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 State of the Tank: (cont.) |
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Oh, and for you stat guys, I'd say turnover now is about 25X, not bad at all for a tank this size.
Unfortunately, not everyone seems happy with all this new flow. My Frogspawns, especially the lime green one on the extreme upper right, seem to be catching the brunt of the 'blowback' and are nowhere near as open as they used to be. Also, my Palythoa cluster is now being 'upskirted', which can't be good. But what seems to be affected the most are my huge cluster of purple Tonga Mushrooms. They are just getting battered by the current and are clearly unhappy. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this however because they were becoming quite invasive. Perhaps this change will cause them recede a little, or at least slow their progress down. As for the Frogspawns, I've read about examples of them adapting quite well to changes in water flow. It takes time naturally, but it does happen. This is good because I definitely wouldn't want to lose them. Their movement always was an eye-catcher, especially to kids and non-reefers viewing the tank for the first time. I have no idea of the long-term effects on the Palys. They may eventually have to be moved to a calmer section of the reef...if I even have one anymore.
The lesson here is obvious: You can't have everything. Nature shaped each one of these creatures to fit perfectly within a certain environment and no amount of science or gadgetry is going to |
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change that. Most of our 'LPS' seem to do better in lower flow, higher nutrient systems. Certainly our mushrooms and zoanthids do. Conversely, most of our 'SPS' can handle all the flow we can throw at them (as long as it's not DIRECT flow). This should give us an idea of where they came from. And yes, sometimes they CAN adapt to the environs we want them to but so could a penguin, a maple tree, and a kangaroo if we designed a suitable enclosure. Doubt if all three would be completely happy in it though.
So I guess we'll just have to see what's going to happen. Fortunately, the Tunze controller will allow me to dial down the flow so I may have to go into tweaking mode for a while. But I don't want to defeat their purpose by turning them really low because, as I said before, the 'SPS' seem to love 'em the way they are. So this might be a case where everyone will have to be a little unhappy for things to work well.
Continuing with the equipment update, everything else seems to be running well and without problems. I AM having a heck of a time keeping the ORP probe of my ozonizer correctly calibrated though. As per instructions, I've attempted to locate it in a darker part of my sump, in moving water, but it still seems to fall out of whack every few days or so. Fortunately, the ORP probe on my Octopus 3000 seems much more stable so I've just been going by the reading on that one. |
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