I have to agree with Craig on that a lot of books are outdated. Especially since so many new advances are made about reef care. Not to say that I have found some extremely helpful. John, do you have any books you could suggest for us newbies trying to do the right thing? I have found out things from talking to experienced addicts, I mean hobbyists >LOCO< and books as well as online forums. But mostly trial and error. As far as the salinity-mine has swung dramatically in the past few months because I didn’t know how important top offs with fresh water were. No books mentioned that one important factor. I have played hell getting things stabilized and the only thing that happened were my guys just shrunk up for a few days (heehee-minds out of the gutter please) and when it got back on track they opened up again. I Have however made sure all of my other params were spot on though. Oh and if you don’t have a refractometer you should get one ASAP. My hydrometer read about.05 off.
[quote=“JCoyne, post:21, topic:4284”]
I have to agree with Craig on that a lot of books are outdated. Especially since so many new advances are made about reef care.[/quote]
What new advances? There are lots of new products. Power heads have become a little more powerful and use a little less electricity. New techniques in plumbing can make your system quieter. I could list many advances, but the husbandry fundamentals have changed much at all in the last 10 years(actually much longer). If you only test Ca and your Mg is dropping in the long run it isn’t going to be easy to keep up your Ca. Chemistry is fundamental and no new discoveries have been made. Fish poop in the water and no such thing as a pooper scooper has been developed or fish diapers, so it has to be deal with in other manners. Light, flow, temp, pH, nutrients, animal niches, live rock…
Leaps and bounds have been made in fish breading, keeping of non-photosynthetic animals, and keep “ultra low nutrient systems”, but again any book written on these topics would have to include a paragraph in the beginning stating the book is for expert aquarists only and that the fundamentals of aquarium keeping cannot be ignored(or just have a copy of the other two books I mention glue to the front cover. )
The two books I mentioned are really good basic reads. Chris Brigthwell’s “Marine Chemistry” and Sprung’s “Marine Aquarium”. If you are really new to the hobby read them and then read them again after you’ve played with your tank for a year and reread them again after you’ve been in the hobby for two years. There is lots you may think you understand the first time around, but you’ll learn with hands on experience how important they are. That would be my advice.
I could mention many other cool books to read about specific topics or different advanced topics, but I haven’t found any others that cover the basics as well.(though I am reading one now that may come close, but may be better for FO geeks) I have a book shelf full of books on this hobby not to mention my chem, bio, and other text on another shelf.
We’ve steered this a bit off topic though I believe and should like the original poster ask any important questions he/she may have until they have time to pick up a good book(if they choose to). Still need to hear about what they are using to measure salinity as Paul brought up and about their filtration.
“Complete idiots guide to saltwater aquariums”. Best book I have found for anyone with a saltwater tank and no biology degree. All orbs text is explianed " barney style" for those of us that have no idea what effect magnesium ions have on calcium when added to the same body of water… GET IT!!!
[quote=“JCoyne, post:21, topic:4284”]
…my guys just shrunk up for a few days[/quote]
Water was too cold.
:
: :: ::
Again I’m not debating whether or not someone should read books - I have a whole library of them - not fish related - but I love a good book. I like BJ’s suggestion of the Idiots Guide - it’d be great if we all had a chemistry degree but unfortunately most of us don’t - and you’re to be credited for having one Jon. I’ve had a hard time finding a book that wasn’t over my head.
I much prefer forums, meetings, and one on ones to learn. It gives me the ability to ask questions until I have a compelte understanding of the subject, I like frum because it gives me the ability to hear different opinions and different experiences from people that have already been where I am.
Chemistry has not changed much in years, but the products that are reccomended for maintaining them sure have. What was suggested 5 years ago may not be suggested today. Lights have come a long way in the last 5-6 years. 6 years ago you needed to have MH to be successful, 3 years ago you were nuts not to run T5s, now LEDs are all the rage. So picking up a book that is 3-5 years old could cost you to spend hundreds on outdated technology (as said by the guy who just switched to MH).
My suggestion is that if you’re going to reccomend a book, or to research online, that you include a name, an author, a link, etc.
Being that Cam has not responded back, I will try to fill in a few blanks for him, since I have intimate knowledge of this tank.
[quote=“reefman66, post:3, topic:4284”]
How long has this tank been set up? It looks and sound fairly new from your statement. Are you going through the initial cycle?[/quote]
This tank was set up and we used the shrimp method to start the nitrogen cycle. It ran for about 2 months, I think, before the Nitrates came back down to below 10ppm. The first day we tested the nitrates at zero was March 25th. From that point we moved some livestock out of the 29g tank they had set up originally. I can’t remember the exact order of things that were moved, but we made sure to do the full move over the course of a few weeks, as to not “over bio” the tank. Regardless, this tank has been cycled for almost 3 months, which is still probably a little too soon for stony corals, but in my opinion that is not the issue they are having.
[quote=“dajohnson02, post:5, topic:4284”]
Question: Are you keeping your fuge’ lit at night, and off during the day? May help with the buildup of bubble algae.[/quote]
The light over his sump/fuge does run at the opposite times from the DT lights.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:6, topic:4284”]
How did your Calcium get that high? If you haven’t added calcium then your test kit or you salt mix is bad. [/quote]
I don’t know how the calcium got that high. As far as I know they are not dosing for it in any way. They are using Instant Ocean Reef Crystals salt, which, in my tank normally has very low calcium although I have a lot more coralline and more calcium using livestock.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:6, topic:4284”]
What is your photo period? If you keep all the lights on for 12 hours a day that can make getting rid of this stuff more difficult as well. [/quote]
I believe their photo-period is blue actinics from 10am-8pm, and white aquablues from 10:30am - 7:30pm. But I may have the end times wrong, they could be 9pm and 8:30pm.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:6, topic:4284”]
Do not add any products that claim to remove the algae, diatoms, or bacteria. They won’t really help or may remove what you are seeing, but something else bad will happen. [/quote]
I am 100% sure that Cam knows better than to try any of this stuff, and his mom wouldn’t without him or I saying to do so, which we wouldn’t.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:6, topic:4284”]
What is the TDS on your RODI water?[/quote]
They are zero.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:6, topic:4284”]
Take things slow. Do you water changes. Limit food going into the tank.[/quote]
As far as water changes go, I believe they do 20% every week to two weeks. We have talked his mom into slowing down the amount that she feeds. They were feeding 1 cube every other day of frozen mysis shrimp. She now is going to feed either 1/2 cube or 1 cube every 3 days to see if that fixes anything.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:8, topic:4284”]
I think your corals are too close to the light which is affecting their appearance.[/quote]
I personally think this is his biggest issue. Initially they placed the chalice on the sand bed for about 3 or 4 days, no more than a week. It started to lose some of its color so I believe it was moved up in the tank, after a couple of days no change was noticed, so they moved it again, and I think it may be stressed because of all of the movement. For the Favia, it was put in the tank just above midway of the tank, and almost immediately got a piece of chaeto stuck on it and I wonder if the chaeto being batted around by the flow was causing some stress to the coral.
[quote=“ibanez2k, post:13, topic:4284”]
Also, I couldn’t tell if it was mentioned already but do you have any filtration media in the tank or any other areas that excess detritus might be trapped and building up?[/quote]
There is no filtration media like carbon or bioballs, or anything else like that, other than chaeto grass in the sump/fuge.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:15, topic:4284”]
To the original poster include some information about your flow, source fresh water, and filtration media or skimmer.[/quote]
For flow, I believe they have a Koralia 1050, a Koralia 750, and possibly an older Koralia 1 (or 2?)
He mentioned in his original post that he has a 20g sump with a g1x skimmer.
We also recently installed a 75gpd AWI Reefkeeper RODI (as in just finished the install on Sunday). Prior to that, they were using a combination of distilled water and RODI water from my Reefkeeper that I provided to them.
Cam (and his mom) are using the refractometer that they won from our March meeting (I think that is when) to measure salinity. I also made sure that they understood that it would be a good idea to regularly check the calibration on the refractometer using pure RODI or Distilled water, especially when there have been large swings in ambient temperature in the room they have the tank in.
As for his Calcium, I am sure that they are not dosing for it, and they just got their Salifert test kit on Sunday, which is when he tested it. I personally have a hard time believing that his calcium is that high in that tank, but it is what it is.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:15, topic:4284”]
That being said I probably won’t be checking back to this thread. My advice would be to slow down get a good book such as the ones mentioned above and take your time.[/quote]
This type of statement is unfortunate to read on a forum for a club that is built around helping each other. Cam didn’t pose a question asking how calcium or magnesium interact in saltwater, or what the exact science is behind the calicification of the skeletons of an LPS (both things that these books will explain, not how to diagnose an issue that you are having, right now, in your tank). He posted pictures in hopes of someone saying, “Hey my corals did that same thing, my dKh was WAY low.” Now, will those books help him to better understand how to be a better aquarist? Maybe, but they won’t help him right now, which is where the forums are beneficial. Now, I can tell you that your first post is very appreciated, and has given him (and I) some things to think about in order to diagnose our issue with this tank, which is what we were looking for.
I apologize for the wall of text, but I wanted to give some sort of update since I am sure Cam is busy finishing up college, getting ready for a trip to Africa, and then moving to St. Louis for a year. We both obviously appreciate any advice that is given. The one thing about this hobby is that you can ask a simple question to 3 different people, and end up getting 5 different answers. It can be very polarizing.
This ended up being a long response as well so I bolded the take home points.
Please understand reading this I’m just trying to be helpful. Not trying to sell anyone anything or anything else. There is usually no quick and easy answer to any of this.
Large swings in temperature in the room? Sun room? Basement? Aired out enough? Have they checked the tank temperature first thing in the morning and right before sunset? What are they using to check the temperature? If they are considering a controller watching the charts of temperature can be very helpful. Night to day swings of a degree or two are typical for reef tanks 4-5*F swings and they may need to consider fans or heaters to keep things more stable.
“both things that these books will explain, not how to diagnose an issue that you are having, right now, in your tank” Actually the book doesn’t explain calcification in LPS corals, please point me to a book you’ve read that does. The books actually do go into lots of what if scenarios and trouble shooting.
No one looked at his corals and said, “you need to add element X to fix thatâ€ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ. All that was posted by me and others was an overwhelming general, “you should know this, and this, and this, and this”. Just a general sweep of everything you should know. With the original post including all the information of their tank trying to find what they could possibly be missing and knowing that the hobbyist was new it isn’t off base to go into everything. That being said books do that a lot better than a thread with a random assortment of things being thrown in the ring. There is an awful lot you can miss when first setting up an aquarium and with the time you may spend crossing things off and going back and forth with hobbyist online, many of which could give poor advice, you could read a pretty good book.
“The one thing about this hobby is that you can ask a simple question to 3 different people, and end up getting 5 different answers. It can be very polarizing.”
As previously stated, the forums will give you 5 different answers. A good book does not. Mixing one persons advice one day because you picked up a Calcium and Alk test kit and then the next day getting advice from a different person on what to keep your Mg at and you could have a disastrous result. Same goes for flow and lighting. If you have a very brightly lit tank and very low flow the end result can be very bad.(a hobbyist with dim lighting, low flow, and soft corals may have fast growing zoanthids and discoma mushrooms, and a hobbyist with 400w MH, SPS, and massive amounts of flow may have great success as well, but combining low flow and bright light and you won’t have success with either type of coral.)
If someone is new to the hobby I recommend reading books to them at least once and really don’t see the harm in it. I am really not sure why people have a problem with me recommending it. I said it and if they choose not to do so then they can sort through the 20 different answers on the forums. Their choice. If I had said screw this forum get a book and figure it out on your own then I could understand, but I offered suggestions, asked questions, and then recommended reading.
Instant satisfaction, wither we are seeking the answer to what we should keep our tanks at and expecting a one word answer(keep your Ca at 400ppm), or understanding what is going on(why are my corals upset), or doing something to your tank and expecting results(let’s dump algaegone in my tank to get rid of all the green and red stuff), in my opinion will never lead to a successful aquarium.
To be honset there isn’t really much you can identify problem wise by looking at a coral in a newbys tank you are completely unfamiliar with. You may have heard that successful aquarist and look at their corals and tell what is going on, but they are also intimately familiar with their tank and the temperament of their animals. If you want to keep healthy marine animals you keep healthy water. I can’t tell from the images of his water what is wrong with it.