Sometimes we just aren’t as smart as we think we are. I am using the “royal we” as I know I am definitely not as smart as I think I am a lot of the tie, especially when it comes to this hobby. Having science degrees and having had the scientific method beat into me, you would think I would know better than to manipulate multiple variables at the same time.
While I was not attempting to test a scientific hypothesis, I was hoping to come up with a new, “better,” easier methodology for setting up and maintaining a tank. For those of you that read this column regularly will remember in the winter of 2016 I switched over my 90-gallon tank for a new, better-looking and up to date Elos 120-gallon tank and I set it us with the notion that I would use a lot of new equipment and a methodology that I had not used before.
As I said, I should have known better as I now realize that I changed too much and tried to use concepts and methodologies that I had only used to a small degree or that I had not tried at all. So, for lack of a better term, for the first year after the tank was set up I consider it a failure. I will explain the how’s and why’s and hopefully some of the things we all might avoid when we set up a tank below.
So what did I do differently when I started this new tank. To begin with, the new tank started with only “dead” live rock, none of the old live rock from the old tank or any “live rock” for that matter was used. The only thing I did with his dead rock was to soak it in water from a water changes from my 300 for 6 weeks to try and inoculate it and make it a little live.
该坦克还始于新的蛋白质撇渣器，具有新的设计，新型独特设计的媒体反应堆以及我以前从未使用过的灯，并定制了灯光。坦克只有适度的水运动，它没有任何奇迹泥或任何形式的基材，底部被右舷覆盖。污水池既包含一个混合物和小菜，又包含在底满各个部分中。
Even the salt that was used was different from what I normally used, as this was done so as to follow the guidelines of one of the most unique aspects of this set up in that the tank would be run using the Triton method and thus would not have any water changes done on it and the water would be tested regularly.
In theory, all of these changes in methodologies as well as the new equipment being used on the tank should not have caused problems, and should have provided at least a comparable if not superior result to what I had done in the past, at least that is how I saw it. I set this tank up as an experiment to test not only the Triton method, but also to try out a bunch of new equipment.
So having it fail, which I will explain why it did, in detail below, was incredibly disappointing. It was disappointing on a number of levels. First, the tank itself, as are all Elos tanks, is beautiful and it sits between the kitchen and the family room, so it is the one tank in the house that everyone sees from the moment they walk in the front door.
因为它在哪里,它一直是一个常量t reminder of what I did wrong. It was also disappointing, as even once it failed, that it took me so long to figure out why and to correct the problem. And lastly it was disappointing in that I did not even follow my own advice in a number of different ways.
因此，在阅读了上面的内容后，您问自己：“这个坦克是如何失败的，或者迈克认为失败了什么？”更重要的是：“为什么这个坦克失败了，他做了什么来纠正它”。我对失败的定义非常简单：一旦将珊瑚放在坦克中，珊瑚就不会在任何时间内生活在这个水箱中，我认为我们大多数人都认为这是失败的。所以发生了什么以及为什么。
Once the tank was set up, with all of the “dead” live rock in place after it had been cured and all of the equipment was tested and was functioning properly, the tank was allowed to run for approximately 6 weeks with no intervention other than top off water being added daily via an ATO to make up for evaporation, and bacteria cultures were added as well.
After this break-in period, some snails and a couple of frags of hardy Acropora and Montipora were placed in the tank and mounted in what were considered optimal positions. Several coral frags were taken from the same mother colonies and mounted at different heights in the tank to reduce the likelihood that bleaching from the new lights to reduce the likelihood of one factor affecting them all.
At this point, a water sample was sent to Triton, which came back showing all parameters were within their limits, as expected. After a full week, all of the corals looked good, so more frags were added to the tank. In addition, a couple of herbivores, including a Rabbitfish and a tang were also added. So at this point everything seemed to be going okay and I was sure the tank would thrive and do well over the long term.
It was at approximately the third week after the initial frags were added that it started to fail.
The initial signs of problems appeared when the initial frags slowly started to fade and then gradually totally bleached and died. This then progressed over the next month to where the majority of frags that were placed in the tank also showed this response. They all just gradually faded and eventually totally bleached out and then died. At this point I sent in another test for Triton and it too came back showing all of the parameters were good.
So then I started manipulating things and changing things in the hope of finding out what the source of this problem was. First it was not the source of the frags, as all of them were either frags of frags I had or frags off of mother colonies all of which were doing great in my other system.
So the next thing that was looked at was the lighting. The light was changed a multitude of ways including adjusting its intensity, adjusting it duration and adjusting its spectrum. Despite varying all of these parameters and taking time to see if any had any affect, all of the subsequent frags placed in the tank perished in the same fashion.
All of this manipulation of the lighting did nothing for the survivability of the corals, but it did produce several different algal blooms. So not only did the corals fail to thrive in this tank, but their death added to the nutrient levels, as a result ugly nuisance algaes sprouted and filled the tank in their place. So the tank was a mess of dead coral and ugly algae.
因此，由于显然不是罪魁祸首，所以我开始改变事情。而且，由于我没有听到自己的建议，我的匆忙和不断改变的东西，坦克在运营一年后仍未安定下来或变得富有成效。尽管切换到我值得信赖的辐射和雷克布莱特LED灯，顶点撇渣器和媒体反应堆并添加了两个Radion Vortech泵的电流，但在保持SPS Corals方面，该水箱仍然是失败的，这是我设置水箱的主要目的首先。
However, whatever the problem was, soft corals, anemones and fish all did well in the tank and over 9 months eventually the algae went away. It should be noted that over this time Triton tests were done with regularity and all showed stable and optimal parameters, but I did go back to doing regular water changes and added Miracle Mud as I had in all of my tanks, thinking that not doing changes or using Miracle Mud might have been the culprit, but it wasn’t. So a year after being set up, the reason for the continued failure was still a mystery and any sps corals that were added still failed to thrive or even encrust, however it now took about 6 weeks or longer for them to show this pattern of demise.
在这一点上，我决定是否应该分解坦克，并在我定期访问中观看Sanjay时从头开始完全重新开始。桑杰（Sanjay）建立了一个新的坦克，并希望做一些与标准SPS坦克完全不同的事情，因为他希望它只容纳蒙蒂帕拉斯（Montiporas），他将把各种蝴蝶鱼作为主要的鱼类居民。必威官网登录随行版当他启动坦克时，我给了他一些蒙蒂波拉碎片，他把一堆蒙蒂普拉碎片从自己的坦克移到了其中，所以我很想看看它的进展情况。
At first glance the tank looked okay as the Butterflies looked healthy and were eating and the Montipora frags looked okay. But when I asked him how it was going he said fish wise it was great, but the frags all seemed to follow the same pattern: they were fine for a week or two and then they would gradually fade and then perish. And despite where he got the frags from or how healthy they were they did the same thing as was happening in my tank.
I then told him I was having the same problem and was at my wits end to figure out what was causing it. We then tried to figure out what commonalties the tanks shared that could be causing them to have the same problem and why they were failing. After a short discussion, we came to realize that the one and really only thing that they shared and that we had done differently than we had done in the past that might be causing it was that we both started them off with exclusively “dead” live rock.
And while I tried to cure mine in tank water and added bacterial cultures to the tank it did not seem to make much of a difference in terms of how the corals fared in it. When I got home I contacted some of my friends who I knew had also recently set up new tanks, especially the ones who started with dead rock. Most had started with at least a 50/50 split of dead rock and live rock and did not report any problems. But for those individuals who had done dead rock exclusively, reported similar problems to what Sanjay and I had encountered.
Their sps corals had also initially failed to thrive and only when they gave their tanks lots of time, at least over a year and had either added more live rock or bacterial cultures did their sps corals start to thrive. Some of my European friends had even come up with the theory that dead rock did not work as it did not contain either the varied bacteria, sponges, microalgae nor natural fauna and flora that true live rock did and as a result these elements were lacking for sps corals and hence why they failed.
由于我尊重提出这些建议的人，因此我终于咬了子弹，并做了他们建议的更改，并花了我时间做。获得了40磅新鲜的活岩，并用每周换水，最新的水箱甚至其自己的蛋白质脱脂器固化三个月。
准备就绪时，含有的水没有表现出养分，氨或亚硝酸盐的痕迹，因此我认为它足够干净，可以用我使用的一些死岩来切换。一个月多的时间，坦克中的死岩掉了每周的十磅。在这段时间里，还添加了我其他坦克的一些活岩，并且在充满海绵时选择了这块岩石。我的经验是，在海绵中繁殖珊瑚也倾向于做得更好的坦克。
So since the dead rock contained no sponges I thought by adding them the likelihood of the corals doing better was increased. I closely monitored the tank’s parameters and kept an eye on how the soft corals. anemones and fish were doing during this “break-in phase. After a month when all seemed stable with no problems, I again added a couple of frags from various corals and held my breath as I waited to see if they would slowly fade as had been the case with all of the previous corals.
As luck would have it, I had to travel for the second week they were in the tank, so upon my return I expected the worst and that they would be faded like the rest and I would have to go back to the drawing board. However, this was not the case as all of the corals had survived and if anything looked to be healthy and did not have any of the paling that I have come to associate with a sick coral.
与我过去所做的事情不同，我为自己做了一些罕见的事情：我什么也没做，什么也没有改变。我决定，我会给他们更多的时间来看看他们随着时间的流逝，因为我过去被愚弄了，并且不会添加其他碎片，直到我确定他们会生存。在接下来的两个星期中，他们不仅幸存下来，而且做了一些我在过去十年中认为理所当然的事情，他们开始围绕着附着的岩石。
对我来说，这对我的坦克来说是个好时机在过去的一年中，我收集的碎片一直在碎片坦克中存储。老实说，这也意味着我现在在两个坦克中都有更多的空间，以获得更多的新珊瑚。
因此，所有这一切的好消息是，我在我仍然陡峭的学习曲线中学到了几堂课：慢速，一次只更改一个变量，并在无法解决问题时与您信任的人交谈。显然，回顾过去，我希望我没有尝试一次在这个新的坦克上使用这么多新事物，这样我就可以更快地解解问题，并且在将来设置新的坦克时，我不会这样做。我真的希望我能够在没有水更改的情况下提供Triton方法，但我将继续使用它来监视我水箱中宏观和微量元素的整体参数，因为从我的角度来看，它仍然是最好的监视坦克的这些方面的方法。
虽然我相信你们中的一些人有很好的成功ss using dead rock to fill your tanks, at least for me it did not work or I did not give it enough time to be fully inoculated and full of the necessary bacteria and fauna to be as good as true live rock. At the moment the tank is progressing nicely as the coral frags are starting to encrust and take off and the small colonies I added are filling enough space that the tank already looks semi full. After going through all of the problems I have had with this tank for the last 18 months I am going to try something that I rarely do and have never done in the past.
By the end of the month I am going to have all the frags and fish I want in place in this tank, so then I am going to follow what I learned from the articles I did on the masters and I am just going to keep the tank stable and not add anything. Hopefully as a result, over time it will resemble their tanks in terms of color and health and it will provide the dramatic focal point for my home that I have been looking for.
