The importance of stability

[wicked demon]

~Adding a lot of equipment, livestock, supplements, and a lot of water changes in a short period of time makes for constantly changing water quality, and little if any stability.

~Not enough emphasis is put on the "stability" factor, until they were put in captive aquaria these animals had little or no fluxuation in their water quality, dietary intake and hours of light. Stress is a huge killer of captive animals and stability is probably the best thing you can give them to avoid problems. (In fish and corals) If corals are melting, bleaching or just not happy, odds are they are doing so in response to a huge change in the environment, for good or bad.


~If your sleep cycle, dietary intake, and oxygen consumption were all altered you wouldn't feel so hot either.

~Just my 2 cents.

 

[revhtree]

Great words of advice!

 

[Alpha Aquaculture]

Your right there are a lot of factors that have to be stable... And the key is that all of them are stable at once...

Would you agree that the stability of some factors are more important than others?

Which factors stabilities are most important? And what is the best reccomended tolerances for those stabilities?

 

[BlazinNano]

I would the two basic main factors would be salinity and temp.

 

[wicked demon]

Tolerances would of course depend on fish or coral, and then species dependant as well, for example hypo salinity;
While used for many fish treatments this is rarely used for any coral treatment, most corals would not survive more than a dip. (there are exceptions)
IME there are some factors we as hobbyists put a lot of credence in to, after salinity;
~PH and temp probably being the largest factors because they are the most visibly obvious immediately, and most likely the biggest killers of newly aquired specimens.
~Slow build up of dissolved organics being the most over looked, because until there is cyano, diatom, or negative algae growth typical hobbyists wont know it is happening, hense the large number of threads about these issues.

 

[Troylee]

In sps tanks I think po4 control is about the biggest concern well mine anyways, I thrive to keep it down low and make sure it never comes up although I get lazy on water changes, I have a skimmer that can handle it, and dose bacteria also... In reality I change 20 gal at one time near the end of the month or go 6 weeks sometimes lol... I think my tank stays pretty stable from this... I dose a ton of crap thou and test all the time.... We had frank burr from tropical osasis speak one time at our local club meeting and he had a couple prop tanks that never did get a water chAnge in over a year and they were flourishing!!!! I think personally I'm gonna change my habbits thou and start changing like 5gal every fridAy so it's not such a drastic change in the water chemistry and helps keep it stable..... Great topic btw...

 

[Alpha Aquaculture]

Alkalinity and Calcium can be kept stable by using a pricise CO2 regulator, like the one from aquariumplants.com (the most precise with electronically controlled bubble count) and a ph controller for your Calcium Reactor, like the one from Milwaukee. I like the ease of GEO calcium reactors because they have a very easy system for cleaning, plastic screws on top that don't even need to be completely unscrewed to allow removal of the top. These things make alk and Ca stability realistic if your using a calcium reactor. There are other ways to keep these two stable but a Calcium Reactor is one of the best.

 

[Alpha Aquaculture]

I try to run more of a hyper active system with increased feeding coupled with increased nutrient removal. I like to do bigger water changes because of this and I have been doing them weekly. I would like to have no sand.

How can I keep my pH very precise?

 

[grisha]

,, i think i just ignore all of em

 

[Paul_N]

Good point WD! I didn't start to have a successful tank until I stopped chasing numbers that other people had their parameters at. I run my parameters high(Ca: 450-500 Alk: 10-11 Mag: 1500+) but stable. When I first started a reef I fell into that trap of reading threads of successful tanks and immediately thinking "Oh he runs his alk at 7-8 so I need to also."

 

[Dave@ARA]

Sorry,
We have a Quantum Meter calibrated with a 100' cable and take readings at the same patch reef every time we go out to our live rock/coral farm, (a couple times a week) and have been taking them there since 2003...I have NEVER gotten the same reading at the same patch reef with my sensor in the exact same place at the same time of day...I always hit it at 2:30PM..and If I am early..I wait.. If I am late..I wait until another day.

Light is NEVER, a stable factor in the wild, never the same from day-to-day or hour-by-hour.

Light attenuation or extinction is greatly effected not only by passing clouds and/or moisture in the atmosphere,...but more over by the constantly changing size and shape of the lenses, (the ever changing water surface), not to mention TDS that are also in a constant state of flux.


I can't even get the meter to stop jumping from it's lowest to highest readings on the calmest of days in situ.

I can take the exact same meter back to our lab,... put it into any one of our 14 systems with as much surface motion as I dare to implement within a closed system I ...CAN ALWAYS get a stable reading even with lights moving, via fans and light movers.

Not trying to be a Know it all jerk... I just live in closer proximity to a real reef to most reefers do, and I scrutinize the differences, (between captive and wild conditions) all the time...with a vengeance.

Alkalinity+Calcium levels stay the same only...temp changes all the time, salinity fluctuates on a yearly cycle,. dietary intake is never the same due to seasonal cycles of nature.

one example; every year on one evening coral will spawn here in the Florida Keys,(there are a few different spawning events associated with different species.. however) on those evenings...when the water column fills with sperm and egg packets..or in the case of brooders, gametes...the fish, squid sharks,everything!.. goes crazy consuming all of the small protein bundles in front of them.

A week before the weren't eating any coral larva... there wasn't any in the water column..... they were eating something else.

Our little closed, high nutrient, bonsai systems are nothing like the wild on so many levels,...I believe it dangerous to compare the two.

Mother Nature doesn't have to worry about potentiometric hydrogen ion concentration...(we do), her system is big enough and constantly receiving light somewhere.-Dave

Don't get me wrong..stability is UBER important our closed systems...but not because your animals were living in, that before they were collected or aquaculture.

 

[wicked demon]

I think the most important aspect is not allowing an animals environment to change except in small amounts, mitigating potential negative outcome.

If you have high nitrate or phosphate you will want to remove it slowly, the same as you would acclimate a fish to its new environment because a rapid change can be bad. Doing a 50% wc on a dirty system will most likely lead to additional issues-even if the water seems healthier.

When using a Ca reactor, PH is well controlled with a CONTROLLER doing top offs with a kalk stirrer, as the reactor drops the PH the controller will top off with kalk saturated 11.0-12.0 PH water until brought to proper levels, this method requires a second top off system with pure RO/DI as top off will need to occur when no PH adjustment is necessary.

 

[wicked demon]

IME/IMO with out a controller, best approach to PH stability is to go DSB (not sugar fine), good oxygenation, lots of live rock and FLOW,

osmosis, dissolution, and diffusion will occur buffering the water naturally, just cannot keep up with large bio loads, in nature this happens through ratio of open ocean to reef;

NATURE~~~less than 1% of our oceans is reef habitat, and the rest fuels the chemical / ionic balance.

CAPTIVITY~~~50% or more of our volume is reef and our systems are far less capable of ionic dissolution and redistribution

 

[RBursek]

Dave@ARA,
I have watched on TV the fall spawning thing, if I remember right it is like 7 days after the full moon in Nov, but was filmed off the GBR in the southern hemisphere, I was always wondering if it was at the same time in the northern hemisphere? Can you confirm the month and moon cycle and time before or after the full moon? I will notice in my tank the softies get huge starting a few nights before every foll moon and get there largest the night of, always wondered if even in a tank they can feel the tidal effect or of it was something in there genetic composition?

 

[RBursek]

Troylee,
I was doing about 25 gal every 4 weeks, then went Randy's route about a month a go and set it up to do an automated change 3qts every day with 2 pumps and a timer. Mushrooms look great all the time now, they usually started to get smaller towards the end of the water change cycle before then perct up right after. My Ca and Alk dosing has slowed down because of it also. Using RC at 1.025 but still dosing Kalk, about 4-5qts a day for MU on a timer set to dose every 2 hours but more during the lowes ph cycle even though the fuge lights are on reversed except all lights are off for about 4 hours during the early morning.

 

[Dave@ARA]

Very cool question RBursek!!
I have witnessed coral spawning within our culture tanks here at ARA as well as the culture tanks at Mote Marine Laboratory.. inside...in closed systems with no lunar/visual cues whatsoever going off at the same time as their wild counterparts.... in my opinion.. there is some cue I would guess gravitational, magnetic or something big... much larger than my understanding... I simply don't don't know ... could be a combination of cues.

 

[CoralBandit]

funny you mention this, I noticed an odd occurrence with corals going suicide @ the same time in two diff tanks but in same city (it was a plate, it was fragged, healed for two weeks, then when transferred after about two days later they both went up in smoke the same night). Wonder if its correlated? I know they release chemicals to coagulate clouds above them I wonder if they can do more?

 

[wicked demon]

Sorry,
We have a Quantum Meter calibrated with a 100' cable and take readings at the same patch reef every time we go out to our live rock/coral farm, (a couple times a week) and have been taking them there since 2003...I have NEVER gotten the same reading at the same patch reef with my sensor in the exact same place at the same time of day...I always hit it at 2:30PM..and If I am early..I wait.. If I am late..I wait until another day.

Light is NEVER, a stable factor in the wild, never the same from day-to-day or hour-by-hour.

Light attenuation or extinction is greatly effected not only by passing clouds and/or moisture in the atmosphere,...but more over by the constantly changing size and shape of the lenses, (the ever changing water surface), not to mention TDS that are also in a constant state of flux.


I can't even get the meter to stop jumping from it's lowest to highest readings on the calmest of days in situ.

I can take the exact same meter back to our lab,... put it into any one of our 14 systems with as much surface motion as I dare to implement within a closed system I ...CAN ALWAYS get a stable reading even with lights moving, via fans and light movers.

Not trying to be a Know it all jerk... I just live in closer proximity to a real reef to most reefers do, and I scrutinize the differences, (between captive and wild conditions) all the time...with a vengeance.

Alkalinity+Calcium levels stay the same only...temp changes all the time, salinity fluctuates on a yearly cycle,. dietary intake is never the same due to seasonal cycles of nature.

one example; every year on one evening coral will spawn here in the Florida Keys,(there are a few different spawning events associated with different species.. however) on those evenings...when the water column fills with sperm and egg packets..or in the case of brooders, gametes...the fish, squid sharks,everything!.. goes crazy consuming all of the small protein bundles in front of them.

A week before the weren't eating any coral larva... there wasn't any in the water column..... they were eating something else.

Our little closed, high nutrient, bonsai systems are nothing like the wild on so many levels,...I believe it dangerous to compare the two.

Mother Nature doesn't have to worry about potentiometric hydrogen ion concentration...(we do), her system is big enough and constantly receiving light somewhere.-Dave

Don't get me wrong..stability is UBER important our closed systems...but not because your animals were living in, that before they were collected or aquaculture.

Seems like a daily stability vs./ life long or even generational stability debate.
The conditions that these animals live in are certainly not as stable as we in the hobby would like but have been on the same yearly cycles for hundreds if not thousands of years, thruogh entire generations, that is stable. just because you get different readings with sensors day to day doesn't mean the coral is in an environment that is inappropriate, in fact that is the "NORM" for the coral ~slight or even drastic variations within parameters acceptable to the species, it is when we put these animals into a closed environment that we take these conditions to the extreme states that cause issues with health. Agreed light is the least stable natural factor, but is one of the easiest to control for a hobbyist, and seems to have a great impact on the behavior of these animals.

 

[CoralBandit]

I agree +1

 

[Troylee]

Very cool question RBursek!!
I have witnessed coral spawning within our culture tanks here at ARA as well as the culture tanks at Mote Marine Laboratory.. inside...in closed systems with no lunar/visual cues whatsoever going off at the same time as their wild counterparts.... in my opinion.. there is some cue I would guess gravitational, magnetic or something big... much larger than my understanding... I simply don't don't know ... could be a combination of cues.

I had this talk with a lfs. And he told me it was the barometric pressure or barometer what ever they call it, he was telling me how nights when it rains his fish act different etc. Also said during thunder storms he has witnessed alot of his fish jump which led him to giving the advice of not having a tv on at night around the tank because the flickers cause stress and fish to jump... How much truth is behind this I don't k ow and I thought it was all hog wash but from what you guys are stating about spawing I could see the barometric pressure being the key in spawing or something very similiar in those lines... Hmm great work guys keep it up....