emits the entire spectrum of visable and ultraviolet light. I don't know if this entire spectrum would be beneficial but our animals were designed to live in it.
As for mollies they are a good food but you would need an awful lot of mollies to feed a reef but it would work if you had enough.
I also can't manage perpetual food either but I have an automatic feeder that supplies food twice a day and I manually feed other foods in between that. Most fish in the sea are opportunistic feeders and will sample just about anything. I really do think that they need much more vitamin A than we are supplying but I only get that idea from watching them and as I said they usually eat whole fish which includes the liver which is full of vitamin A. and the bones which are calcium. I don't know the calcium content of mysis as they do not have bones.
We can only try.
SK8R I will also never have tank of the month either but my tank is also disease free and has been for over 25 years. My reef is an experiment because I am past seeing if I can have the most beautiful tank around, I am more interested in finding solutions for problems so I experiment, and sometimes it does not go as well as I plan. As an example I have been feeding my moorish Idol a mixture of bananas, garlic vitamin "A" and Plaster of Paris.
Not exactly reef fare but I am trying to get vitamin A and calcium into the fish. He loves it but I don't yet know if it is helpful or if it will kill him.
Paul
:dance:

 

[WarrenG]

In Kahalu'u beach park near Kona I've seen pairs of Moorish Idols in two feet of water with virtually no coral polyps in the area. They were grazing on hair algae. The visibility was maybe 30 feet in that area because of the algae growth generated by a freshwater spring. Depth was less than 6 feet for the entire little bay. Best place on the island for turtles and Humuhumnukua'a triggers. In Fiji I found roving gangs of Humuhumu's in the same kind of place, along with some very bright blue SPS.

 

[Paul B]

Warren I also have seen Idols on Kona. They live in shallow water. I saw very little if any of them deep.
Even in the Tahitian Islands you see more of them while snorkling than diving.
Paul

 

[marinelife]

Paul this is a great thread, I 100% agree with you on everything.

 

[Kent E]

I also agree. Display is only a part of reefkeeping but seems to dominate the culture.

 

[Paul B]

Paul this is a great thread, I 100% agree with you on everything.

Marinelife, thank you. I sometimes don't agree with myself 100%.

There is a lot of mis-information going on in this hobby but it is no one's fault. This is not an exact science because of all the variables. Just about everything here is a variable. Water is different everywhere, livestock comes in various states of health, forget about lighting, I am an electrician and I don't know all the variations in lighting, I do know none of it compares to sunlight, food is another one, fresh, frozen, flakes, pellets, homemade, all has advantages but none are the natural diet of fish. Most of our animals come from a LFS, this is unfortunate because it is yet another stressful envirnment that these animals go through and a lot of them die there. As a mater of fact, a good portion of animals die in wholesalers and dealers tanks.
Thats the lucky ones that make it there from the collector.
The newly collected fish are very cheap, I have seen lookdowns for sale in the Caribbean for $2.00 a pound. They sell in NY for $125.00 each. That is not robery, many of them are lost in transit and it cost more to ship water than fish. Add all the fish that die and the LFS does not really make that much. I know three owners of very large stores here in NY and none of them look very wealthy to me.
I also think the internet also confuses everything. Now we have many people who have a tank a few weeks giving advice which may be helpful but you should take it with a grain of salt. I have been doing this for over fifty years and I make plenty of mistakes. We are always learning. I sometimes read something I wrote a while ago and I don't agree with it anymore because I found a better way. We also need common sense, if someone says they have a 1/2" slug that ate an entire tank of hair algae, I would question that. Also if I say for example that I can keep a mandarin for ten years with no care that is because my reef is different than yours. I can't keep anchor corals, I don't know why but they grow like weeds in some tanks. We will know all of these things in time but for now we have to keep experimenting and learning.
Have a great day.
Paul:beer:

 

[KafudaFish]

Paul,
I always enjoy your threads because they are insightful and I always come away better from them.
Why do some things succeed in one person's tank and fail in another? That really is the $64K question. A person can do "everything" right and it still turn out all wrong. This is nature that we are dealing with and yes it follows certain rules over time but the reason why nature is successful is it is able to adapt and evolve over time. As a society, especially in the US, we demand instant gradification and when it does not happen something must be wrong. Case in point: how many times has someone new here posted a picture of a great tank, healthy and stress free fish and beautiful corals with growth only to be told 5 times "Wow beautiful tank!" and the next person says, "Oh you should change X." That person is not necessarily trying to give bad advice. It is then up to the tank owner to decide for themselves what they should do. If they are successful then they should have the background to go in either direction.
As a newbie, I must decide for myself who to listen to and why. The same goes for someone with years of experience. But how do you choose? Do you base it upon occupation or number of posts? Neither really. Occupation is not important rather a person's ability to observe the biology and draw simple conclusions and obervations from that. Post numbers don't always help because you still get credit for saying, "Wow nice tank!" as you would explaining pH stability in the tank.
I believe that the number one failure or shortfall as hobbists is based upon time and complexity of the system. Again nature: decades to centuries, hobby: days to months.
As you said in your first post, not really sure where I am going with this but I guess I am there.

 

[Paul B]

I just came back from crabbing. Winter is coming in the north fast so you have to get all the ocean time in that you can. Of course I always try to get something for my fish too so with all the blueclaw crabs I caught I fed some to my fish and I will eat the rest. The fish love it as does the bubble coral. I tried to collect some small silversides that were being harassed by snapper blues but I forgot my net. I guess I will have to go back tomorrow. :eek1:
I did manage to get some sponge though.
Paul
:dance:

 

[Frankysreef]

I also believe that we are always learning in this hobby, Before I even found reefcentral, I was always trying to go the natural route. I used fresh live rock instead of cured, and I think that really helped my tank just because of the animals that are in my tank that grows off the rock...

I see other hobbiests doing things that just don't make sense naturally also.... I remember that I got some rock from a friend and he said it was live... He COOKED it, and it was essentially DEAD rock.... white... nothing on it... I bought it anyway cause I was there, but some of the people on these threads with the closed minds that THIS is the only way to do something are just plain wrong.

There are many different ways to do something in this hobby and following nature is a good way to do things. I developed a sunlight reflecting system for my tank and I have plankton, and people keep asking me if I use ZEO and the answer is NO... I am just trying to emulate nature as much as possible with my lighting scheme.

Arent all our tanks changing all the time too? Now that my corals are overgrown the amount of space in the tank is dwindling and I think that this caused the demise of my 5 yr old hippo tang...

The anthias love the corals and are always zipping in and out... but I may do a smaller tang this time or maybe two tangs for they seem to swim in groups.

I dunno... I tried naso tangs 3 times and every one died....perfect water parameters in my tank, they just didnt like the confinement.

Our tanks are ecosystems, predator prey problems with new constantly arising issues....

I only stick my hand in the tank every 4 days or even less...I just put a new majestic angelfish in and he loves the environment...zipps in and out of rocks...

This hobby can be very difficult at times to try to predict what environment the animals can be truly happy in.

They are not just fish tanks

 

[Joao Monteiro]

Very interesting thread

The issue of the equipment and the "fast tanks" has a lot to do with what is availble and the speed of changes in today´s world. Everything has to be fast. As a result, a marine tank "should be done" (almost) just by adding salt.
And in a market like the US where everything is available...

I´m in a very small market and when I sarted in 1990 it was... well, we had 4 LFS in the entire country (small country, anyway).
We used to line at 2, 3am in the street waiting for the owner of the LFS to arrive from the airport with a new shipment and buy the fishes (no corals available, anyway) in the boxes. Sometimes, even without seing them, just based on the list. But we had been waiting for that shipment for months...

But things were more "natural" and even with no equipment, we still had some sucesss. With poor (lousy) conditions, I kept an Acanthurus leucosternon (PBT ?) between 92 and 96. And it died because of a heater malfunction (bad equipment).

Then, everybody wanted more "sterilized environments". Everything at zeros. The use of natural sea water made (makes ?) people laugh (I´ve been using it since the beginning), etc, etc.
Fishes just can´t be happy in those environments I think. They just give up

Nevertheless things are changing a bit. In some corals farms in Germany they´re dosing PO4 and Amonia to the tanks and having better growing results; people are now putting more small fishes in the tanks to have more waste, because that´s very important for the corals to eat, etc. etc.

We now are more concerned about creating an environment closer to what our animals had in the wild and not... technically perfect.

But, that´s the way things are. Evolution goes in circles.
Back to basics ?