Part-1 (cont)
The use of excessive amounts of carbon may lead to RTN (rapid tissue necrosis) or White Band Disease. When using carbon use smaller amounts and use them intermittently. Run a batch for a few hours and remove it. That should take care of improving your water quality. Remember that carbon will quickly remove iodine from the system. Note that after you have used carbon for such a short amount of time it is not spent. You can spread it out in a thin layer and let it dry and use it again. Before doing so the next time, rinse it with purified water first to remove any residual dirt or detritus.
The whole issue of RTN in SPS corals is still not quite understood except that lack of light and lack of water motion do promote its appearance. The exact causative agent though is not known yet. RTN and other coral disease are actually bacterial in nature for the most part. This is a secondary step in the process. What allows the bacteria (often Vibrio sp. is blamed) to actually destroy coral tissue is what is not quite clear yet.
Note that RTN is most prevalent in SPS type corals and not so much in LPS type corals although they, too, can be infected with bacterial diseases. Brown Jelley is one of the more common ones (check the article in the disease section of the SW Library of the web site on this disease and check the one in the Netclub library as well).
Keep lots of free space between the live rock to promote vigorous water motion. Corals placed too close together inhibit water motion and water movement over the coral tissue and polyps. Good water motion allows the sloughing off of slime and detritus from the corals you have. This is especially important with SPS corals but applies to LPS corals too. Goniopora is a good example of the latter. Removing slime and detritus that may accumulate on the corals or between their tentacles prevents decay, which may lead to disease and tissue necrosis.
SPS corals grow rapidly. This prevents light from reaching corals that are lower or suddenly shielded from the light source. This can lead to disease. Trim and frag (fragment) your SPS corals regularly so that this cannot happen. More and more speakers and authors are stressing the need for very high circulation and water motion within the tank. Figures of up to 20 times the tank content per hour where mentioned several times. This requires good pumps on one hand, and it also requires that you clean your pumps more regularly to prevent a slow down in their output.
Do not overpopulate the tank. This inhibits water motion in all areas of the aquarium. Julian suggested that the amount of rock used nowadays is far higher than what people should use. This is kind of a shift in thinking as a while back just about every author recommended large amounts of live rock. Mind you, if you are keeping LPS corals you do not really need to lower the amount of rock that much if at all. All you need to do is ensure that water flow is strong and reaches all areas of the tank and that dead spots are avoided. Powerhead pumps and irregular flow of water will achieve this.
Use live sand and use a coarser grade (as suggesed for instance in my article in the NetClub Library). Reduce the amount of rock and increase the amount of live sand. Make sure it is "live" and has plenty of worms and so on in it. If you have not read the Live Sand Update article recently, you may wish to do so. I use a mixture of 50 % live sand, 25 % crushed coral and 25 % crushed shells and place it directly on the bottom of the tank. Thickness is from 2 to 3 inches. No plenum lately although I have obviously used them in the past.
Use Reef Janitors and use them at the rate of 1 per 2 to 2.5 gallons. Watch their growth. Get small ones to begin with and replace them or place them elsewhere when they get larger ( the sump is a good spot ). If you do the latter you will need to feed them. You can use red legged or blue legged ones. The key is to get real small ones and when they get larger and show signs of becoming aggressive, remove them. I have tried hermmits from many different suppliers and keep going back to the ones from GARF. I seem to have better success with those.
A few Atrea Snails in the tank are desirable. 1 per 5 gallons is IMO enough.
Pay real close attention to how you position the animals in the tank to avoid nettling and stinging. Watch for those corals that have sweeper tentacles. Place them far enough apart so no stinging can occur during the night especially. You will rarely see sweeper tentacles during the day so you will need to look at what is happening in your tank at night. Use a red light or a flashlight covered with red acetate to see what is going on. Corals do not react to red light so you get a chance to really see what is happening in your tank and what creatures may be present that you were not aware of.
Since SPS corals grow rapidly, leave plenty of space between the frags to allow for growth without inhibiting light and water motion. Watch growth rates and frag them when they get too large or start restricting lighting for what is underneath, cutting down on water current, or stinging adjacent corals. You can place the frags in your own tank, using epoxy to hold them down, or you can sell them to a pet store or other hobbyist. Use the reefkeeping mailing list if you wish to advertise what you have for sale.
Since many corals need nutrients in the water, do not overskim and do not use mechanical filtration. Overskimming and mechanical filtration remove valualbe food stuff from the water.
It is not a bad idea to add live plankton to your tank from time to time to ensure that enough food is available. In this respect, the higher the temperature you run your tank at the more you will need to feed, as higher temperatures promote higher rates of metabolism. You can grwo such plankton yourself or you can order it from several companies that advertise in hobby magazines. I get mine from AWC now. Excellent quality.
When a problem occurs in the tank, deal with it immediately. Don't put it off or you may end up with more damage than you expected. In addition, the longer you wait the more difficult it may be to solve the problem. Not only may it become more difficult to deal with that one problem, but others may start as a result. This is the so-called downward spiral effect: when one thing goes wrong and you do not deal with it, more will go wrong and solving the problem becomes more and more difficult.
Keep Nitrates (total nitrates) real low. The recommendation is now to keep the level below 5 ppm total or lower if possible. I have always been in favor of keeping nitrates real low and am happy to see that other authors are starting to recommend the same.
Acclimate your animals to both the water quality of your tank and to the lighting conditions over your aquarium. The SW library of our web site
http://www.athiel.com contains several articles that you can read that will give you more information on how to do so. Read those articles if you have not done so yet and read the one in the Netclub Library as well. Also read the articles by Dana Riddle in the SW Library of the web site. All are helpful and provide some additional insights.
CONT. TO PART-2