Your tank is too new for _______ organism. Why?

[TangerineSpeedo]

I’m stumped so definitely following. My 4mos old tank cannot grow SPS — I can grow hammers, torches, other easy corals but no SPS. I’ve used 50% established rocks and half dry rocks. The basic parameters look normal and stable but it’s clear that something is missing. I used to think that once parameters are stable and coralline algae growth as an indicator, SPS should grow. Well, nope — not yet. Guess I’ll wait until a year mark but I’m at a loss on what’s missing.

I think I have some easy SPS coral for you that you can't kill ( If you do let me know how you did it ) Trying not to let it take over my tank. Have you done a ICP on it? Probably just need a bit of NSW... But seriously if you want some easy SPS you got my number.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Here's what I " know" after being in the hobby since 1983. 1) Most rules are really just opinion. 2) The more I know the less I know. 3) The easiest path to success in this hobby is fresh( less than 24 hrs from ocean to tank) live rock, a good skimmer and good lights. I've tried just about every method and with this recipe I can put corals in right away, including acros, and fish by day 5. My guess is it is all about " Biome" whatever that is defined as. In other words if there is enough " good" stuff to balance out the " bad" stuff, enough buffering capacity in rocks and/or sand and enough knowledge/ experience in the reefer to respond when needed. Not overreact and do 9 things trying to fix 1 thing that may not need fixing in the first place. Only " Rule" that I believe in is slow down and think it thru before doing anything. Ok, enough rambling from an old man, lol.

You have me beat with a few years... 24hrs is a weekend dive trip from Chi-town to FLA. which back then was no big deal.

 

[Brad Wilkins]

My tank was up and running in a couple of months. Heavily Stocked with fish and 100 corals including sps. My emphasis was on stocking as much micro fauna as possible from the very start. Live rock, live sand, natural seawater containing mixed pods and a large amount of mixed snails and crustaceans freshly caught that each contribute to their own microbes through defecation. Ive manage to skip the ugly stage completely. Coraline algae was the only thing that took its time to appear but now is starting to grow.
My water changes are 100% monthly NSW and matched with tank Alk and temp. My first sponges appeared within 4 months. Ive lost 9 out of the 100 corals through pore choice in their health from the store and coral warfare mainly due to hermit crabs dislodging corals and dumping them on top of others but every thing els including all the sps, torches and hammers are doing extremely well at 10 months.
Like with many things in reef tanks, it's what you don't see thats going to make the difference.

 

[Imrahilwjz]

Interesting thread. Only thing I have to add is quote which may, or may not, be considered relevant:

"Good judgement comes from experience, a lot of which comes from bad judgement."
Texas "Bix" Bender in "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On."

 

[bakbay]

I think I have some easy SPS coral for you that you can't kill ( If you do let me know how you did it ) Trying not to let it take over my tank. Have you done a ICP on it? Probably just need a bit of NSW... But seriously if you want some easy SPS you got my number.

I got plenty of easy SPS - just no clue why. lol

 

[ajmckay]

I believe the basis for this claim is simply that it's a quicker way to tell an overly ambitious OP to calm down because they're likely not experienced enough to achieve what they're wanting to do right now. Based on ones quick judgement.

Like say a grade schooler tells you with absolute certainty they want to be an influencer and asks you if they could get subs by playing GTA on twitch. Most likely they lack the necessary skills and GTA is really hard since so many people play. Let's say you do have some experience and 1,000 subs. Would you spend the next hour telling them, in detail, how you would do it? Or would you tell them to wait until next year, because "most people are in 8th grade before they can play GTA good enough for twitch". And all this knowing that next week they might decide that GTA is too basic and now what they really want is to day trade Dogecoin.

The reefing forums are loaded with beginner questions over and over - and reefing is a nuanced hobby. If someone is asking what a feather duster worm is, chances are they aren't quite ready for that expensive yasha goby/shrimp pair in the tank they started 3 weeks ago with dry rock and bottled bacteria. Experience would tell you that's a bad idea and to wait until x,y,z conditions are met. But for someone experienced in keeping difficult fish they would have a higher chance of success when introducing such a fish very early on because they know how to work through many of the potential problems with this fish. If you don't have experience with cryptic fish you might think it died if you don't see it for a week.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

I got plenty of easy SPS - just no clue why. lol

So your saying you can grow easy SPS, like birds nest and stylos etc. just the harder stuff is more difficult?

 

[bakbay]

So your saying you can grow easy SPS, like birds nest and stylos etc. just the harder stuff is more difficult?

I haven’t tried those actually. What I meant - I can’t even grow easy stags (Green Slimer) and monti cap, which are supposed to be indestructible! Smooth skins ones die after 2-3 weeks.

 

[goosemans]

I think there are some animals that can be introduced too early… Mandarines, sea stars, clean up crew to name some examples. As long as you’re not putting your whole fish/coral stocking at once. I say send it.

 

[DoktorZhivago]

I can only speak to freshwater planted tanks, my salt water experience is very limited.

I've found that with properly cycled filter media it is possible to immediately introduce fish and plants very successfully to a brand new tank. Even with delicate plants like crypts, I've had very little issues with melting from transplanting in a brand new tank (WITH cycled filter media from an existing tank).

I will say it seems like there is about a 4 week period where the tank bounces around a bit on hardness and alkalinity (tho these are not usually critical parameters in freshwater) which I suspect is the bacterial bloom from the biome introduced with the media pulling bicarbonate out of the water to either munch on or to offset the nitrifying bacteria's hydrogen ion poops.

My cycled media is usually a sponge filter that has been running for at least 4 weeks in an established tank and it carries all my clean up crew hitchhikers on it which are ramshorn and bladder snails, amphipods (aka scuds) and even my cherry shrimp which somehow got into all my tanks despite my best efforts.

It seems like there's always a diatom bloom in a new tank no matter what but it fades within days in a pre-cycled tank rather than weeks in a brand new uncycled tank. Tho this may be due to the efforts of the CUC being introduced early in the process rather than any superior microbial biome introduced from my media

I think if the proper biome is introduced in sufficient quantity to seed the tank relatively quickly (I suspect that within the specifics of this lies the real answer!), then the speed of introduction of livestock doesn't really matter. However I have never attempted this with corals as I am a complete reef noob.

 

[Doctorgori]

Generally IMO “tank maturity” is at best misunderstood and at worst overrated…
with the caveat that coralline, sponges and certain pods take time to establish since IME those variable do seem to
matter

 

[Reefering1]

I can only speak to freshwater planted tanks, my salt water experience is very limited.

That's cool. But, umm..., let's hear about your saltwater experience.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Let me make a contrarian case for a way that water chemistry may be an important thing that stabilizes over time. (the case for bacteria/benthic succession can also be made as well)

This is something that I've been thinking about in my messing around with trace elements since results on the ICP's weren't what I wasn't expecting. I have been doing a bunch of different stuff to my system in phases 6 weeks at a time, and looking at ICP-OES+ICP-MS results between each phase. I expected to see lots of differences between doing essentially no water changes ~1-2% week vs lots 15% per week. I expected to see changes switching from feeding boring flake+pellet+mysis vs replacing 25% of the food input with macroalgae and phytoplankton.
What I saw in my (over 10yr old) system is that essentially none of these things moved the water chemistry much at all. Trace elements have sat at nearly the same detectable levels and barely budged up or down through these intended system changes. Nearly 40 detectable elements that are barely moving at all (link to the sort of data I'm referencing) with the hobbyist trying to introduce significant changes to the system.

So perhaps there is a picture of minor and trace elements in a mature system where there is a multi-branch equilibrium between concentrations in the water, some precipitated with inorganics, some bound to organics on surfaces, some bound to dissolved organics, some taken up by organisms. And over time all these different sinks for low concentration elements get well established so that if the concentration in the water gets externally pushed up or down by inputs or removals, then the equilibrium between these different element sinks works to level the water concentration. More inputs - more rapid movement into the sinks, smaller inputs, some of the sinks such as precipitates, natural chelating dissolved organics and dead organisms all become sources - releasing some back into the water. Maybe old systems are sort of a "Steady Chem 2025" on their own?

I'll give 3 specific element examples since most of what's written above is vague handwaving.
Silicon: In my system years ago it was very depleted, I dosed and dosed lots for months and watched my system guzzle it down. Now - it sits around 0.5ppm silicate without me doing anything, and I haven't dosed it in months. I see sponges and flushes of diatoms come and go. But the concentration stays steady. The uptakes and dissolutions back into the water seem to have balanced. (confirmed no notable inputs through water changes).

Phosphate works similarly in many systems. People who find it zero'd have to dose surprising large amounts for a long time, and then - they don't anymore. The system will often just hold a steady level once enough inputs have been added (mine does).

Iodine is another element where when people start dosing the demand is enormous, but the demand drops over time after more and more inputs. Uptake slows, and maybe some of the sinks once built up, become sources here too. (I've measured Iodine release into the tank water from dead gorgonian tissue before.)

Maybe many other minor & traces work like these more easily measured ones. Fairly easy to argue that Copper and Iron for instance have many of the sinks I mentioned: precipitates, bound to organics on surfaces chelated with dissolved organics in water, in addition to uptake by organisms.

Without these sinks being well established, we should expect new systems to be much swingier with respect to many of these things. Once firmly established, water concentrations seem quite hard to move for lots of elements.

I think the increasing trend to stabilize the concentration of many seawater components is a real, fascinating, and important aspect of the chemistry of reef tanks as they age.

Calcium carbonate surfaces, organics in detritus, on organisms, and coating many solid surfaces, and various mineral precipitates will all reversibly bind and help stabilize concentrations of many elements, including most transition elements. Recycling of elements through uptake and then release by organisms (such as snails eating algae) may be an important recycling mechanism for elements such as iodine.

OTOH, Im not sure that Si measured by icp is all usable orthosilicate and may be forms like metasilicate that organisms such as diatoms and sponges may not readily use.

I’d love to have much more discussion of these stabilization ideas, but they do bring up more questions than answers.

1. Are these chemistry differences actually impacting organisms in an important way that simple dosing doesn’t overcome?

2. Which chemicals does #1 apply to?

3. Is #1 true because the chemicals in #2 are more stable (always available at a more fixed concentration) or never getting too high, or never getting too low?

Lots of great food for thought!

 

[bswicicki]

Not directly related to your quest here, but kinda sorta in a way.

The list of your tank is x blanket statements here are endless….. and the parrots are many.

“What’s your par? Oh it’s 350…that coral won’t live unless it gets 351, change your lights”…I have no clue how I’ve been in the hobby since the nineties and never even touched a par meter.

“What’s your nitrate and phosphate? Oh, 20 and 0.08…that’s horrible! Corals need to be at 10 and 0.03 or they’ll all die!”

“What’s your ph? Holy cow that’s low! No wonder you’re having problems. You must have 8.3 or higher, your tank is dying “.

“What’s your last icp test show? Whaaaat? You don’t do icp? No wonder, you’re an idiot…you must do icp testing every other Tuesday and twice as often on leap year or you’ll never be successful!”

“What’s your flow??”

I think you get the picture. When I started we didn’t have all these rules (or commandments as I can them). Yes there were generalizations, but I never heard so many things (especially numbers) spewed off with such authority. I feel for people asking questions quite often. How do they even begin to sift through all the differing “facts of reefing” responses they get?

I remember when this was as much an art as it was science. That was until the science got better . Back in the day I remember the cutting edge involved ozone thru wooden air stones for the best ORP. Who cares about any of that anymore?

That said of course the numbers matter we know what is optimal for most species out there. You cannot argue with the science BUT in my since opinion stability is king. The difference between Kh of 7.6 and 9.5 probably means very little UNLES you change it in an hour. Do that 2 or three times and you start murdering livestock

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Just pondering here, but I also wonder how much of the mantra that water changes are all you need in the early stages of a tank plays a part in chemical theories.

For example, it seems highly likely that trace elements such as iron and manganese are severely depleted by ugly stage algae growth or refugium or ats macroalgae and turf algae growth. Water changes won’t keep up with that.

 

[Luminous74]

I’m not a chemist or biologist, but I think – and I really mean think – it’s more about biology. From what I’ve seen, older tanks packed with corals tend to have fewer issues. You can kind of replicate that in new tanks if you load them up with lots of corals, even bigger ones, right from the start.

I also don’t think live rock is absolutely necessary. The coral colonies bring the right microbiome with them and can steer the tank in the right direction. Corals are constantly influencing their environment, and yeah, they’re always kind of at war with each other. You can’t measure that with ICP tests.

When I started out, I did regular ICP testing and tried to keep everything in the “perfect” range, but honestly, my results weren’t any better than they are now. These days, I just test the macros and do ICP maybe two or three times a year to make sure trace elements aren’t building up (I’m using All-For-Reef). Oh, and I do a 10% water change every week.

What always gets me is how my corals look even better after a water change. It makes me wonder: Is it something about the chemistry, or is it biology I’m affecting? I don’t really have an answer. But then I think, if everything was perfect before the water change, why do the corals open up more afterward?

 

[Reefering1]

For example, it seems highly likely that trace elements such as iron and manganese are severely depleted by ugly stage algae growth or refugium or ats macroalgae and turf algae growth. Water changes won’t keep up with that.

At that stage of a tank, how much benefit is managing trace elements? They're still trying to get past the algea, everything "good" keeps dying, and are spread pretty thin learning the basics...

 

[crazyfishmom]

I’ve been in the reefing hobby for about 1.5 years at this point. Multi tank syndrome so I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with different ways of starting a tank. I like starting a tank with just coral and bottled bacteria and ideally a nice piece of live rock.

The tanks where I started with mostly live rock took off faster than the tanks that were started dry. The tanks with mostly live rock never really went through the uglies. The tanks with dry rock did.

Most of my corals, including the harder to keep species like acros, gonis, and fancy torches have done well. I make sure to keep nutrients detectable in all tanks and I use my trusty AFR to maintain everything else. I have really high nutrients in one of my tanks but everything in it is thriving so I don’t worry about it.

All of my tanks have been able to grow coralline within a month. My anemone tank had one small piece of live rock and the rest was dry. It went from 3 nems placed in it to 20 plus in a year and they’re all loving life. The first anemone went in when the tank was 2 weeks old.

I don’t have any automation and lighting varies wildly from tank to tank so it’s not like I’ve discovered some reefing secret. I read a lot and from the beginning have tried to make as few interventions as possible. Was traveling a lot for work recently so my alkalinity in one of my tanks slowly went down to 4.5 dkh from 9.5 dkh. Did not lose a single coral. Brought it back up very slowly, about 1 dkh per week till it reached 7.5 dkh which is where I’m going to try to stay moving forward.

I think we over complicate the hobby.

 

[kingranch2003]

That's cool. But, umm..., let's hear about your saltwater experience.

I can only speak to freshwater planted tanks, my salt water experience is very limited.

Seems like they covered that at the beginning. It is very "limited".