Hi all, my current reef has been up and running since 2016 and the live rock that is in it has been in my tanks since the 1990s.
Anyway it occured to me several months ago that I was not seeing the gazillion micro star arms all over the rockwork when I would feed the tank. That puzzled me because my tank has always had oodles of those tiny starfish. Also my tank coincidentally was in a downward trend at that time, (nothing catastrophic but several coral were languishing as well). Or was it a coincident?
I have been keeping salt water aquaria since 1997 and in that time I have had 3 main tanks. So each tank was up and running 6+ years. When you have tanks that are up that long you have times of exceptional health of all the animals but then it may be followed by a season of some of the Coral not thriving. On occasion I may have been able to attribute it to a lapse in maintenance. However I was an aquarium maintenance tech and rarely have lapses so more often it remained a mystery to me. I have since talked to other reefers whose tanks have been up and running for many years and they too have experienced this.
Is it possible that our mature, stable reef goes through natural seasons of rise and fall? Maybe a pod plague breaks out and kills a large percentage of the pods or in my tank's case it was the micro stars. I am only surmising but what do you all think???
Anyway it occured to me several months ago that I was not seeing the gazillion micro star arms all over the rockwork when I would feed the tank. That puzzled me because my tank has always had oodles of those tiny starfish. Also my tank coincidentally was in a downward trend at that time, (nothing catastrophic but several coral were languishing as well). Or was it a coincident?
I have been keeping salt water aquaria since 1997 and in that time I have had 3 main tanks. So each tank was up and running 6+ years. When you have tanks that are up that long you have times of exceptional health of all the animals but then it may be followed by a season of some of the Coral not thriving. On occasion I may have been able to attribute it to a lapse in maintenance. However I was an aquarium maintenance tech and rarely have lapses so more often it remained a mystery to me. I have since talked to other reefers whose tanks have been up and running for many years and they too have experienced this.
Is it possible that our mature, stable reef goes through natural seasons of rise and fall? Maybe a pod plague breaks out and kills a large percentage of the pods or in my tank's case it was the micro stars. I am only surmising but what do you all think???