Reasoning behind six month wait for nems??

[Tmoriarty]

So Im curious as to the reasoning behind waiting 6 months for a tank to mature enough to add nems? I have been told multiple things from the tank needs to balance out to a multitude of other "Bland" explanations. Can someone clarify this a little more please.

I ask this question because I recently started a new 203g tank. I had two BTA's in my 55g where the tank was around 7 months old. The tank was doing poor because of my own neglect (while building the 203g build) so I started moving everything from that tank into the 203g as soon as it was ready and cycled. The tank is sitting with 0-0-0 Ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. I am running a fuge, a SRO-3000 skimmer and a DSB in the fuge (2 inch in MT). The nems are in the tank and have been for almost two weeks and look far better than I have ever seen them. They have not moved except when they were first introduced. They both take food (I feed my own mix of Mysis/Brine/Squid/Clam/Shrimp/Chaeto) daily and have been very settled.

I am not by any means telling people to stray away from waiting for a tank to properly mature, my situation warranted the move and there is 250g's of water in an understocked tank. But this is why I ask the question, is the recommendation more in reference to people or to the actual tank. I have heard numerous times.... wait till you have been reefing for a year before you try nems...., this logic makes no sense as everyone learns at a different pace. My 203g tank will eventually get magnificas, it was built around having them, but I will wait until the tank has "matured" to add them.

If all my levels are stable, the tank is healthy and nothing is fluctuating, is there any real reason that I can't add Magnificas earlier than 6 months? I have been told that Mags are one of, if not the hardest, thing to keep successfully in a tank. If my levels are right, is there any reason why I can't add one now? (BTW the BTA's would most likely come out when I add Mag's). Thank you to anyone who can clarify this for me and give me some real science behind the wait.

 

[garygb]

I expect that in many cases the 6 month rule-of-thumb doesn't apply. For those using a DSB, it takes a while for the de-nitrification to kick in and stabilize. On the other hand, in tanks where low nitrates are maintained by other means, I expect that a couple of months is sufficient. I think that for inexperienced aquarists it's advisable to wait 6 months to make sure that good husbandry practices have become routine. Just my thought...

 

[OrionN]

The tank stabilize takes a while. You can see this through various algae progressed, bloom and then died out through the stabilization period and the explosion of pod initially. Stabilization of the nitrogen cycle is only the first. I suspect that there are other micro nutrients that cycle similarly to this also. It is just not as important. Plus as Gary wrote, an experienced reefer can cut corner and do OK but a new reefer with a month or two experience should wait. Patience is one of the more important characteristic reefers need to be successful.

 

[bradleym]

This 6 month rule is in place to cover several issues. First and most common, it is to make sure the hobbyist has gotten into a routine that guarantees good nutrient export. After the first few weeks, nitrates will be the biggest concern, and it is critical to keep those levels low. In a new setup, with different patterns and feeding habits, it is possible for even a relatively experienced aquarist to accidentally develop some bad habit that causes high nutrient levels. This can take a few months to build up, and it should be noted and corrected before risking an anemone. However, this is only a rule of thumb, and with proper knowledge, good filtration, and enough experience, this is not always a problem. However there are some other issues that have little or nothing to do with the aquarist:

Using almost all dead rock to set up the tank will take a lot longer to colonize because you are starting with such a small population of bacteria.

Using live or dead rock that wasn't yours originally can put you at risk. LR from a FOWLR can contain copper or high levels of PO4 and NO3 depending on the care and treatment of the previous tank. These will leach out into your water for a very long time.

Flow patterns can create detritus buildup in/around rock, causing unexplained high nutrients down the road.

I think these are the biggest issues that have lead to creation of this rule. Mostly, it is to make sure you aren't skipping any steps or cutting any corners that will end up costing you and your livestock. However, if you have the proper experience establishing and maintaining a clean healthy reef, good nutrient export, and rock from a good source, you can cut the time down by a lot IMO.

 

[Wistler]

I too had the same questions as the original poster and sought out many sources to try and get a plausible answer. I am new to saltwater reef tanks, but in the past 6 weeks I have tried to absorb as much info as possible, including reading Fenner's "The Consciensous Marine Aquarist" cover to cover, and speaking with members of our local reef club. I looked at several tanks and read several forums for days and days, when it was slow at work

Our tank turned 6 weeks old and I took a chance and bought a healthy green BTA. I drip acclimated him before placing his foot in a shaded area and he has not moved an inch over the past week. He fully extends during the day and has eaten a half inch long piece of raw shrimp.

Before all the daggers get thrown at me let me give you the specifics on my tank and then if someone can tell me why my decision to buy a $40 anemone was a bad one, I am all ears.

We have a 90 gallon display tank with a 29 gallon sump/fuge. In the DT I have 100 pounds of well cured live rock, bought locally with 60 pounds Carib Sea live sand. The fuge has 20 pounds of oolithic sand and a football sized ball of cheato and a clump of calerpa alge. A 65 watt 6700 CF bulb runs opposite the DT lights on a timer.

Im running a Coralife 125 hang on protien skimmer, and have an auto top off water system and a brand new RO/DI system. I use reef crystals salt, and I always let the saltwater age for 7 days before water changes.

I have two 48" VHO Actinics in a oak hood that stagger on two Hamilton 14k 175 watt MH Bulbs. The Actinics come on 2 hours prior than the MH and stay on 2 hours later. The MH run from 1000am to 500 pm and blue LED lunar lights come on from 800PM to 1130 PM. Cooling fans in the hood keep the day and night temps within 1 degree.

My parameters are as follows:

Nitrates/Nitrates/Ammonia at Zero
Temp 78 degrees
Specific Gravity 1.025 (Syben Refractometer)
Calcium 460
dkH 10
PH 8.4 (from day one)
Phosphates - Zero

We have added a pair of clowns, a foxface rabbitfish, 6 green chromis, a long nosed hawkfish, melanarus wrasse and a blue spotted jawfish. The jawfish made an awesome burrow in the right corner where I piled more sand for him.

I use a mag 7 return pump and two Koralia 1050 powerheads for flow.

My neighbor gave me a 6" around hammer coral and a large green stony polyp, which are thriving. I also have a nice selection of other frags, some bought and some given that are doing well. The devils hand has really blown up since we added him.

I feed very sparingly and mainly offer sheets of green seaweed, RDF formula 2, Mysis, and some cyclopeze in minute amounts.

Last week I added two bags of copepods from a local club member that grows them. We are starting to see purple coraline alge appearing all over the rocks and the clean up crew is doing great. The skunk cleaner has already molted.

I have A&B sea balance as well as seachem FUEL on hand but have not added anything to the tank except 3 caps a week of Purple Up (for Magnesium) and a small amount of Kent Calcium.

Thats pretty much our set up. Did we add too much too soon? I'm sure most will say yes. But in my defense, we have so much live rock, sand, alge and the protein skimmer that I never saw a "cycle". I had a diatom bloom on day 8 and that passed with out incident. I have an excel spreadsheet and I am very, very anal with my water changes and testing parameters.

My fish are happy, all our eating and there is no bullying or problems.

Time will tell and in a few months I may look back and say all the "Internet People" were right and I should have waited to add the BTA :wave: I tend to agree that most new people should wait, but I had a lot of support and info to get me started and therefore wild swings in water quality shouldnt be an issue with our tank.

I created a short video to share with our friends on facebook that you guys can see here:

http://youtu.be/0NxtBzvPzZY
I'm not happy with the purple tint but you can get an idea what we have going on. The corals are not perm placed yet..fyi.

 

[windyridge]

Not knowing any better I added an RBTA after only three months. It is thriving and has quadrupled it's size if not more. So it can be done successfully, just not recommended for some of the reasons stated here.

 

[phender]

Although reefing is getting easier with all the new equipment available, I can't count how many people I have talked to who set up tanks and had a very easy time of it for the first few months and then everything goes sideways. Nutrients build up and they start to get hair algae and slime algae. This happens to experienced reefers as well as newbies. The 6 month period gives your tank time to go through ALL the cycles that it needs to go through and time for you to stock your tank. Anemones are a pretty big bio-load and if you don't already have a fully loaded - stable system you risk having things go more wrong than they tend to do anyway.

 

[Wistler]

Phender,

I was worried about what you mention, especially after reading about alot of system crashes and other problems other people experience. I addressed this 4-6 month aging period with my local fish guru, and the possibility for hair and other alge blooms. He said these blooms are not always going to occur, especially If I use RO water and do not let phosphates rise.

I will keep a close eye on things and keep my fingers crossed. My neighbor has had a reef for 3 years using only a skimmer and canister filter and he has not had any problems, and does infrequent maintenence :headwally:

I wonder how many of these alge cycles and problems could be related to the tanks owner getting a little lax in months 3-6 because the "novelty" of the tank wore off and levels weren't monitored?

Just a thought....

 

[BonsaiNut]

Nothing good in the ocean happens fast. Nothing good in our reef tanks happens fast.

For every person who will argue "but look - I was able to keep an anemone alive and my tank is brand new!" there will be 100 who will try it, fail, and not say a word.

There are many variables to take into consideration when cycling a tank. How big is the tank? What does the rest of the system look like - what lighting, what filtration, what water movement? What water is being used? How much live rock? Substrate or not? Etc, etc... so everyone's experience is going to be slightly different. That is a good AND a bad thing! If everyone's experience is going to be different, how can you gauge whether it is safe to short-cut a long cycling process based on hearsay from one person whose tank may or may not be like yours? Even if they use different WELL WATER they may have a completely different experience.

There are things you look for that can't be measured with a kit. Do you see the tank swarming with zooplankton? (about four weeks) Do you see tons of new amphipods? (about six weeks) Do you see a total lack of green algae and/or cyanobacteria and/or dinoflagelletes? (one to two months to fully cycle and know you are "out of the woods") Do you see active and robust growth of purple coralline algae? (one months to two months or longer). Most importantly - when you see these positive things, do they STAY that way, or (what frequently happens) do you see your tank stall at one stage - i.e. great progress for the first month and suddenly huge problems with cyano. Or great progress for two months, but no coralline and your corals all die.

I'm not going to write a white paper on cycling reef tanks here, but the bottom line reason to wait six months is that if you can go six months and not have something bad happen, you are probable good to go. Just because something bad doesn't happen in the first week, or week 2, doesn't mean it won't happen in week 12 - because your tank is still evolving at a quick pace.

 

[rizon25]

I tried to keep a rainbow bubble tip anemone in my 1 and a half month old tank. My ammonia, nitrites, nitrates were zero, I had chaeto as a nutrient exporter. My parameters looked good but the anemone started shriveling up and hiding in it's crevice. My zoas, xenias, cuc, dendro, and clownfish all thrived except for that anemone. I decided to give it to my friend before it died to hold for me until my tank became established and now it's doing well in his 2 year old tank. +1 on waiting at least 6 months before trying to keep an anemone.

 

[Tmoriarty]

This is the point of the discussion I wanted to avoid. Opinions in this hobby are plentiful, but they mean little. What are the factors that cause these crashing tanks and algae blooms....the science not opions. Algae is caused by many things...excessive light cycle, poor nutrient export causing build up at a few months (from poor circulation and overfeeding) . I know some of the causes of these problems and am attempting to stop them before they happen through proper husbandry. (For reference I had diatoms for twentyfour hours only). What is the science behind the wait....not opinions. I don't think everyone should try what I have done. There are far to many variables. For example I stocked my refugium with rocks that already had pod populations from my fifty five gallon. I ran a one month lightless cycle. The tank is stocked lightly (10fish...five are crommies only one inch) . Is there a scientific reason why I should wait six months to add a magnifica? If there is a problem I will face...how do I prevent it? Stuff in this hobby can happen fast if done right...one hundred people may fail but only cause they were under educated or underfunded.

 

[rizon25]

bradleym stated earlier in this thread as to why new tanks may cause failure in keeping anemones. However, If you decide to purchase an anemone, you should keep a daily log of your water parameters, feeding schedule, lighting schedule, and all water changes performed, etc. Maybe you can bust this 6 month waiting period myth lol. I might even try to house an anemone just to do this experiment.

 

[Toddrtrex]

Have to remember that there are changes going on with our newly set up tanks that the average test kit can't measure.

Observations and opinions from people who have been keeping anemones for 15+ years shouldn't be ignored just because they can't produce a "scientific reason".

I used to have an S. haddoni that would always "look" better after I did a 5 gallon water change. However, every test that I ran indicated that nothing changed, should I discount what I observed because I couldn't test any changes?

 

[Faye]

I think a lot of people tend to forget certain things. Todd is right on the money saying that fluctuations happen that our test kits can't read. For example, when the reefer comes onto RC and says "My tank has a ton of nuisance algae, my ammonia is 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 0, phosphate 0, why do I have this algae?" The algae is consuming the nitrates faster than the test kit can see it. Same thing applies with bacteria and ammonia/nitrite. There is such an ample load of bacteria that it is consuming deadly toxins like ammonia and nitrite faster than the test kit can see it. This is usually explained in the "why are my fish dieing?" threads.

WHen you have legit LR and it has been shipped and sat out of water for 24 hours, there was die off. After your nitrification cycle, organisms continue to die for months before new growth comes in. Again, there is so much bacteria on live rock that it is consuming the toxins faster than salifert or api can read.

I think there are ways to safely add in anemones sooner then later though.

 

[phender]

Good luck finding scientific evidence on aquarium keeping. As BonsaiNut mentioned there are way too many variables. Some of those variables can be negated with technology and fastidious husbandry practices, some can't. You have to feed your animals and you need lots of light for example. Every aquarium is its own unique ecosystem. They all need to be dialed in. Sometimes that takes time, sometimes it doesn't, but you won't know until that time has past. If you keep more than one tank at a time on separate systems you find out very quickly that one answer or method does not fit all. It is best to error on the cautious side.
Almost all the advances in this hobby have come from hobbyists not scientists. It is OK to challenge dogma and here say, but don't be so quick to discount those who have been there many times before.

 

[BonsaiNut]

Stuff in this hobby can happen fast if done right...one hundred people may fail but only cause they were under educated or underfunded.

Go for it. You're talking to some pretty educated and funded people here. Prove us wrong. You're not asking for help, you're asking for people to prove a negative. No one will ever be able to prove you CAN'T keep an anemone from day 1, so you just keep trying. Then, when you get a little wiser, and a little more experienced, maybe you will understand what the rest of us are trying to tell you. Let's just hope in the interim you don't kill too many critters.

It is apparent from your statements (about diatoms, and pods, and lightless cycles) that you don't have much experience. I don't understand how someone with so little experience is coming here so willing to argue with people who are trying to help.

 

[MelloW33]

This is the point of the discussion I wanted to avoid. Opinions in this hobby are plentiful, but they mean little. What are the factors that cause these crashing tanks and algae blooms....the science not opions.

If there were an exact science to reef keeping, we would all be successful the first time. Boards like this exist to share opinions and experiences in hope that we can learn from one another. There are many things in reef keeping that cannot be explained.

 

[Tmoriarty]

Go for it. You're talking to some pretty educated and funded people here. Prove us wrong. You're not asking for help, you're asking for people to prove a negative. No one will ever be able to prove you CAN'T keep an anemone from day 1, so you just keep trying. Then, when you get a little wiser, and a little more experienced, maybe you will understand what the rest of us are trying to tell you. Let's just hope in the interim you don't kill too many critters.

It is apparent from your statements (about diatoms, and pods, and lightless cycles) that you don't have much experience. I don't understand how someone with so little experience is coming here so willing to argue with people who are trying to help.

I admitted to having little experience....otherwise I wouldn't be asking the question at all. If I knew everything than why ask for answers right. On that same note I do have multiple sps and two btas in a tank that is a little over a month old and all are healthy.

And to todd...while a five gallon water change might not look like it changed nutrient levels....u and I both know it does. And there r plenti of reefers who know the science behind our tanks...those r the people I'm seeking answers from. I never said I think others should do what I have and u would know that if u read my whole post. I'm just curious as to the science. If the bacteria are consumming nutrients faster then they show up on our kits....then its reasonable to say these nutrients shouldny be harmful to most inhabitants.

Again please keep the flammi.g to ur self and let those with something constructive to say speak. I'm seeking to learn that's all. And for a reference I have only lost one animal In either of my tanks (a sebae to a powerhead) ..so I must either be lucky...or doing something right.

 

[Toddrtrex]

....

And to todd...while a five gallon water change might not look like it changed nutrient levels....u and I both know it does. And there r plenti of reefers who know the science behind our tanks...those r the people I'm seeking answers from. I never said I think others should do what I have and u would know that if u read my whole post. I'm just curious as to the science. If the bacteria are consumming nutrients faster then they show up on our kits....then its reasonable to say these nutrients shouldny be harmful to most inhabitants.

Again please keep the flammi.g to ur self and let those with something constructive to say speak. I'm seeking to learn that's all. And for a reference I have only lost one animal In either of my tanks (a sebae to a powerhead) ..so I must either be lucky...or doing something right.

You are seeking answers from " And there r plenti of reefers who know the science behind our tanks...those r the people I'm seeking answers from." and yet you write a sentence like that.

Look, I have been keeping (( successfully )) for the last 15+ years, with keeping one S. haddoni for 12 years. But, since I don't have a science background nor have published any papers on the subject you feel that me expediences/opinions aren't valid. Fine by me, I don't need anything from you. I wish your anemones luck, they are going to need it.

You contradict yourself with that last paragraph, but what do I know. Not going to waste any more time with someone who insults me.

 

[BonsaiNut]

Again please keep the flammi.g to ur self and let those with something constructive to say speak. I'm seeking to learn that's all.

You've gotten a lot of excellent advice in this thread. Whether you chose to listen to it or not is up to you. What you call flaming I call frustration. People keep saying the same thing to you over and over, and you keep disagreeing with them. Do you want to learn? Or are you just waiting until someone tells you what you want to hear?

I wish I had access to the information you are asking for. I am not aware that it exists - at least I have never run into it and I read TONS of scientific papers. The other people on this forum are saying the same. Good luck on your search - I have no idea who the "plenti of reefers" are who have access to this mystical information you seek. If you run into it please post it here because I would like to read it (no sarcasm intended).