so how sensitive are our systems really?

[reefwars]

in the grand scheme of things they are pretty hardy.

i always see post that the salinity at 1.028 is what crashed the tank ....... temp raised to 81 from 78 killed all my corals..... or tap water is why my corals are brown or rtn'ing.....

temps drop during shipping and packaging, corals bounce around in bags and man handled to pack, salinity rasies or is dropped , ph fluctuates and fish pee themselves stupid...........yet they seem to survive this.

corals left out of water for hours during fragging , water changes.

im sure every reefer here has hit a high temp , high salinity , used tap water , old salt , expired test kits etc etc etc.

if i had a dollar for every temp spike i had im sure i could take the day off work lol

so lets here it , how sensitive is your system to small changes that doesnt seem to bother others systems or newer ones?

me i do large cold water changes , tap water without conditioner ( i know right ) i over feed, over stock and occasionally overdose and yet still my tank is healthier than its ever been.

maybe its the need to find an answer to a problem that has no obvious cause?


so what risky business do you do to your tank that the system doesnt ssem to mind?


cheers

denny

[Coralgurl]

Lack of water changes....I got back on a schedule a few months ago, but left the heater in my nsw container on, it burnt a hole in the side and I haven't bought a new one. My skimmer has been off for a week or so and sometimes I don't top up my ato, so I get salinity swings. I came home from the wedding this past weekend and my temp was at 86 in the tank. Everything is fine.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

Lack of water changes....I got back on a schedule a few months ago, but left the heater in my nsw container on, it burnt a hole in the side and I haven't bought a new one. My skimmer has been off for a week or so and sometimes I don't top up my ato, so I get salinity swings. I came home from the wedding this past weekend and my temp was at 86 in the tank. Everything is fine.

this seems to be an average reefers routine IMO especially at summer

not far off my own , its summer time and i find myself away from the system more and more. im sure theres more differences in my tank happening that i dont even notice as im not on it all the time or there to see it happen , its not untill you notice that something is off with a fish or coral that we start investigating and more often than not we reach out or look for answers to problems that were either never a problem to begin with or had no serious underlying issue.

[straightrazorguy]

I had some major salinity changes happening this summer (ATO failed). I also let the calcium fall to 350 and Alk to 6 dKh and my poor corals are hanging in there; no sign of distress.

[asylumdown]

Well, my experience has been that my system is remarkably stable, unless it isn't. And when it wasn't, I couldn't really pin-point why.

I have a couple of analogies from ecological science - the first comes from resilience theory which proposes that 'functioning' ecological systems have a series of feedback loops in place that resist perturbation. These perturbations can come in many forms - but most of them can be boiled down to species composition and nutrient cycling. The prime example cited in the literature are clear, low dissolved nutrient, high productivity, benthic lake ecosystems dominated by substrate-bound vascular plants. They adaptively respond to the increase or decrease of nutrients entering the water by increasing or decreasing the rate of plant growth, which in turn fuels an increase or a decrease in the rate of energy transfer up the trophic hierarchy in the lake, and maintains a constant low nutrient load in the water column. For some lakes, the 'window' of stability can be quite large, remaining stable with little observable change to the system across a wide range of nutrient inputs. However, if nutrient inputs exceed the system's max capacity to absorb it, the entire ecosystem will undergo a rapid state change from a clear, benthic, complex vascular plant dominant system to a turbid, pelagic, simple single celled algae dominant system, and once that's happened, the new 'system' is itself remarkably resilient and resistant to change, even if nutrient loading falls back to a range that the old system could previously cope with.

There are other examples from reclamation sciences, specifically in the grasslands. "Climax" grass plant communities in places like Alberta are remarkably resilient over time, and do a remarkable job of preventing invasive weeds that aren't native to this continent from gaining a foothold. However, very few of the ecological pathways and processes that lead to the development of what we see as a 'native' climax plant community exist any more, so once a climax community is physically disturbed (by say the installation of an oil well or pipeline), the presence of exotic weeds and the absence of things like bison and regular burning can fundamentally shift the successional sequence, resulting in a new climax plant community that looks nothing like what was there before, usually comprised of things we'd consider undesirable or weedy. The new state is incredibly stable and nearly impossible to change back without intensive intervention.

I think the analogies to be drawn to a tank is that any functioning reef system has a series of pathways and processes in place to reinforce the ecological 'state' you see. Some 'natural' (as in performed by things that live in the tank), but most are artificial through equipment you've installed and husbandry practices you engage in. Collectively, those work together to create the appearance of resilience that we see.

Tanks that get supposedly hard treatment with cold, unfiltered/treated tap water water changes are not experiencing large enough fluctuations over long enough periods of time to shift the system outside homeostasis. When you do a cold water water change, you drop the total temperature of the system by a few degrees C, but your heaters quickly kick on to bring the tank back up to the desired temp. Since that doesn't seem to hurt anything, then the total drop in temp and the amount of time the temp stays low must be within the acceptable metabolic range of your inhabitants. You also aren't introducing "bad" chemicals in concentrations high enough to harm anything, and chlorine rapidly off-gasses. If you didn't have a heater, or you dropped the temp too far with too large a water change, or if your local tap water was treated by the city differently, or even if you had a different mix of species with a different range of tolerances, the equation might be different. However, the bacteria and microfauna in captive systems have all demonstrated a clear ability to be shipped around the world on rocks covered in cold, wet newspaper. They're the most important part of the tank, and save for antibiotics and few genera specific poisons (prazipro, most dips, etc.), they probably have a range of tolerances far wider than those of the corals and fish you set the tank up for.

We also actively work to remove or eliminate 'weeds' that have the inherent capacity to change the ecological state of our systems, either by manually removing them, making the chemistry unfavourable for them, poisoning them, or introducing an appropriate predator for them. If certain pest species are present and the aquarist does nothing, the system will fundamentally shift towards those pest species, so we can't discount the aquarist's role in the perceived state of resilient stability of an established tank.

The caveat is that a lot of the resilience we see might be in spite of us, not because the system itself has an easy time dealing with the things we do to it. Regularly dropping the temp of your system by several degrees is taxing on your heaters, and if they fail and you're not there to see it, the whole system can crash in one night. Also, if you're doing things to it that have always seemed fine in the past, but rely on people you've never met and who don't care one bit about your aquarium (i.e. the people at the water treatment plant) to not make an unannounced change from chlorine to chloramines, or install copper fittings somewhere between your house and the treatment plant, you're only one water change away from a major problem.

[Aquattro]

My temps have swung from 79 to 89 daily for a summer. My salinity has hit 1.030 for a month. I've got rusted hose clamps in the sump going on 4 years. I've put my arms in the tank while covered in paint/oil/asst muck. I left lights on 48 hours. My skimmer shut off for 2 weeks. My CO2 tank drained into the room over a 6 hour period. I've used tap water without regard for chlorine. I test annually, needed or not.
All these things and many more, and the tank was rock solid. An established tank, and even a new tank well tended, are very rugged things.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

My temps have swung from 79 to 89 daily for a summer. My salinity has hit 1.030 for a month. I've got rusted hose clamps in the sump going on 4 years. I've put my arms in the tank while covered in paint/oil/asst muck. I left lights on 48 hours. My skimmer shut off for 2 weeks. My CO2 tank drained into the room over a 6 hour period. I've used tap water without regard for chlorine. I test annually, needed or not.
All these things and many more, and the tank was rock solid. An established tank, and even a new tank well tended, are very rugged things.

theres a few on your list i do reguarily , like work the other day i was working on my bike changing its chain full of grease and i stepped into the room for a break just to see a frag knocked over i reached right on in there to put it baqck in place lol didnt think about it at the time but could have been the last day of my system

ok so you all may remember me posting last year or year before about the dumb mistake i made? well basically i laid my 5g bucket of coral rx dip after use right next to the 5g bucket of ATO water , went away and came back later to realize that the tank needed a top up and bam ....5seconds later i ralized i just made a huge mistake...dumped the bucket of coral rx right into my sump lol

i did the usual freak and pull hair while cursing , i kicked the sump i believe in an attempt to turn back time lol anyways no negative effects , infact all algae dided shortly afterwards....ive kinda always wanted to do it again lol

[Madreefer]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

An established tank, and even a new tank well tended, are very rugged things.

I totally agree. Those that constantly muck around in their tanks and add all kinds of different crap to combat a problem are the tanks that usually have the most problems.

[kien]

In general I agree with the ruggedness of mature tanks, but it also partly depends on the inhabitants. Some are simply more sensitive than others.

I've had my current tank for about 5 years now and I think I've about done it all. Temp swings up to high 80s, lack of water change for 3 summer months! Expired lights (2 years old), skimmer less for over a month. Too lazy to fix a busted RO unit so I used tap water in my ATO, temp drop down 60s for 24 hours due to power outage.. The list goes on! While I have lost corals and a few fish along the way this tank hasn't yet completely crashed despite all the calamity (and occasional poor husbandry). The bio system seems to have remained somewhat stable/hardy I think. I have corals, fish and inverts still trucking along since day one of this tank.

(Pretty sure I just jinxed myself and will find a tank of death tomorrow morning)

[kien]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

I totally agree. Those that constantly muck around in their tanks and add all kinds of different crap to combat a problem are the tanks that usually have the most problems.

+1.