Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Really want your thoughts on what I am trying this time, In my quest to try and get some growth from my zoas I have quit doing my weekly 27g water changes in my 125g tank, (only about 100g of water in the tank, with all the LR in the tank) and I am doing one 27g water change one time a month. The zoas have never looked better, and two of my frags have each put out one new baby, thats alot for me. I haven't had any babies for a long time. Forgot, my Tubes Blue frag that I got from Andy has put on two babies also. Now for the other thing that I have started doing that I am not to sure about I have turned my skimmer off, ( I am using a filter sock that I change every day) thinking that it may be doing to good of a job and effecting my zoa growth. I was planning on leaving it off for three days (tommrow is the third day) then running it for a day, then off again for a few more days. I only have 2 sps corals in the tank and if they bite the dust so be it, I want zoa growth. Is this skimmer move alright or a bad move?

Many zoanthids will be absorptive feeders (getting the rest of their nutrition through photosynthesis), so a bit of extra stuff in the water column stands to benefit them. The skimmer being offline may or may not be a good idea long term. The issue lies in whether or not there is enough diversity and natural means to basically process the extra. Export is export, but you have to make sure your tank as a whole can handle what the protein skimmer was removing. If it can't, it will only spell trouble in the long run. I've found that skimmerless tanks are often best setup as such from the start rather than changing over later. The chances for success are higher that way, anyway. That's not to say that it can't be done, but often the odds are a bit against you, especially in the usual reef setup, which is usually sparsely fed (by natural standards) and starved even more with ultra-efficient protein skimmers. The capacity for such a tank to be able to handle itself has been greatly reduced if you were to take the skimmer offline and you may very well run into issues. If you slowly ramp the skimmer out of commission, while simultaneously compensating via other means, it can be a much smoother transition.

That being said, I'm loving my new skimmerless tank. There's less noise, less hassle, and less maintenance. But I have a lot of fauna to process particulate waste and a ton of plant matter to assimilate nitrate and phosphate. I feed a ton, too, especially for a little 25g tank.

I've always had better success with growing Zoas/Palys whenI had an appropriate (not overpowered) skimmer on the tank and a modest bioload, though lighting seemed to be a bigger key, as they grew much faster in high lighting.

Good luck growing the Zoas. I am good at growing the nuclear green paly and invasive palys.

So far so good, I am good at growing Purple deaths, but even those stopped putting out babies. I have high hopes this time though with the reduced water changes and turnning the skimmer off some. We will see how it looks in a few months.

Over time, I've found that everyone has a tendency to want to starve their tanks. I did the same thing for a good, long while. People are so scared of algae that they tend to gravitate toward this when a bit of algae should be a very natural thing. I have a little patch of cyanobacteria that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Not only is it small, but it isn't uncommon to see it in seagrass beds in between plants. I'm glad I took a more natural route and I'm definitely happy with the results I've gotten, as well as the great stability the tank now has. When in doubt, feed a bit more--just make sure you have adequate export mechanisms in place.

my filter sock stopped up and i guess i did not do a good job cleaning it because it stopped up agin but i did notice that my zoas and polys started going nuts well growing rapidly in the past month... but now my nitrates are sky high and the saddle is taking the beating but everything els looks majorly healthyer than ive ever seen it??? dunno what the deal is but guessing that the extra junk in the water is power feeding everything....

Your case is a bit different. When corals are limiting in something, they can obtain it by absorptive means as opposed to prey capture. That works, but isn't as advantageous for the coral in many circumstances--at least with stony corals. Soft corals, at least the more common ones we keep, typically are largely absorptive feeders to begin with. In an aquarium without any sort of reasonable food input, they "do better" because you are fulfilling their needs in another way--and certainly not the most natural way in terms of percent obtained from absorption. Keep in mind that in the ocean, while the levels are exceptionally low, they are in constant supply, unlike in an aquarium. Not to mention that most corals can meet their needs in other ways much more easily in the ocean.

The RBTA isn't liking the skimmer being shut down a few days a week and has started moving around the tank a bit. I think I might need to go back to running the skimmer as before 24 - 7 and just stick with the infrequent water changes. I am guessing that the RBTA most likely wasn't liking the infrequent water changes and not running the skimmer pushed it over the edge and had it moving around the tank. The zoas on the other hand are starting to put out a few babies, not all of my frags, but some, and I hope the other frags will jump on board. Just thinking here maybe has my zoas frags start getting bigger ( I am very optimistic here )and are able to use up more of the nitrates that maybe we can get to a point that the skimmer won't have to be in the system, we will see.

Trying to learn by ease dropping.

What is RBTA?

Thank you....

Shelly wrote:Trying to learn by ease dropping.

What is RBTA?

Thank you....

Rose Bubble Tip Anemone