Interesting article!

[Jorsan]

Mark,
Very interesting article!. I the square tank that appears in the beguining of your article looks cool!. Is possible to see more (and bigger) photos and to know the specs? the lighting system looks cool too; what brand it is?
Thanks

[Skipper]

That is a tank in Reef & Fin located in Connecticut. Sorry, but I don't have all the details on the tank.

[Skipper]

Here is a bigger picture that I made the graphic from:



If I remember correctly, those are Geissman HQI fixtures. Nice tank, eh?

[Jorsan]

Its an incredible tank indeed! thanks for the photo.

[Mark]

Hi Jorsan,

Thanks for the compliment on the article. Looks like Skip answered your question about the tank. A very cool reef aquarium indeed. I only wish more tank manufacturers produced tanks with that kind of surface area. Much better than the narrow long tanks we see at our LFS.

[Jorsan]

Hi Mark,

Yea, in this hobby we have lots of (sometimes) nonsense misconceptions about almost all the areas but maybe thats why this is so interesting.

One more question Mark, do you think that maybe too many corals in a tank could be one of the reasons for the "old tank sindrome" or instead, trace elements are the main reason? I ask you this because corals could release some compounds (justy guessing) that in the long run could accumulate and /or affect other corals staying in the system fixed in sand, rocks,etc.

Thnaks again

[Mark]

Yes, I certainly think both depletion and accumulation of various elements contributes to the old tank syndrome phenominom.

Crowding large amounts of corals creates a lot of competition for resources, which the aquarist must account for by replenishing. But I worry that the rate of depletion can get excessive, and perhaps that the aquarist is not replenishing all those needed elements. In the real world, overpopulation leads to the limiting of resources. I think the same applies to our tanks. On the same note, corals compete with another for limiting resources(like real estate and food) by trying to eliminate their neighbors. The byproducts produced by corals to compete against neighboring corals could also build up in the reef aquarium and negatively affect the organisms in the tank. Water changes, carbon, and skimming may help a little. But I think it is inevitable for such byproducts to build to unnatural levels in a closed system. Captive corals have to put up with a lot of stressors, and I think this is yet another kind of stressor.

I haven't looked into RTN much, but I wonder if RTN is less prevalent in tanks with lower sps densities. It'd be interesting to find out.

[Jorsan]

Thanks Mark, another interesting area to look at in the hobby.

[Jorsan]

Ron Shimek is working in this area. He is collecting data from lots of reefers, so we could have more info about this matter. Looks like he's gonna show the results in next MACNA.

[JohnL]

Originally posted by Jorsan
Is possible to know the specs? the lighting system looks cool too; what brand it is?

It's a 4'x4' custom Tenecor tank.

[Jorsan]

Thanks John