Pics of my 180g. ecosystem reef
- Thread starter Sue Truett
- Start date
Here's an "SPS" dominated reef that I photographed in Fiji in about 15' of water. Oh, one thing I forgot to add is that this is a fairly "young" reef, as all the corals you see in this picture are <3 years old. The reef was wiped clean in 1998.
Here is a picture of SueT's reeftank:
Do you all think the two are similar, or different?
I think they are similar in a lot of ways in that the corals are all very tightly packed together, with not much room to grow, however the corals in Sue's tank ARE smaller than the ones in the photo from Fiji.
Any other input? I think we are all in agreement that Sue's tank is what A LOT of reefkeepers strive to create. I think this could be a useful excercise... How is a reeftank different than a reef.
Cheers
James Wiseman
[ October 01, 2001: Message edited by: jamesw ]
Here is a picture of SueT's reeftank:
Do you all think the two are similar, or different?
I think they are similar in a lot of ways in that the corals are all very tightly packed together, with not much room to grow, however the corals in Sue's tank ARE smaller than the ones in the photo from Fiji.
Any other input? I think we are all in agreement that Sue's tank is what A LOT of reefkeepers strive to create. I think this could be a useful excercise... How is a reeftank different than a reef.
Cheers
James Wiseman
[ October 01, 2001: Message edited by: jamesw ]
First off, Sue, Beautiful tank!
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I think the closed system factor is the biggest difference. Corals will release metabolites and chemicals to compete with adjacent corals. But these elements will only compete on a very local level on a wild reef. In a tank, they have the ability to hang around and build up. Sometimes I wonder if crowding sps is a bad idea. Not just due to the need for growing room, but also in terms of a coral releasing stressors. I've noticed that in uncrowded systems, if one corals stresses or RTN's the rest tend to be allright. Only adjacent corals will react. In crowded systems, I've seen one stressed/RTN'ing coral create a wildfire effect and wipe out the entire tank. This is just from observation, and I have no idea what is really going on. But based on that, I've wondered about crowding corals together. On a reef, they can crowd more easily, because the body of water the flows through it effectivly flushes any of these stressor signals out. A closed tank is different. A good example in a tank is xenia. Grab you finger, and rub/harras one single colony of xenia till it's upset and closed. Then wait and look at all the other colonies of xenia. They will all close up. This is not true of all xenia, but seems to be the case with my elongata. Even the xenia in my sump will close up. Some type of stressor signal was produced. I wouldn't be suprised if sps could do the same.
Again, I'm just thinking out loud, so don't ask for citations or articles or anything. It's also obvious that many tanks do not have any of these problems. Heck, Sue's pictures are the perfect example. A beautiful healthy reef tank. But you prompted a discussion, and I replied.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote
I think the closed system factor is the biggest difference. Corals will release metabolites and chemicals to compete with adjacent corals. But these elements will only compete on a very local level on a wild reef. In a tank, they have the ability to hang around and build up. Sometimes I wonder if crowding sps is a bad idea. Not just due to the need for growing room, but also in terms of a coral releasing stressors. I've noticed that in uncrowded systems, if one corals stresses or RTN's the rest tend to be allright. Only adjacent corals will react. In crowded systems, I've seen one stressed/RTN'ing coral create a wildfire effect and wipe out the entire tank. This is just from observation, and I have no idea what is really going on. But based on that, I've wondered about crowding corals together. On a reef, they can crowd more easily, because the body of water the flows through it effectivly flushes any of these stressor signals out. A closed tank is different. A good example in a tank is xenia. Grab you finger, and rub/harras one single colony of xenia till it's upset and closed. Then wait and look at all the other colonies of xenia. They will all close up. This is not true of all xenia, but seems to be the case with my elongata. Even the xenia in my sump will close up. Some type of stressor signal was produced. I wouldn't be suprised if sps could do the same.
Again, I'm just thinking out loud, so don't ask for citations or articles or anything. It's also obvious that many tanks do not have any of these problems. Heck, Sue's pictures are the perfect example. A beautiful healthy reef tank. But you prompted a discussion, and I replied.
The differences are astounding. In fact, other than the fact there is a single genus of coral common to both pictures, I don't see any similarity at all. I think the most notable difference is that James' picture shows one genus of coral and two fish in about 15,000 gallons. ;-)
James
I think sue tank is very natural looking and I hope that my SPS tank will grow as well as hers has, also if you have more pictures like the one in your post I would love to have you send me some to view. My email is [email protected], if you dont mind.
David
I think sue tank is very natural looking and I hope that my SPS tank will grow as well as hers has, also if you have more pictures like the one in your post I would love to have you send me some to view. My email is [email protected], if you dont mind.
David
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