4 gallon pico thread

[asylumdown]

If anyone's interested, I'm selling two of the corals from this tank:
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97597

Three large open brains in a 4 gallon tank isn't going to work long term, so my least favourite is going.

I also moved my forest fire digi frag from the big tank to this tank. It hasn't grown at all (not even plating) since i got it, and has slowly been bleaching. It stopped extending any of its polyps about a week ago so I'm testing to see if it's my lighting, or the addition of coral beauty angel to my big tank.

[asylumdown]

egads. I just worked out how much I've spent on this thing.

$1137.00 all in, that's if I don't count the two open brains that were rescued from my big tank in to it.

[asylumdown]

Sold two corals that weren't working for this tank. I had the intention of replacing one of them with an insanely coloured scoly or something, but the really nice ones are like $250 bucks, which is insane. So instead I picked up a couple of tiny little corals that I think are maybe fungids? I also took an acan frag that was getting bleached in my big tank and not growing moved it in and fragged (more like butchered) my small colony of red and green Aussie blastos to put a small piece in the little tank. It looks a little emptier now, but the corals in here will all grow and fill in and the whole thing will be much more colourful.

I did have a mishap taking the rock structure out to attach all the new stuff though... the top tier broke off (I mean it's just super glued together) and the bottom half landed hard face down in a bucket, splashing about a gallon of water on my floor and seriously damaging my two brains. I was afraid I'd killed them, but the injuries seem to have sealed up and they're fully extended today.

[asylumdown]

Just looking at some old photos. I know I've posted these before but I never looked at them side by side before. All I have to say is WOW, did I ever get a good deal. I got this open brain for maybe 60 bucks because it was ugly as sin when I bought it. All this time reefing and I still had no idea what good water and good lighting could do for an LPS coral. I can't believe how much this guy has improved.

First picture (coral is bottom left) is pretty true to how it looked when I got it, browned out, muted, dull. I bought it because it was cheap but it still had a kaleidoscope of colours, even though they were all really drab. Second two pictures (mid left) barely captures how nice it is now because it's so brilliant and luminescent that it + LEDS reeks havoc on my phone's sensor. It's spectacular. Yes it's that teal blue in real life, and it also has gold in it that doesn't get picked up in the picture at all. Love this coral.

[fragbox.ca]

sweet little tank!
thumbs up for the bare bottom

[asylumdown]

So I got in a bit of a forum debate over the merits vs the risks of a 100% water change in a reef system. I obviously am of the belief that they are a good thing and are a totally legitimate method for maintaining a reef. There is another school of thought out there that believes that massive to 100% water changes mess with the 'constancy' of a system and can 'shock' it in some way, and should therefore always be avoided.

My theory is this - the term 'shock the system' is vague, and as far as I can tell, there's no operational definition for exactly what it means. The same way that people talk about 'toxins' in our bodies, I find the language surrounding a lot of the things in the aquarium trade to sound more like pseudo-scientific superstition than anything that's really happening. Since, in my opinion, being intangible and having no visible or testable effects is the same as not existing at all, I will define the term 'shock the system' to mean some sort of tangible deleterious effect on the health of a coral, and/or the disruption of bacterial metabolism to a large enough degree to cause system instability, as I believe that's what people who speak in these terms are generally referring to. Those two things are testable - coral health is directly observable both in the behaviour and growth of a coral, and the functioning of a bacterial bed is indirectly observable via the processing of nitrogenous compounds.

Two things have been suggested -

1. That the difference in parameters between the discarded water and the new water will be significant
2. That this difference will harm either the corals, or 'things we can't see', ie, the bacteria.

Here's how I'm going to test this:

1. I've never tested my pico for anything other than salinity and temp, so I'm going to test the major parameters both before and after a water change.

2. I'm then going to document the corals over the course of a week in photos, and use old photos/photos in this thread as historical comparisons

3. I'm also going to feed each one of my corals either a meaty food if they can accept it, or a Acans plus/Coral Frenzy mixture as soon as they'll accept it after the water change. I'd normally wait a few days to feed to try and max out the low N and P levels of my change water. I'll feed the corals again a few days later

4. I'll test ammonia daily for the week following the water change.

I am expecting to see a difference in the major ions between the old and the new, as I don't dose them via any method other than water changes. I'm also not expecting those differences to cause any sort of damage, either to the macro inhabitants, or the micro inhabitants. But we shall see, I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong.

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

So I got in a bit of a forum debate over the merits vs the risks of a 100% water change in a reef system. I obviously am of the belief that they are a good thing and are a totally legitimate method for maintaining a reef. There is another school of thought out there that believes that massive to 100% water changes mess with the 'constancy' of a system and can 'shock' it in some way, and should therefore always be avoided.

My theory is this - the term 'shock the system' is vague, and as far as I can tell, there's no operational definition for exactly what it means. The same way that people talk about 'toxins' in our bodies, I find the language surrounding a lot of the things in the aquarium trade to sound more like pseudo-scientific superstition than anything that's really happening. Since, in my opinion, being intangible and having no visible or testable effects is the same as not existing at all, I will define the term 'shock the system' to mean some sort of tangible deleterious effect on the health of a coral, and/or the disruption of bacterial metabolism to a large enough degree to cause system instability, as I believe that's what people who speak in these terms are generally referring to. Those two things are testable - coral health is directly observable both in the behaviour and growth of a coral, and the functioning of a bacterial bed is indirectly observable via the processing of nitrogenous compounds.

Two things have been suggested -

1. That the difference in parameters between the discarded water and the new water will be significant
2. That this difference will harm either the corals, or 'things we can't see', ie, the bacteria.

Here's how I'm going to test this:

1. I've never tested my pico for anything other than salinity and temp, so I'm going to test the major parameters both before and after a water change.

2. I'm then going to document the corals over the course of a week in photos, and use old photos/photos in this thread as historical comparisons

3. I'm also going to feed each one of my corals either a meaty food if they can accept it, or a Acans plus/Coral Frenzy mixture as soon as they'll accept it after the water change. I'd normally wait a few days to feed to try and max out the low N and P levels of my change water. I'll feed the corals again a few days later

4. I'll test ammonia daily for the week following the water change.

I am expecting to see a difference in the major ions between the old and the new, as I don't dose them via any method other than water changes. I'm also not expecting those differences to cause any sort of damage, either to the macro inhabitants, or the micro inhabitants. But we shall see, I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong.

If big water change was a problem, this tank wouldn't have lived long enough to tell the tale of 95% water change

http://reefbuilders.com/2013/05/21/f...lems-95-water/