Common Misconceptions In the Hobby
 

A lot of things seem to come up on the forums that are a result of recycled information that has been passed down through the years. I want to start this thread in hopes that this information will start to be widely accepted and known and hopefully dispell some of those "old hat" ways of thinking in the hobby. Some of these have mostly gone by the wayside and some are till in full swing and commonly believed in the hobby. Please feel free to add some of your own, add to my explanations, or even dispute my contributions.

1.) You should keep your PH at or between 7.8 and 8.3.

While those are acceptable levels this simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've seen claims that the PH on Indonesian reefs (where most of the corals we keep will be found) is on average between 8.4 and 8.5. With readings often being higher and rarely below 8.0.

Conclusion: There is nothing to worry about if you PH is reading above the famed 8.3 mark. In fact, consider youself one of the lucky ones. If you're reading below 8.0 seriously consider betweer gas exchange and dripping kalkwasser to keep your PH higher in the acceptable range which should probably be more along the lines of 8.1-8.8. Maintaining a higher PH in closed aquaria is probably a good idea because of the greater amount of waste and acids that we encounter.


2.) Maintaining a KH of 8 is a good idea because it's close to what natural seawater is.

This one kind of goes along with the above suggestions. 8 dKH is perfectly acceptable, but it doesn't allow for a lot of wiggle room in out "dirty" aquariums. I've observed stress in various organisms when KH starts to drop much below 8. On the flipside there was a time when people commonly maintained a dKH as high as 18 in this hobby without any apparent stress from tank inhabitants.

Conclusion: While I wouldn't suggest striving for 18 dKH aiming for a little higher than natural seawater is a good idea because of the volatility of closed systems. I typically suggest people aim for 10-12 dKH. If you're using something that automatically replaces buffers in your system this is less crucial.


3.) 75-77 degrees is a good temperature for a reef tank or tropical fish only tank.

The majority of our corals come from corals and fish come from waters that range in temperature anywhere from 76-90 degrees with average temps in the low 80's. There are certainly creatures that are an exception such as those from Japan, Australia, and deeper waters which are more usesd to temperatures a little lower.

Conclusion: The old magic 76 degree mark has little merit and I'm not sure how it ever came to be in the first place. Maintaining temperatures in the low 80's is probably most natural and will suit most fish/coral available in the industry. Thankfully this has become more accepted in recent years.


4.) It's very important to keep temperatures stable.

This one pops up a lot on the forums. As you may have gathered from the above commentary, the temperature on your average reef isn't really stable at all. Temperatures can shift greatly with a simple shift of the tides or currents. There are also shifts between day and night that are close to 5 degrees on average.

Conclusion: Stop worrying about your daily swing in temperature from your lights heating the water. There's no need to go buy expensive chillers or controllers to always maintain the same temperature. In addition to being pretty natural the temperature swing may be good for your aquarium inhabitants and make them less likely to succumb should you have a more major temperature swing. In closed aquaria I wouldn't suggest testing the limits of this, but if your swings are under 5 degrees from day to night I wouldn't worry much.


5.) Any detectable amount of nitrates is bad in a reef aquarium.

While elevated levels are certainly a concern (20 ppm+) and I do feel it's best to maintain very low levels I think the toxicity of nitrates is highly exaggerated in this hobby.

Conclusion: If you're having problems zeroing out you nitrate tests don't fret too much. However, keep an eye on your nitrates levels and make sure they don't build up to levels that can start causing problems.

6.) Zoanthids are prefer low to moderate levels and flow, and they like dirty water.

As a group Zoanthids are very diverse. They can be found on the reef in pristine water conditions with incredible bright light and heavy flow. They can also be found at greater depths with lower light levels and less flow. Areas with turbid virtually stagnant water; check. Areas with huge waves crashing into them frequently being exposed to air, check. Dirtier water that may even be from sewage rinoff; check. Tidal pools with hugely varying conditions; check.

Conclusion: What's good for the goose may not be good for the gander. That's of course with the asumption that the goose and gander are both zoanthids. What the heck is a gander anyhow? ;)


7.) SPS corals require huge amounts of light and flow.

Much like Zoanthids, SPS corals are a very diverse group. They are found at a wide range of depths in a wide range of conditions.

Conclusion: Just because you have an SPS coral does not mean it will appreciate being blasted with light and thousands of gallons of water per hour. Do a little research on your specific coral to get a better grasp of what conditions it might do best in. A good rule of thumb is that more delicate looking specimens come from areas with lower lighting and flow that would be experienced on the upper reef. More robust looking growth forms would probably appreciate being blasted with light and flow.


8.) The colors of corals are a result of the zooxanthellae which grows in their tissue.

While this is true to a degree, zooxanthellae is typically a shade of brown (think autumn colors). The bright colors often seen in photosynthetic organisms are the result of various proteins. Some of these colors are genetic, some are freak occurences that are related to light intensity levels.

Conclusion: A coral being brown isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least it has plenty of it's zooxanthellae symbiant. However, if you have ome crazy blue coral it is absolutely not because you have some freaky blue zooxanthellae growing in it.


Well, the site is about to go down for maintenance so I'll leave it at this for now. Please add to the list and discuss what I've posted thus far.

P.S. Sorry for any mistakes along the way in my typing and grammar. I blame the beers!

Thanks for the list, Peter.

While some of the things you listed are true to a certain extent, I think you're reaching for a bit much, perhaps due to the beer as well. :)

I'm merely afraid that it might lead some people to believe that there are THAT much leeway in reef-keeping.

I do believe in keeping the temperature stable. Your comparison of the temperature of an aquarium to that of the ocean isn't really a sound argument. Once things start to go south, we are not afforded the luxury of having a gadzillion gallons of water volume and thus a temperature rise in the ocean will not equal to a possible disaster that could happen in your reef if you let the temperature creeps past a certain point.

Number 7 is also a bit deceiving. Nevermind whether or not SPS like the flow or not, you didn't really mention that the inadequacy of flow could give way to dead spots and the build up of detritus and eventually a tank crash. How anyone can have low flow and no dead spot in an SPS tank is not really that easy.

I do agree with you on the Alk and the Zoas, the Nitrates, and I'll just take your words on number 8 because I'm hopping to bed and wouldn't mind a beer myself to help along the way.

I like beer. It is loaded with information!

Peter, I agree with all that you said. My tank is not under what some may consider "ideal" conditions", but it looks great. Everyone is a marine biologist on reef central, thinking they are some sort of "salty guru", so it is nice to read your post. Up until now I thought my tank was always teetering on a crash due to fluctuations but it looks great so I just held my breath. Good work and thank you for the confirmation.

assuming one of your test kits is bad, when you are really at the wrong sg. etc etc etc (ie the misconception being: thinking uncalibrated equipment is telling you the truth for certain)

9.) Animal X is a filter feeder. It's great for your tank.

Filter feeding is just a way to say that an animal's food is suspended in the water column. Hobbyists hear the word "filter" and make the erroneous assumption that these animals will improve their water quality. Like all animals, filter feeders turn their food into waste, which gets peed or pooped out. They turn often harmless particulates into dissolved nutrients (ammonia being the chief one). With the exception of those with zooxanthellae to uptake it, you're always going to end up with more dissolved nitrogen coming out than went in (poorer water quality).

[quote]I do believe in keeping the temperature stable. Your comparison of the temperature of an aquarium to that of the ocean isn't really a sound argument. Once things start to go south, we are not afforded the luxury of having a gadzillion gallons of water volume and thus a temperature rise in the ocean will not equal to a possible disaster that could happen in your reef if you let the temperature creeps past a certain point.[/quote]
Whether in the ocean or in captivity, stable temperatures don't afford you any wider a margin of error in the event of a problem. The physiological tolerance of the animals is still the same in captivity or the wild. All stability does is narrow that window of tolerance.

I don't know anyone who shoots for 75-77 degrees.

10.) My cleaner fish/shrimp cured or helped my fish get rid of ich.

There is no evidence that any cleaner species eats ich in any real number, either in the wild or captivity. It's never been found in the gut of cleaners in the wild and in lab tests cleaners have never been shown to make a significant difference on parasite loads. The ich parasite is under the skin of the host and without harming the host fish, the cleaner only has access to the parasite for about the 5 minutes that it takes for the parasite to burrow through. Because that 5 minutes occurs in the wee hours of the morning, cleaners will never naturally encounter the parasite during that time. In the lab, even when cleaners were induced to clean during the period when the parasite was burrowing in, they ate very few of them and made no significant difference in the parasite loads of the fish. The white spots associated with ich are only damaged skin due to the parasite underneath and guess what a large part of the diet of most cleaners is.... dead skin and fish mucus. Picking off the spots doesn't cure the fish.

11.) A UV sterilizer will kill everything good or bad in your tank and significantly reduce disease, food, or filtering capacity.

Even when UV sterilizers have near 100% kill rates of the organisms passing through, in recirculating systems they don't make a huge impact on the overall populations. They are limited by the fact that the breeding population in the system is always much larger than the number of individuals being killed. They can also only kill those organisms that are in the water column. There are numerous experiments confirming that the use of UV sterilizers on recirculating systems either has no significant impact on parasite populations or on infection rates.

I just keep thinking of more and more. :)

12.) Mariculture and aquaculture are different methods of farming corals.

Aquaculture is underwater agriculture. Mariculture is simply marine aquaculture. In the context of the hobby, since all of our animals are marine, they are synonyms. Neither one implies anything about the culture method used or where it's done. To tell where the culturing is done you use [i]in situ[/i] (in the original location) or [i]ex situ[/i] (away from the origin) or sometimes [i]in vitro[/i] (in captivity). To talk about the actual method used you talk about the intensity level. Extensive culture is when you have almost no control over the growth. Leaving frags on the reef to grow is an example of extensive culture. Semi- intensive is when you have some control, such as growing corals in a greenhouse but using NSW and sunlight. Intensive is when you have control over almost everything, like in your home frag tank.

13.) Trading frags helps save the reefs.

Reducing the demand for wild corals may help some, but it won't make a very big dent in the amount of corals being taken from the reef. As large as it has gotten, the live coral trade is still small compared to other uses for the reef such as construction. Regardless of the demand from the hobby, there will always be more demand for corals than supply and the collectors will always need jobs. To truly reduce the amount of corals being taken, economic alternatives to harvesting from the reef have to be offered and simply cutting our demand doesn't do that. Eco-tourism and responsible aquaculture are two possibilities.

And again...

14.) Inverts are short lived, so expect to replace your cleaning crew regularly.

It's hard to generalize about the lifespan of inverts since they make up the vast majority of animals on the planet. Some, like octopi and most sea slugs only make it a year or two. Many popular members of cleanup crews can live decades to centuries though. Some of the animals we keep are even theoretically immortal, meaning they don't grow old. They only die when something kills them.

I generally agree: I advocate certain ranges for newbies because they are further from disaster than other readings, and fairly easy to achieve in relation to each other...if we can get the newbies to stay alive for long enough, and make few enough swings into disastrous territory, I hope they'll be with us a while...but when I say 1.025 is a 'good' salinity it's because a .001 either side of that isn't a bad swing and most things a newbie is likely to buy are going to be ok with it after acclimation.

But thank you, Peter: very much worth observing than some rules are "sorta guidelines" and that we need to remember that.

I've found corals are tougher in some regards than we commonly believe [I had a bit of bubble coral survive cycle and then perish when a too zealous cleanup knocked it off its precarious perch.]

And the interrelation of brilliant light PLUS temperature plus other factors seems complex: 85 degrees can bleach, but how old are your lights, etc?

Your corals survive bad conditions and then rtn when things 'improve'.

Not to mention the fish that lives in near muck of a dying tank and then fails when rescued, or the coral you pull out of where it fell and then see it's in better condition than its 'well-placed' brethren.

Or my bundle of torch/frog/hammer that happily accommodates my tailspot blenny, who likes, for some reason, to camp in the torch...while my highfin gobies seem to like to sit on the candycane and flirt with disaster in the clam.

Watch and wonder.

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10580000#post10580000 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sk8r [/i]
[B]

I've found corals are tougher in some regards than we commonly believe

[/B][/QUOTE]

Amen, I have only been at this for about 8 months but have learned that our little biospheres are a lot tougher than we give them credit for.
The ocean and Mother Nature for that matter is violent and unforgiving.
I also have learned to take a laze fare attitude with my tank(Other than some basic maintenance). It does not need me constantly lording over it like some mad scientist.

Peter, I haven't piped up yet but just wanted you to know I think your contributions are exellent. Thank you!

Peter, I haven't piped up yet but just wanted you to know I think your contributions are excellent. Thank you!

Sorry, accidentally hit submit 2 times.

I agree Peter. There are just too many variables in this hobby to have absolute rules. I think most of the "rules" we have should be considered more as guidlines. I've been at this hobby for 5 yrs. and on this board for almost that long. In that time allot of the absolute truths have now fallen to the wayside.

Corals and fish are tougher then most people think. Just watch one of the Discovery Channel shows on reefs and the ocean. It's brutal out there. I've had zoo's that took 4 days to get to my house only to have them open w/in a few hours of being in my tank. In my early days, I've had fish survive, and seem to thrive, some horrible tank conditions while I was trying to learn this hobby.

I'm not saying ignore the rules, just don't spazz out because your tank is not in some set spec's. Watch your inhabitants and they will let you know how things are.

Kaos, your signature kind of adds to this discussion. Also, you being in the coast guard (Thank You) should know better than many how cruel the ocean can be.

Greenbean - I love Carmella - my favorie PM in a long time.....and Jessica Walcott too!

OK, back to the fish we keep in tanks : 0

15.) Higher Kelvin bulbs such as those in the 14k-20k range will cause corals to "color up".

All the scientific research done in this area suggests that Kelvin has no effect on the bright coloration of corals. When it comes to lighting, intesity is the deciding factor on what color you corals are/will be. If you observe your corals getting more colorful after switching to a higher Kelvin bulb it's a result of the change in intesity and the perception of color that comes along with the higher Kelvin and greater blue spectrum.

Conclusion: This one is pretty harmless, but it's one of those beliefs that is perpetuated over and over again on this forum. There are other factors that will help determine coral coloration but all research suggests that the Kelvin of the light source is not one of them.

Thanks for the contributions and comments thus far. Keep them comin'!

Re: Common Misonceptions In the Hobby
 

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10579251#post10579251 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Peter Eichler [/i]
[B]

6.) Zoanthids are prefer low to moderate levels and flow, and they like dirty water.

[/B][/QUOTE]

Damn beer... :lol:

6.) Zoanthids prefer low to moderate levels of light and flow, and they like dirty water.

:lol:

16.) The phytoplankton I put in my tank feeds my corals.

Very few corals are know to consume phytoplankton and some research suggests that most corals are unable to digest phytoplanton even if they can ingest it.

Conclusion: Phytoplanton has direct benefits to filter feeding organisms as well as pods. The addition of phytoplanton may indirectly benefit your corals but if you goal is to feed your corals directly it's best to look elsewhere.

I agree with mostly all of it. I have never worried about temperature swing unless the tank reaches about 88 and even then I have never lost anything. I also dont have any desire to keep nitrates at 0 and my corals look great and are growing much faster than when I did try to keep nitrates at 0...

I think your right on about people worrying too much and not just enjoying their tanks. I have a friend who is like that and the other day he was over at my place and noticed the temperature was a bit high...man he was all over me to turn off the lights, do a water change with cool water, ect, ect. I laughed and told him to look at the corals and tell me if they looked stressed. They did not. But he still had this thing in his head that it needed to be lowered! So I told him to just relaxed and we got to talking about maintenance. Turns out he cant even remember the last time he sat infront of his tank for a long period of time without adjusting or tinkering with something...Thats sad...

Beer was a staple in my diet throughout my college years. Maybe I should try some again! :D