random reefkeeping: volume?

[reefkprz]

Nutrients: import export, the unbalanced scale
Welcome to another edition of random reefkeeping. Its been a while since I bothered hashing out any thoughts and laying into my keyboard with vigor, but recentley a couple conversations about skimming, food supply, and what to do with the leftovers have brought the import export balance to the forefront of my thoughts often (and again and again. No I have not looked back at my previous rants to see if I have attacked this monster of a subject, nor will I. Those who dwell in the past are blind to both the present and future{I have no idea who I just quoted here but I heard it somewhere and it made sense}).
Anyone who has kept Reef Tanks and FOWLR (fish only with live rock) tanks long term are familiar with what happens with an over abundance of nutrients, various plauge algaes, poor light penetration, reduced coral growth, reduced fish health leading to other problems such as disease, increased susceptability to some parasites, and an overall unhealthy tank. Much to our dismay its far easier to add nutrients than to remove them. In some cases ceartain foods are so ill suited to use in our tanks that despite the magic marketing claims by their creators they are little more than pollution, with very little utility. Some amazing marketing has many hobbyests using stuff that shouldnt get within a mile of a tank, such as warm shelf phyto, and dry flake/pellet foods. The warm phyto is mearly dead phyto begun to rot..... {awesome addition}. Flake/pellet food no matter how good they claim to be or how they are proccessed are unfortunatly a source of nitrates and phosphates, more so than properly prepared and properly served frozen food.
The crux: how to provide the food in a nutritious form in the amounts found in the natural habitats and provide the same level of export. A nearly impossible task many have found with their set ups and maintinence rituals.
So we go lean on feedings to make the export requirements lower, for example people feeding every other day. This is far from natural, in fact it couldnt be much further from natural, as most of our captives in the wild feed constantly throughout the day, not in one heavy feeding every now and then (with a few exceptions I am sure). in fact even these sparse feedings when done in a heavy amount can be counter productive as all the food may nopt be consumed by the target and go on to break down in our tanks. Fortunatly there are many scavangers and other benthic life forms that can utilize some of this, if the proper areas have been designed into the system (or even happenstanced into the system) for them to grow.
Another sign of the under fed aquaria is the ever present myth "that coral just needs light, it doesnt need food" almost all corals feed organismally. While its true that many survive and flourish without "spot" feeding, and in fact dont require it, they still require food, this is nearly undisputable. To the best of my knowledge there are no completely photosynthetic corals, the closest would probably be xenia. I believe even these absorb nitrates when growing. I say nearly undisputable because I do not feel I know the requirements of every coral, in fact I am quite aware that my knowledge of various coral requirements are severely lacking, much to my dismay.
We all know there are many many forms of filtration and combinations thereof that can be created and designed into a system. Most long time hobbyests get sent catalogs full of stuff that should we spend the money could be attached to, hooked on, hung on, gravity fed, or otherwise integrated into our systems. The plethora of crap marketed to the unwary (and the wary) can cause a person to spend needless dollars costing them a small fortune, trying to do the right thing for their tank but through a lack of solid knowledge does the almost right thing or the most pushed item at the LFS (local fish store), and as they learn more the spend more going in a direction they feel is better. Depending on the size of your personal fortune this can lead you away from a very rewarding hobby (my personal fortune at present is about seventeen dollars and fifty eight cents, not that you needed to know that but you dont have to be rich to enjoy this hobby.)

 

[reefkprz]

There is no way I can even begin to comprehensively cover all the forms of filtrations or nutrient exports available, that would take an entire book and by the time I got done writing it I am pretty sure it would be out of date, need to be revised, edited and added to. Suffice to say in my opinion there is no single form of filtration or export that is the end all be all solution. Rather I would say that finding as many forms of export as can be integrated into a system without conflicting each other is the best possible approach. Just for clarity I would like to include an example of a conflicting form of export. Running a phosphate sponge while attempting vodka (carbon) dosing. In my opinion this would be a bad idea because, as those of you familiar with vodka (carbon) dosing know, vodka (carbon) dosing requires nitrates and phosphates to function properly. runnign a phosphate sponge while it would reduce phosphates, would not reduce nitrates, so the phosphate depeletion might exceed the nitrate depletion and throw your attempts at finding a maintinence dose out the proverbial window or rather down an open elevator shaft with a grenade attached hoping for a soft landing.
A few points I would like to toutch on that have come up rather more frequently than I would like are fairly simple.
Overskimming, I hate this one. Yes it is possible to Over skimm (foam fractionate) your tank, if you are under feeding it and under supplementing it (water changes with new salt water and dosing whatever you dose counts as a supplements in this case). Some people say it strips all the food out. Unfortunalty in our closed systems thats a good thing, if its not consumed in a couple minutes I want it out, chasing little chunks of meat or flake or whatever around my tank to ensure this is not feasable (you notice every fish food container says remove all uneaten food after a few minutes, try it in any tank, not realistic). Some would say its fine others will use it. I am sure they will there are a multitude of life forms that can use just about any form of the food I just put in my tank. Unfortunalty the fishes that just ate the bulk of it is going to defecate and when it does the food (coming out as feces) is still going to contain eighty to nintey five percent of the nutrition it went in with, unfortunatly fish digestion isn't very thourough. I want my scavangers, detritivores and bentic fauna and other flora as well as my aerobic filtration dealing with that, not the particles of food that nothing found. My skimmer can yank as much foods out as it wants, food by comparison is cheap. I can add more food than any skimmer could ever hope to remove so can you.
Waterchanges, apparantly the hardest thing to do in the hobby. I dont know how often I see (read) or hear people touting the benifits of not doing them. Hands down waterchanges are the most cost effective way to export nutrients and replenish depleted elements available, period. If you want to say I am wrong quote me the cost of a batch of salt, then quote me a price for a test kit for every element on the periodic table (all are found in marine water) and the price of dosable portions of each along with the amount of time it took you to test each one. unreasonable? yes. For some reason NSW (natural sea water) has the perfect mix, and no I dont think our tailor made salts are perfect (not by a long stretch) but as a long time reefer and many of you may may also remember that one time when your tank was so perfect still kind of new but it was thriving, thats fresher water. we obviously cant test and dose everything out there, nor can we perfectly match NSW levels with our mixes, but the best mixes out there try to mimic NSW levels some are better than others etc. but my point is clean water is clean water. the stuff trapped in our little glass cubes and topped off for months at a time does not have the advantage of the oceans largess of filtration and dilution, so we need to dilute at every opportunity. If I could do a 100% change of water every day I would. I'm not saying if I could suck all the water out of my tank and dump a fresh batch in. I'm saying If I could set up a system to flush new water in and flush old water out to the equivilent of 100% new water everyday I would. the ocean does, often three or four times a day depending on local though sometimes as few as twice. but it moves the water from one location to the next and each plays and integral role in the filtration of the ocean, including the depths to which the snow falls (if you dont get it, well, stick around in the hobby a while and you will).

 

[reefkprz]

At this point its now two twenty in the morning and I am running out of steam. this portion of random reefkeeping while not complete will have to wait for another to wind up and finish. I am going to post what I have typed out so far and hope you guys can bear with me untill I catch some sleep and get around to finishing.
For those of you who actually read the whole thing, thank you, very much for reading my rant, and for those of you that skipped to the bottom looking for cliff notes or a summary, throw rocks at your tank

. Have a good night all

 

[nycbob]

very nice article. i am a big believer in water change. i do it 3x a week minimal. only dose at most 1x per week, and that calcium.

 

[spanko]

Good stuff reef! I too am a proponent of "over filtering" (sticks tongue in cheek) whenever wherever I can. My LFS says I am overdoing it, I say but it is working and my critters are growing, coloring and just overall looking like they should. I too would like to have a setup that is a constant water change, a large vat of new saltwater that is being introduced at some rate while old water is being removed and discarded but am not in a position to create it. So instead I rely on 20% water changes in my 29 gallon weekly. I monitor and does calcium and alkalinity. I dose Prodibio once weekly along with daily vodka and amino acids. I change out filter floss daily, the accumulation of gunk from the vokda dosing and the bacteria are amazing. I skim 247 and get a good cupful of liquid you can barely see through each week. My water is crystal clear and there is very little growth of any algae on the glass. One thing I do miss is the where with all to grow any macro algae in the tank though. I feed daily a rotation of different foods. My nutrients are undetectable.
I await you next postings in this, as I do believe that people are not aware of the real positive results that are accomplished with keeping things clean and fresh. When I started out this reef I made a decision that I wanted to keep the conditions as best I could to enable the well being of the creatures contained within.
Get ready for the "I haven't done a water change in two years and my tank is beautiful" crowd.

 

[flower]

Well here I am guilty of feeding warm phytoplankton...

Dead decaying food for my wonderful expensive critters...

I do recommend others to turn off the skimmer for the day they feed the tank and give the coral time to consume something. For those with a problem of no coral growth for long periods, I recommend only running the skimmer for a few hours a week. Have I been giving bad advice?
I like your article, and I read all of it...

In your continued rant, could you add how to grow my own phyto or direct me to where I can find the info?

 

[reefkprz]

part 2 of edition ?: thanks for waiting.
Few ever witness the glory of a tank that has the filtration and food supplying capacity of the ocean. In fact even tanks that are connected to the ocean via a pump (there are many public aquariums that do this) still cant come near the reality of the open ocean. The water is pumped in recirculated and pumped out, the natural actions of tidal movement and the currents in the ocean is lost, as well as the effect of inhabitants consuming from one area and defecating in another to tranport nutrients to a different area. Food comes in on the currents in amazing amounts as well as being born, hatched, ejected, and grown. this same food goes out on the currents to new locals or just a few feet to be eaten or stands still while sometyhing else eats it and moves on munching away. We find ourselves severely limited by our capacity to move the food to places it can be utilized and thus it becomes waste.
This waste accumulates in our tanks, either through lack of creatures to utilize it, or through excess in supply versus our ability to remove it. The negatives begin to happen, I wont rehash those, we all know what they are and I toutched on them in the beggining of the first portion of this article.
Let me digress a little and focus on food supply for a minute, then I will get back to export and finding a balance which is the whole point of this article (if that is what you would call it).
Food supply and nutrient influx, lets pretend, for a second or five, that our capacity to export everything we put in exists on our tank currently. Aka forget about export for the moment and think about merely the feeding of our many denizens. We would be supplying a multitude of food types. These foods would range from live micro planktons both phyto and zoo in various sizes from the smallest to the largest, to fresh algaes of varying types, on to meaty delights such as fish clams shrimp etc. A constantly varying supply, a veritable conucopia of food. Ideally a constant fresh supply of food should be presented to our tanks all day everyday. Food types would change throughout the day such as it does in the ocean, from the predator prey relations that occur diurnally as well as nocturnally. Sating the habits of all day herbivores, and nightime predators, and vice versa. sessile organismal feeders relying on the currents to carry food to them would have a pleasant wash of food brought to them on our currents. OK enough fantasizing, it was great wasnt it?
It remains to say the maximum availability of food in variety should be presented to our reef and fishes to supply both their nutritional needs and their natural feeding form. The reality is we need to cope with the stuff that remains, both the unused foods and the post consumption stages of the foods, unfortuantly everything that gets eaten gets defecated, the organism consumes food and generates waste depending on its ability to utilize what nutrition it can passing what it cannot use or does not have time to digest out of the food. Like I mentioned earlier in the case of various fishes, most fish are only capable of actually capturing about five to twenty five percent of the nutrition from foods before it gets passed. That means seventy five to nintey five percent of the nutrition remains in the food now labled feces. In a balanced system (I'm not defining a balanced system) there are creatures that can reuse this feces, removing more of the nutrition, and again passing more feces this feces still has available nutrition in it. There is no form that consumes one hundred percent of the potential nutrition out of any given food, there will always be a next stage. the best we can hope for is to have the food stuffs rendered down to as low a nutrient waste as possible, then get it out of our little glass box. Potentially in a large enough system both removal and supply could be handled internally with no input from us (liek the ocean). Not realistic in most cases.
At this juncture I would just like to point out I am not focusing on consumable elements in our water just foods. Elemental cunsumption, addition, and removal is a subject for another article. Prefferably one written by someone else.

 

[reefkprz]

Export, the other side of the scale. How to effectively remove wastes? as we know there are a multitude of things we can do. However we do it it needs to match the amount of remaining waste that our life forms are incapable of handeling, (lifeforms in this case covers the obvious fish snails crabs etc, As well as all the bacterial residents heterotrophic, aerobic, anaerobic and so on, along with all the algaes micro, macro, and such). If there is a remaining amount it degrades into the forms of waste we are all familiar with, nitrates protiens amino acids etc. Lots of systems are capable of handeling a suprising amounts of those naturally, through re consumption in algaes DSB's (deep sand beds) etc. but, I am repeating myself, my point here is the waste our systems by themselves cannot handle, this is a factor when the input exceeds the capacity to consume.
I have yet to design a system that can on its own handle the amount of food I desire to and do offer, so I need to remove the excess and the semi-stages of incomplete digestion and the by-products of the breakdown of these wastes. I turn to the physical removal of such wastes. Various forms of harvesting algaes, fractionation, waterchanges, carbon dosing, mechanical filtration, and others can all be applied here. Generally speaking the more you can set up a system to remove the more you can input.
In my expirience the use of fresh foods, in as many forms and as constantly as possible, leads to the best colors, growth, diversity and overall health of our tank life. I'm not saying dump massive amounts of food in your tank for health that would be a foolish statement, if done without temperance it would actually be quite dangerous. However as you increase your capacity to remove, you can increase your additions. A painfully obvious statement I am sorry. If you indeed feel you are exporting more than you are adding by all means add more to bring the availability of foods higher. Most foodstuffs by comparison are relatively inexpensive, especially if you make your own foods. Some however remain either expensive or a challenge to aquire, such as fresh live phyto, in some places its nearly impossible to find a reliable source for the stuff (much to my dismay). A lot of peolpe overcompensate for the inadequecies of their foods with supplemental vitamins, while a sound theory, it is really easy to go overboard and add too much since we have no way of knowing how much is getting used except to watch our tanks for the signs of excess (water tests, algaes etc.).
One of many methods for striking a balance is simply to slowly (over the course of many weeks to months) increase feedings untill your tank starts showing the signs of being at the point of growing nuisance algaes, or showing excess nutrients in the water testing. At that point you can cut back by a margin, and observe your tank after a few weeks you can begin increasing feedings slightly again untill the same point is reached. I have found that slowly increasing feedings, increases the tanks natural biodiverse populations to handle the amounts of foods as well as building denser bacterial populations to handle the waste. You can also increase whatever other export means you utilize such as waterchanges to remove the wastes.

 

[reefkprz]

In my expirience, and this is really subjective and a little obscure so bear with me, the higher you can raise both your import and export levels and maintain a balance the better. There is a limit to what each setup can handle and the longer you have your system and the more familiar with it you get the more you can learn the limits of your tank. Gradually raising imports even when you have added a rather signifigant form of export is far safer than than raising imports drasticly because you have added a signifigant amount of export. Caution is advised in any increase of influx, just because of the potential for sudden ammonia spiking, nitrate/phosphate end results and algae blooms. As your import increases as long as your export is comparable you may find yourself suprised at the prolific growth of lifeforms you never before saw in your tank even if you havent added anything new in a signifigant time. there may be just one or two of a life form alive in your tank but as food supplies increase some of the populations will as well. some life unfortuantly has no luck reproducing in our tanks. I am almost positive if you take your existing tank as is, and double both your import and export, the forms of bentic life form, copepodia, annelids, and other wonderous forms of life will make themselves more prominent. There is a double bonus to this happening usually all these forms of additional life provide more filtration by the way they feed, and it gives you a ton of other cool "thingies" for visitors to ask about, and if you have never seen them before for you to be intrigued by as well. If your an uber-geek like me it gives one more thing to look up, check out, study, observe, and dig for info on. YAY geeking out! I love it when I get to get my geek on.
Everyone that takes the time to read through this, thank you. Please take from this what you will. I know I havent thrown out a ton of solid scientific facts (in fact I am pretty sure I havent added any). This isnt about quoting research or about filling your mind with factoids that can be easily googled or otherwise looked up (like in a book remember those? rectangular objects with paper covered in words). This is mearly me typing out my thoughts on this subject. I hope each of you that do read through this take away simply a different way of looking at the subject. I'm not trying to change any minds, or even change how you approach anything. I mearly want to expose you to another view on the subject at hand and maybe get you thinking about things that you may or may not have thought about. If even only one person gets any benefit what so ever out of this article then it was well worth the hours I put in at my keyboard.
Thanks again to all the read this and post some replies on the thread. Please feel free to chime in with your thoughts on this even if your disagreeing with me, often in this hobby the greatest amount of knowledge is expanded by dissagreements about various things as the various parties try to find information to back their views up, one or both often learn a lot in the process.
On a final note, those of you who again simply skipped to the bottom looking for the summary and the cliff notes please continue to throw rocks at your tank

 

[reefkprz]

Originally Posted by Flower
http:///forum/post/3183972

Well here I am guilty of feeding warm phytoplankton...

Dead decaying food for my wonderful expensive critters...

I do recommend others to turn off the skimmer for the day they feed the tank and give the coral time to consume something. For those with a problem of no coral growth for long periods, I recommend only running the skimmer for a few hours a week. Have I been giving bad advice?
I like your article, and I read all of it...

In your continued rant, could you add how to grow my own phyto or direct me to where I can find the info?
Flower I would not consider it "bad" advice. I would consider it the best advice you had to give at the time. you advised what you knew, as your knowledge of tanks expands and changes so will your advice. I remember years ago I was advising people to use Crushed coral because of the fact that it was the easiest substrate to siphon. that was the my best available advice because I new it worked. as my knowledge increased my advice changed, and will continue to do so for the remainder of my involvement in this hobby.
as for shutting off the skimmer for a full day I dont feel its needed, it is common practice by a lot of people to shut them down for an hour or so after feeding planktonic foods to provide time for the feeding to happen. after that you may as well turn it on and remove the excess before it rots.
I think cranberry would be the person to ask about growing your own phyto, I'm sure there are others on here that know how I just cant think of any off the top of my head. I dont grow my own phyto so I have no first hand expirience with it.
and thank you for reading the whole thing