Holy Cow Brad great thread, good comments to!!
Couple of quickies. One on flow. When talking about flow in your tank I think the best way to approach it is not by how much do you have but more on how effective it is. Thier are certain goals that folks need to concentrate on when looking to get the right flow in the tank. With flow you want to keep food (detritus/waste or what ever) in the water column and available (as in floating around the corals) it doesnt take alot of flow to do this, just little bits in the right place. For folks with BB tanks it becomes a little more of a requirement. Now you are still trying to do the above but also want the food not to settle out, so more attention muct be given to lower end flow. On keeping detritus and such out of a coral (stag or cup) its pretty hard to do, I know I cant for all my corals, now this is important because that food on the coral will hurt it, the bacteria begin to reduce it and keep going into the hurt part of the tissue, this causes bacterial infections and can lead to rtn. Two things fix this, one is acro crabs and the other is blowing them off with a PH.
Second thing is on lighting. MOST all MH lighting will grow coral no problem.It does not take much light energy to start a photosynthetic cycle. For color it is just a matter of lining up the color bulb with the color/pigment that you want to have that coral turn. I think folks should spend more time on that then on the out put of every bulb and ballast.
Brad I hear you on the reflectors, I knew it was a big factor, but not mearly as much as it truely is.
Mike
Couple of quickies. One on flow. When talking about flow in your tank I think the best way to approach it is not by how much do you have but more on how effective it is. Thier are certain goals that folks need to concentrate on when looking to get the right flow in the tank. With flow you want to keep food (detritus/waste or what ever) in the water column and available (as in floating around the corals) it doesnt take alot of flow to do this, just little bits in the right place. For folks with BB tanks it becomes a little more of a requirement. Now you are still trying to do the above but also want the food not to settle out, so more attention muct be given to lower end flow. On keeping detritus and such out of a coral (stag or cup) its pretty hard to do, I know I cant for all my corals, now this is important because that food on the coral will hurt it, the bacteria begin to reduce it and keep going into the hurt part of the tissue, this causes bacterial infections and can lead to rtn. Two things fix this, one is acro crabs and the other is blowing them off with a PH.
Second thing is on lighting. MOST all MH lighting will grow coral no problem.It does not take much light energy to start a photosynthetic cycle. For color it is just a matter of lining up the color bulb with the color/pigment that you want to have that coral turn. I think folks should spend more time on that then on the out put of every bulb and ballast.
Brad I hear you on the reflectors, I knew it was a big factor, but not mearly as much as it truely is.
Mike
J/K
