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Nutrient Saturated Systems
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john.m.cole3
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I was talking with a local reefer who suggested removing my chemical filtration about 3 months ago. I was worried. My nitrates were 5 and po4 was .03. I changed my GFO, GAC, and purigen regularly and always had them running. I took everything off at the same time. My tank almost instantly started looking better. Now I run my skimmer 24/7 and put some filter floss in the sump every now and then. Nitrates are 35 and phosphate holds steady at .03. I just let it go. The only reason I test is out of curiosity but not to inspire a reaction .
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john.m.cole3
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And I have zero algae. But tons of micro feather dusters have popped up and the rocks darkened in color within the first 2 weeks.
Paul B
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I never use any Purigen, GFO, GAC, ABC Do Rae Me or any of that stuff and I have no algae except where I want it in my scrubber. My reverse undergravel filter is also filed with tiny tube worms. :)
Bob Escher
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That sounds interesting that most tanks with most tweaking have most problems.
But most people especially newbies to the aquarium hobby ( fresh and salt) that's all they know, 5test test test. Watch out for this and that and we really don't learn until years later or so.
And it's all about experience and knowing what our tank is all about. I don't think every tank can get away with high nitrates and it's probably something that occurs more naturally then the person actually forcing it to be that way. Once the hobbyist has discovered it is they leave it
How many of us really learned that you can keep those things high, not many I presume
But most people especially newbies to the aquarium hobby ( fresh and salt) that's all they know, 5test test test. Watch out for this and that and we really don't learn until years later or so.
And it's all about experience and knowing what our tank is all about. I don't think every tank can get away with high nitrates and it's probably something that occurs more naturally then the person actually forcing it to be that way. Once the hobbyist has discovered it is they leave it
How many of us really learned that you can keep those things high, not many I presume
Paul B
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Hey Veteran, thank you for your service. I too am a Veteran.
About the tweeking, that of course is not a scientific study and just comes from my observations. If you read these threads it seems so many people fret so much that their nitrates are not zero and the temp is not 79 and their salinity is 0.025. These numbers are generalities and the fish and corals are not that sensitive. But they are sensitive to change and adjusting things like pH which I have never tweeked and I have had fish over 60 years is harmful. They seem to do much better if we have parameters close to what they are in the sea and they should be and leave it at that. I also assume that a Noob may want to use GAC and GFO because they have not yet learned to let bacteria and algae do that for free. It also takes a while, maybe a few years before a tank is stable. I cringe when I read something like "My tank cycled today at 2:15 so I am going to add a bubble coral, mandarin, twin spot gobi and birdsnest"
Truth is a tank never cycles. It varies constantly as life is added or removed and different strains of bacteria are constantly in flux as they multiply and ebb over time allowing your tank to become more stable. I can't see the bacteria but I do know that in a new tank, less than a couple of years old if two pods die, the tank can crash. A Manta ray could have a heart attack and die in my tank while a hurricane hits and shuts off the power at the same time a volcano erupts and raises the temperature to 97 degrees and nothing bad will happen. That is all because the bacteria, which run our tanks are of sufficient numbers and the correct types to keep everything stable. We need a lot of patience in this hobby and that unfortunately is usually lacking. I am sure when I started I also had no patience but I didn't have as many problems because I live near the sea and threw mud, rocks and water in my tank from there so I got a jump on bacteria. I still add mud and rocks from the sea for that reason.
Problems with new tanks such as parasites, algae, cyano, and crashing is directly related to bacteria or the lack of them. Keeping a tank sterile is also a big problem as bacteria hate sterile. That's why they keep operating rooms sterile.
We used to think bacteria were bad, but now we know that bacteria are what makes the world go around and we should also feed our fish live bacteria every day which will also introduce live bacteria to our tanks. That is how to keep a tank stable and eliminate all these problems. Just my opinion of course.
About the tweeking, that of course is not a scientific study and just comes from my observations. If you read these threads it seems so many people fret so much that their nitrates are not zero and the temp is not 79 and their salinity is 0.025. These numbers are generalities and the fish and corals are not that sensitive. But they are sensitive to change and adjusting things like pH which I have never tweeked and I have had fish over 60 years is harmful. They seem to do much better if we have parameters close to what they are in the sea and they should be and leave it at that. I also assume that a Noob may want to use GAC and GFO because they have not yet learned to let bacteria and algae do that for free. It also takes a while, maybe a few years before a tank is stable. I cringe when I read something like "My tank cycled today at 2:15 so I am going to add a bubble coral, mandarin, twin spot gobi and birdsnest"
Truth is a tank never cycles. It varies constantly as life is added or removed and different strains of bacteria are constantly in flux as they multiply and ebb over time allowing your tank to become more stable. I can't see the bacteria but I do know that in a new tank, less than a couple of years old if two pods die, the tank can crash. A Manta ray could have a heart attack and die in my tank while a hurricane hits and shuts off the power at the same time a volcano erupts and raises the temperature to 97 degrees and nothing bad will happen. That is all because the bacteria, which run our tanks are of sufficient numbers and the correct types to keep everything stable. We need a lot of patience in this hobby and that unfortunately is usually lacking. I am sure when I started I also had no patience but I didn't have as many problems because I live near the sea and threw mud, rocks and water in my tank from there so I got a jump on bacteria. I still add mud and rocks from the sea for that reason.
Problems with new tanks such as parasites, algae, cyano, and crashing is directly related to bacteria or the lack of them. Keeping a tank sterile is also a big problem as bacteria hate sterile. That's why they keep operating rooms sterile.
We used to think bacteria were bad, but now we know that bacteria are what makes the world go around and we should also feed our fish live bacteria every day which will also introduce live bacteria to our tanks. That is how to keep a tank stable and eliminate all these problems. Just my opinion of course.
It took me some years to figure out why I didn't have the same problem s a lot of folks did. I'm definitely no genius. I just had no money and still really don't. I got my rocks from good folks who knew about bacteria any age. I was constantly adding new rocks in the first years piece by piece and using natural seawater because it was free.
When I did start to have odd nutrient problems(because everyone said never never clean your sand:eek:) I stumbled across Ron shimeck and Paul B and Randy Farley.
Their undrstanding and approach was very different from the rumor mill and thy guy I alarmist punched at the lfs who basically said I needed to take out a loan to care for my 30 gallon tank.
Both mybtanks now a are both very humble and held together with hello kitty duct tape and stuff I got from Craigslist. But I don't know what people mean by nutrient spikes or a snail died and crashed my tank. My talbot keeps shredding my Dsb but for some reason it didnt make my tank crash it made the corals grow.
Yes o do have algae in the dt but it's because I'm playing with that. It's really been har to keep the bryopsis alive in the 55 for some reason. And the dictoya only appears in the overflow box. It's such a pretty plant. When it starts to come in next Then I clean it off.
It's pretty ironic most call Paul's style and mine I suppose dirty style. We clean stuff. And let bugs do it for us.
Fwiw my no and Po once I finally decided to test were almost undetectable. I knew that because the fuge was full and the zoas began to pout.
So it turns out the secret to my success was I had no choice but to let nature take its course. And hello kitty duct tape.
@Paulb I think your pulling our legs here. With all those bugs n bacteria and algae there no way your numbers are that high unless your buying the fish slurpees and marlboroughs.
When I did start to have odd nutrient problems(because everyone said never never clean your sand:eek:) I stumbled across Ron shimeck and Paul B and Randy Farley.
Their undrstanding and approach was very different from the rumor mill and thy guy I alarmist punched at the lfs who basically said I needed to take out a loan to care for my 30 gallon tank.
Both mybtanks now a are both very humble and held together with hello kitty duct tape and stuff I got from Craigslist. But I don't know what people mean by nutrient spikes or a snail died and crashed my tank. My talbot keeps shredding my Dsb but for some reason it didnt make my tank crash it made the corals grow.
Yes o do have algae in the dt but it's because I'm playing with that. It's really been har to keep the bryopsis alive in the 55 for some reason. And the dictoya only appears in the overflow box. It's such a pretty plant. When it starts to come in next Then I clean it off.
It's pretty ironic most call Paul's style and mine I suppose dirty style. We clean stuff. And let bugs do it for us.
Fwiw my no and Po once I finally decided to test were almost undetectable. I knew that because the fuge was full and the zoas began to pout.
So it turns out the secret to my success was I had no choice but to let nature take its course. And hello kitty duct tape.
@Paulb I think your pulling our legs here. With all those bugs n bacteria and algae there no way your numbers are that high unless your buying the fish slurpees and marlboroughs.
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High nutrients are the new trend this month?
Hahaha.
Not high. Just not chasing. That's an old trend.
I think it's an interesting observation that it seems new. And it is to many but not to those who have already don this for a lifetime.
Check out the skeptical reefkeeping article.
Joe Yuliio and Paul have very similar approaches to reefing. It's a relationship.
We all get love handles right?
But Joe just has a baby reef. It's only 16:D
And I did say I just stripped all mine.stupid Dsb and refugium :oops:
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New this month! AF products with ULNS was last month ;) lol j/k K.I.S.S
I just hope in the next few weeks we don't see a bunch of tanks with no3 at 80 and po4 at 2.0 and people wondering why they have algae? lol
Well see that anyway!
You did notice that this month has been All about I have no nutrients and algae:confused:
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Well thats every day lol! Algae = nutrients. :D
I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong but nucance alegea= it was introduced to the system. Nutrients have nothing to do with it. It goes a bit off topic I suppose.
But in systems with high nutrients nusance algae is not absolutely going to happen.
It introduction to the tank. I think most folks now dip in Bayer and drop the frag in the tank. That doesn't kill algae. Nobody really talks about QT for coral either.
My experiment was to strip the nutrients with the algae and coral then kill the nucance algae. Worked mostly. In the 55 it's miraculous how well it worked in the 30 not as much. The 30 is only six months old kinda. Lower water volume less age I suppose.
But in systems with high nutrients nusance algae is not absolutely going to happen.
It introduction to the tank. I think most folks now dip in Bayer and drop the frag in the tank. That doesn't kill algae. Nobody really talks about QT for coral either.
My experiment was to strip the nutrients with the algae and coral then kill the nucance algae. Worked mostly. In the 55 it's miraculous how well it worked in the 30 not as much. The 30 is only six months old kinda. Lower water volume less age I suppose.
Hahaa
Paul B
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Saltyfilmfolks, it's interesting that you mentioned Dr Ron Shimech as he and I are the same age and along with Martin Moe, we all started with salt water the same year. 1971 is the year they really started to import saltwater fish to the US. Before that I kept some salt water fish but they were all local fish and they, for some reason are very hardy so to kill them you have to lay them in the street and have a 1955 Oldsmobile run over them, twice.
I think many of us started out very poor and some of us still are. When I started my tank I was bringing home $52.00 a week as an electrician apprentice so I had to feed my fish table scraps and collect food at the beach. I also used NSW and local rocks as they were free. I didn't realize then that that natural food and bacteria and mud laden rocks were actually good for my system and I would try to keep it clean. Of course, like today, that is a no no as far as I am concerned as I want as much bacteria as I can get. As I said, my tank is very stable and it doesn't matter if an elephant seal died in there. For instance once a very large carpet anemone died. It was a foot across and it rotted in my tank. The water turned into snot and the fish were gasping at the surface. I cleared it up with a diatom filter and all was well. I didn't lose one fish. (that was before corals)
Then, years later I had an urchin business. I would SCUBA to collect black sea urchins and sell them to hobbiests to eat algae. I had to many so I put 25 of them in my reef where they all spawned at once. Again the tank looked like whipped cream and I could not see one inch into it. The skimmer overflowed about 10 gallons on to my floor. I got out my diatom filter, cleared it up and the tank never looked so good.
Those things are because of the large numbers of the correct types of bacteria I have in the tank, not my good looks, Lady GaGa or luck. I feel we need to get this sterile thing out of our heads and embrace bacteria as well as Supermodels. :cool:
Here in the top picture is one of those urchins. This picture must be from the 80s (I forget) and it appeared in FAMMA magazine.
I think many of us started out very poor and some of us still are. When I started my tank I was bringing home $52.00 a week as an electrician apprentice so I had to feed my fish table scraps and collect food at the beach. I also used NSW and local rocks as they were free. I didn't realize then that that natural food and bacteria and mud laden rocks were actually good for my system and I would try to keep it clean. Of course, like today, that is a no no as far as I am concerned as I want as much bacteria as I can get. As I said, my tank is very stable and it doesn't matter if an elephant seal died in there. For instance once a very large carpet anemone died. It was a foot across and it rotted in my tank. The water turned into snot and the fish were gasping at the surface. I cleared it up with a diatom filter and all was well. I didn't lose one fish. (that was before corals)
Then, years later I had an urchin business. I would SCUBA to collect black sea urchins and sell them to hobbiests to eat algae. I had to many so I put 25 of them in my reef where they all spawned at once. Again the tank looked like whipped cream and I could not see one inch into it. The skimmer overflowed about 10 gallons on to my floor. I got out my diatom filter, cleared it up and the tank never looked so good.
Those things are because of the large numbers of the correct types of bacteria I have in the tank, not my good looks, Lady GaGa or luck. I feel we need to get this sterile thing out of our heads and embrace bacteria as well as Supermodels. :cool:
Here in the top picture is one of those urchins. This picture must be from the 80s (I forget) and it appeared in FAMMA magazine.
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You can look at every good band for proof of that.
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I'm mostly talking about hair algae, film algae and cyano bac. But yes, algae like bryopsis, bubble algae, and turf algae are typically introduced.
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