Beginner Corals

[Ray Pollett]

Debates are great. If you have an open mind both sides hopefully learn something.

Nikki's

"It is my understanding that this tank had a very low bioload, which in my mind is why the DSB lasted as long as it did."

From my understanding Bob's is low density fish load. None of mine that are about 4 years old are. Most People who see them comment on the number of fish; including other maintence company people.

I do not worry about nitrates for fish, but Cleaner shrimp other than CBS and some corals seem to be bothered by them. The acceptable nitrate levels that are regularly mentioned in this hobby are very low. I read a government report years ago about the levels sea animals could take ( wish I had a copy of it), it showed much higher acceptable levels. So I decided to see for my self. Ran a tank for almost 3 years with nitrates above 200 except for very breif periods. Never lost a fish in the tank including three Yellow tangs ( once known as the carnary of saltwater tangs). I than ran the tank with nitrates over 1200 for another year to see what happened. Still no loses of fish. Corals and anemones grew slower but almost all survived. Mushrooms, leather, and colts. Anemones even cloned.

Ray

 

[mojoreef]

Wow an interesting debate. I have to agree that some corals do well in what most of us would concider toxic conditions. The corals that can survive these conditions can so because they in themselves are toxic produces and have developed imunities to such chemical warefare Through the use of mucus coatings, chemcial tolerences).
DOC's are absorbed through a corals tissue and can be realted directly with the ammount of fleshy tissue that particular coral has. The consumtion of DOC's in any coral is very small in concederation to other forms of feeding however.
On the running of a skimmer or not, it again is an idividuals choice, but with out one you greatly reduce the variety of corals you can keep, you also reduce your tanks ability to survive and event if something goes wrong. Eric Bornaman and Dr. Ron would be prime examples of that. Both having tanks that could have survived the minor disaster thier tanks went through, but instead they lost thier whole tanks and all in them. That was in thier words also. For me (and this is just a personal choice) I perfer not to run the risk, and to open myself up to be able to keep a much broader varity of inhabitants. Running a system with out export means that all is kept in the tank, and that is just a recipe for diaster. DSB's have the ability to cycle out some nitrogen products but that is about it. and they can only do so much all others are sunk into the bed. Which is fine but either other methods of exporting the nutrient overload in the bed must be performed or thier will be a time limit on its survival or effectivness. Also if you are running a DSB/ecosystem or ther sand substriaghts and you have measurable levels of nitrates your system has already losts its ability for denitrification and i already on its way to checking out.
The use of calurpas for exportaion can be done but has to be done correctly (as in removing the entire plant without breaking when harvesting) but when you use them you also subject your inhabitants to a host of poisenious and toxic chemicals (alleochemical (sp?)) these include growth inhibitors, oxidizers and so on. Calurpas are very aggressive towards gaining real estate and use them continiously to do so. Again thier are some corals that also play that way and thus have the ability to survive it.
Ray a question or two for ya. Do you have any pictures or links to folks with these old DSB tanks?? 15 years is a long time I would love to see them. Also it would be great to have you load up some pics of your systems in our gallery.

take care and a great conversation

MIke

 

[Ray Pollett]

Mojoreef,

No I do not have pictures of the other old systems. I do Have pictures of some of the tanks I take care of. The problem is size as I have not figured out how to lower the megabits( is that what it is called) in a picture to met the requirements. Mine all seem to be too, big. None are really heavily populated with corals and since I do not use MH only PCs no really tuff corals to keep. My customers seem to be more interested in an anemone anyway. I could e-mail some if you want? and you could resize and post.

Ray

 

[mojoreef]

Ray I would do it no problem but my email sucks and it wouldnt except the large picture size. maybe we can get someone with a more friendly email to do it for ya.


Mike

 

[Ray Pollett]

Ray I would do it no problem but my email sucks and it wouldnt except the large picture size. maybe we can get someone with a more friendly email to do it for ya.


Mike

Not a problem or maybe someone could tell me how to do it. The one I looked at real quick was 2048X1536 JPEG 687 KB

Ray

 

[Stircrazy]

How big are they? you can try send one to me as a test and I can make it smaller.

Steve

 

[Ray Pollett]

How big are they? you can try send one to me as a test and I can make it smaller.

Steve

Please send me your e-mail address. I figured out attachment there but not with this site. Sorry computer illiterate.

Ray

 

[Stircrazy]

Its [email protected]

Steve

 

[NaH2O]

Ray,

What you can do, if you want to attach them here, is at the bottom of the page, click on "Post Reply", which will take you to a different screen. Type your description, then go to where it says "Attach file:" From there, click on "Browse..." and select the picture you want to attach. Submit Reply is next. Hope this helps!

 

[B-Random]

You could copy it into paint and resize it

 

[Ray Pollett]

Ray,

What you can do, if you want to attach them here, is at the bottom of the page, click on "Post Reply", which will take you to a different screen. Type your description, then go to where it says "Attach file:" From there, click on "Browse..." and select the picture you want to attach. Submit Reply is next. Hope this helps!

Thanks Nikki, but they say it it too big. That is why I was trying to e-mail it to some who knows how to resize it or find out how to resize it myself.

Best Wishes,
Ray

 

[NaH2O]

DOH! Don't mind me...I'm having a blonde day - I see that you were having trouble resizing now...after the fact...lol. B-Random made a good point:

You could copy it into paint and resize it

have you tried this?

 

[Ray Pollett]

Steve I sent you one.

I have Photoshop Elements 2.0 if that helps. I figured out how to crop a picture , but not shrink the size of KBs

Ray

 

[Ray Pollett]

I may have figured it out. We'll see.

 

[Ray Pollett]

This is an 80 gallon Bow front. Set up 3-16-01. Run by 2 Magnum 350 canister filters. The Anemone has split on a number of ocassions. The Clones have been removed.

 

[Ray Pollett]

This is a 125 set up 5-31-02 in a day care center. It is run by 2 Emperor 400 filters.

 

[Stircrazy]

ok I see you got it hehe, guess I don't need to resize this one for ya then.

Steve

 

[Ray Pollett]

I finally figured it out. I want to thank everyone for their help.

Now you have to put up with all my pictures