Maturity Issues

:) Good...although some of the dives I have done are every bit as crazy as jumping out of a plane...crazier, probably.
 
I'm too claustrophobic to be diving into a medium in which I cant see more then five feet in front of me... maybe I'm just scared of the dark. I think puff the magic dragon was the root cause.

I do have a question though concerning the sandbed since we've been on that topic, and I'm sure your tired of answering the same questions over and over again... but...

in reading this discussion thread over twice, I'm still confused about the benefits of 'intermediary distubances.'

It sounds like its good to have, but for someone as new as me to this hobby, would it be wise to create these intermediary distubances when my tank is less then a year old?

What benefits is it to have it. Maybe I just cant see what your answer to it was.

I forgot who it was that talked about moving their tank and not having too many problems with his corals and fish dying off and this can be considered a disturbance.

but I've witnessed a person move from one house to another and what I saw was all his acros dying because of that 'intermediary disturbance.'

So I guess what I'm wondering is...

1) Is it wise and practical to even have these intermediary disturbances when you risk losing the livestock and investments you place into this hobby?

Its great to see that nature has these distubances and creating bio-diversity. But I dont see the practical application in a reef aquarium.

2) What's the big deal if Dawin's idea of one bacteria dominating a tank and not allowing the weaker one to have a chance in the system even though it is a fraction of what you see in nature.

IMO if the weaker species (bacteria) was meant to have a chance it would have already found its way in surviving and even dominating that other.


Maybe I just had too much beer trying to read three pages of discussion (which is very interesting and cool if I may add that).


I have 4 small fishies in my tank. All of them are very small for the 55 g tank.

and I will call them my children... and I shall be God

ciao

Phillip
 
:eek1: Whoa...

This has been the most informative piece on captive reef ecology I have seen anywhere.

Spectacular! :beer:
 
Wish I'd read this when starting my tank

Wish I'd read this when starting my tank

Eric,
I very much like the idea of waiting and maturing the tank before adding predators - its a shame that I didn't have the patience when I started.

However what I do have is a large 8ft refugium with sand and a few pieces of live rock and no deliberate predators. I feed this refugium with live phyto almost on a continuous basis as well as some of the food I feed the tank.

Initially the refugia was buzzing with pods and all sorts - however, since I left it to grow "wild", it is now dominated by aiptasia and I have noticed a significant drop in the amount of life in there.

So going back to the theory of letting the tank mature without predators, say setting up a tank then wait 6-12 months before adding fish/corals, wouldn't you just end up with the same thing where some hitch hiking species higher the food chain dominate the tank?

Wouldn't you just end up with a tank full of algae and aiptasias?
 
I definitely do not think a new tank should "grow wild" and especially without herbivory. However, addition of herbivores should be a balanced thing, not stocking with so many herbivores they starve and not a scrap of algae is in the tank and not so low that algae dominate. Also, Aiptasia are usually introduced and are a known pest organism in tanks, as are oher things. Tanks can be reasonable facsimiles of nature, but becuase of their inherent limitations, require aquarist intervention. But, my point of this post is to allow for the stabilization and development of desirable species at reasonable population levels in a fashion that is more pragmatic than those usually employed..
 
Thanks - that makes sense. It is hard though to judge the right "balance" - especially if you're impatient.

Now I'm stuck with a dilema though - the hundreds of Aiptasia in my refugia are predating on all the lil critters I'm trying to give refuge to.

I do not want to add predators like butterfly fish nor peppermint shrimps to the detriment of all the life in there - but how do I remove and keep a control on the Aiptasia?
 
A fair amount of people use Kalkwasser to inject them. Other things I've heard as well, just a little more sketched by them [lemon juice, etc]. Some are now raving about a product `Joes Juice' ... but gets expensive, and what I've heard is that it's probably darn close to Kalkwasser slurry.

As for how ... do a search.

Yep, it's a pain, but I've gone from having them in my 58g tank to not having seen one there in 6 months. Manual injecting most of them, and the addition of one peppermint shrimp has mean total extermination :D
Could probably remove the peppermint when they're all gone, but one of ours has been very helpful by eating the little aptasias. [I also have two slacker peppermints, don't do squat in the 40g tank ... but that's another story].
 
Erm... there are hundreds of the buggers - of all sizes! I can't keep up with them, by the time I've reached one end the other end have started again... this is 16 square feet worth of tank to cover!

May be I'll sacrifice a few of my snails to put some peps in there. Perhaps the spawn they produce make up for the predation a little. Hopefully they'll leave the sponges/sea squirts/feather dusters alone... :0
 
I've had no problems like that with Peppermints ... mine don't touch snails, sponges, tunicates ... the only thing I really seem them hassle is corals ... stealing food from the polyps right after direct feeding.
As with anything, I'd go minimally, stocking the fewest possible - and with most of these `nuisance eating' critters ... the less you feed the tank, the more they tend to eat what you'd like them to.

I'd still manually remove the big ones, but I've had luck with peppermints taking care of aptasia [and no other problems].
 
Hi Tip,

I do have is a large 8ft refugium with sand and a few pieces of live rock

If it were me I would remove this many by hand (I wouldn't let them die and decompose in the system, or allow predators to eat them only to excrete them as feces). If you only have a few pieces of L/R in there, then that can be addressed seperately from the rest of the refugium. If they are on the sides of the refugium container, you probably can use a razor blade to dislodge their basis. If they are on the sand, well you would just net them out with a thin layer of sand.
Steve
 
Heres a picture of my sump.

42733663-med.jpg


I'm in the middle of my 7th month. I just added 10 corals (Acropora, Montipora (digitata and plating), Pocillopora, Stylophora, and Heliopora) into the main (240) tank. In the sump there is Xenia, Heliopora some zoe's and a medium size Gorgonian on the 28th of December 2003. This system will be skimmerless I have no intention at this time to add a skimmer. Personally the corals are showing (to me at least) noticeable signs of growth since being put into the tank.

craw.
 
Eric,

As I'm reading through this I'm wondering about lighting during the maturation process? I may have missed it in one of the earlier posts on this subject. What should the duration & quality of lighting be? Thanks!
 
I would provide the same light as will be present after this time. Otherwise, you will wind up acclimating things once, and then again if you change it. I know a lot of people cure live rock in the dark, and I think this is a crazy practice. The thought is to reduce algae, but there will not be any nuisance algae if the water is well managed and herbviores are present. I know when I cure rock, I may wind up doing 2-3 100% water chnages a day until things settle down a bit...I skim heavily, and have even used ammonia blockers to keep levels from becoming toxic to the surviving life. But, that's the very early stages, and probably not what you were referring to...was it?
 
I really don't have any plans at this point. I'll be getting my canopy in a few week's, so after I get my MH light's up I'll probably be adding some coral's. Right now I've got a bit of cyano, so I defentinally won't be adding anything untill that goes away. I have a small amount of a clean up crew in there, but I do plan to add a larger number. There's actually still a lot to look at. There's been a huge increase in the number of snails. There's always little snail egg sac thing's on the glass.

I'd really like to get a Protein Skimmer before I add any fish though. Ill probably start getting things in it within the next 2-3 months.
 
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