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Ooops! I lied :-(


Timfish

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I posted here: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/23416-20-years-old/ what I thought was my oldest tank. I was going through notes on another system I was thinking was set up in 1994 and noticed the first additions were in May 1991. My oldest tank is 22 years old, Woohooo!! yahoo.gif Filtration is just a simple sump with some base rock and overflow corals from the display tank and it gets a weekly 10% water change. Most of the corals were added in mid 1990's and I've been maintaining it since 1995. Notably the Palau Green Finger was acquired in 1997 as a 1 1/2" frag that survived from a colony that died of brown jelly at Aquadome. (This was before Terry, Hunter and Gary!) Analysis done in 2011 identified it as Sinularia foliata which had only been described in 20081 so for over 11 years we had an undescribed species in the tank! Here's a video from last year:

1http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/record/292118

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I find it very interesting (I mean that honestly, NOT sarcastically) that you're able to maintain such clean looking tanks with large corals for so long without crashes and nuisance algae, with such a minimalist approach. So many people have I met with tanks consisting of only lights, flow, rock, and regular water changes that don't turn out near as nice. Matter of fact most tanks I've seen with that approach end up crashing with alot of fish and coral deaths and algae mania. I know having a large and stable bacteria population is ideal but surely there must be something else afoot

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Probably consistency... we all get busy or lazy with our personal tanks and start skipping WCs... and yes there are people out there that manage to go with almost no WCs... but I know I personally get algae explosions etc. when I start missing WCs and letting it go 2, 3, or 4 weeks without...

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I think a lot comes down to not fiddling with the tank, the amount being fed, etc. Back when that tank was started, there would not have been the amount of monitoring, additives, etc available. So people would tend not to obsess over every detail of the water chemistry :) Also from the video, if you look at the corals, I don't want to call them "easier" ones to keep, but definitely not as pickier as SPS.

I personally have found with my tanks, they do better the less I mess with them. I am definitely on the less-frequent-water-change program ... but that is also coupled with the not-feeding-that-often plan too. So I don't get the big nutrient spikes from over feeding.

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I find it very interesting (I mean that honestly, NOT sarcastically) that you're able to maintain such clean looking tanks with large corals for so long without crashes and nuisance algae, with such a minimalist approach. So many people have I met with tanks consisting of only lights, flow, rock, and regular water changes that don't turn out near as nice. Matter of fact most tanks I've seen with that approach end up crashing with alot of fish and coral deaths and algae mania. I know having a large and stable bacteria population is ideal but surely there must be something else afoot

When tanks are set up to work in harmony with nature, minimalistic is best. The bacteria do not need an automated control system to multiply and keep up with increased nutrient input. Most coral consume different bacteria as a food. Bacteria is the bottom of the food chain. If the foundation of your food web is weak, then so is your biological filtration.

Patrick

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True that tank is mostly lps and softies by the look, but he has posted several videos here recently of tanks with some large sps colonies that look great. They may not be cartoon colored like some of the zeovit tanks you see but I'd sure take them over my own! Lol

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Tim, these are awesome. I found much more success when I stepped back and set cruise control on the tank after learning the ropes. I am trying my hand at a temp FOWLR right now in situ while the reef tank is rebuilt. Which brings me to another question....

What is the expected life span of a standard silicon-glass tank? Provided it has lived it's life on a stable stand and not a lot of scrapping done on the corner radiused silicon seal.

I know many tanks don't see this kind of posh life of long term stability, but the bigger question is, what will the the ultimate failing point of a long term system be provided it has long term consistent and competent care (read: no human mistakes or induced crashes).

My guess at ranking:

  1. human error(h.e.) (miss calibration and mucking with things)
  2. excessive nutrient import (feeding, h.e.)
  3. power outages and heat
  4. equipment failures

Just another idea up for discussion. Sorry to hijack Tim.

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very nice tank. hopefully in 21.75 more years mine will look like that, too. :).

i find the assumption about the SPS curious, though. you see one small corner of a 110g tank. does anyone, well besides tim, know what resides in the rest of it?

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Thank You everybody!

@ Ckyuv and Brooks, maybe I'm reading to much into it but I'm seeing the words "old" and "geezer" and "irrascable" betwen the lines. laugh.png

@ Nwehrmen, it's a 110 gallon, it started out life as a 75 gallon with a wet/dry. There have been several tank changes over the years but each time most of the coral colonies were kept along with the majority of the rock and some new live rock was added.

@ Planedon, more of the same actually. smile.png This tank has primarily Palau Green Finger (Sinularia foliata) lots of tri color Frogspawn, brown sinularia finger, tri color candy cane and mushrooms.

@ Bpb, I have to agree with Etannert and JamesL and Subsea, consistancy with maintenance and water changes and just leaving it alone to find it's balance. I know systems have been kept a long time without water changes, Dr. Jaubert in his reearch maintained a system without pumps or filtration or skimming for over 4 1/2 years and maintain water quality. Considering what we are learning about refatory compounds and TOC I think water changes are needed. What the magic number is I can't say though. PaulB on Reefcentral has a system over 44 years and does 20% every other month. I will soemtimes have to do several large water changes in a row (20% - 30% instead of 5% or 10%). There are two things I think get people in trouble irregardless of thier methodology, one is they do not give their system enough time to mature (9 months to a year) and start trying to fix algae problems that will take care of themselves (I know other aquarists here have echoed this over the years) and end up exacerbating the problem. There are simple things to do that help the tank look better during the maturing process but I am not going to be adding anything outside of calcium and alkalinity buffers.

The second is corals are added that will die. Some because their requirements are not met some becasue they are very difficult to keep and this includes some "softies" and so called LPS corals that do not have any history of successful propogation in aquaria (I'm not counting corals that are sliced and diced as successfully propogated here). What annoys me is some of these are often touted as "easy to keep" (like Trachyphillia). They may look good but it is rare to see them live two or three years. An additional consideration I think is a significant part of the problem with coral dieoff in young tanks is new reef aqarists do not have any realiable way to tell if thier lighting conditions are adequate for the coral they are buying. This is unfortunately soemthing that takes some experience, both with all the permutaions lighting can have and with what corals will adapt to various lighting conditions and which will not. From what I have seen as corals die there are "things", for lack of a better term, that happen in a tank that will not show up on tests but will contribute to nuisance algae. If more inappropriate corals are purchased and added even with good husbandry things can start spiraling downward. One factor I point to as a reason of my success is back in the mid 90's I made a conscious decision to stick with corals I knew I could grow in my tanks. I do experiment with new species/variants but it is one or two at a time in an established system and I try to see what the lighting conditions they grew under.

The scenario or sequence that is usually given for coral death and nuisance algae problems seems to be: Excess Nutrients -> Nuiscence Algae -> Coral Death. I would posit many times the sequence more correctly is: Coral Death -> Reduced Nutrient Competition -> Nuisance Algae This is based on my experience fixing problems by simply doing small weekly water changes and addng corals I know will grow well in the aquarium in question.

@ Jaggedfire, As far as life expectancy of aquariums anectodally i would say 10% failure at 20 years for glass and silicone and acrylic using single part solvent type glues. For acrylic using two part self polymerizing adhesives judging from the lack of incursions or crazing I've seen that occurs with the single part I'd say a whole lot longer. But my choice is glass for ease of cleaning.

Thankfully for all the mistakes I've made over the years I've never crashed a system. I may have had one tank crash from excess nutrients, it was 14 years old and the owner had me do just one 20 gallon water change a year (per manufacterers recommendations, it was an old DAS system). No nitrates but phosphates were between 2 and 3 mg/l. System had mostly mushrooms with some zooanthiids and brown BTAs. Reason I say "may have" is phosphates were stable for several years and the livestock was doing fine when the mushrooms started declining and died off over a 3 or 4 month time frame when the decision was mad to convert to freshwater, it's possible a disease may have taken hold. Heat has caused some very major problems and I'll consider AC failure seperate from system equipment failure. System equipment failure is one of the driving forces for simple systems - there's less to break down. With the system this post is about we've had several close calls with both AC failure and sytem equipment failure over the years but over all I'd say heat.

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That is awesome! I hope to be successful in this hobby for that long.

How is the life span of fish in a system like that? Have you had some of the same fish in there the whole time? I've heard of people keeping fish for many years. 20 plus would be impressive.

Nice work!

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More than happy to share my opinions, just remember advice is free only so long as I don't have to get off my couch. grin.png Unfortunately one of the lessons I learned is atlantic carpet anemonies have very strong stings and like to hang out by power heads, I had one take out ALL the fish in about 2 hours when it wrapped itself around a screened power head intake so unfortunately none of the fish are original. The Purple Tang was purchased in 1994 but was from another tank that was torn down. The Sailfin and Regal tangs were about 2" - 3" long and were from an aquarist that got married and got out of the hobby, I'm thinking at the rate it's growing I've got 2 - 3 more years before the Sailfin outgrows this tank. In the tank referenced in the first post I had a Marine Betta live to 19 years and a Yellow Tang live to 18 years.

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That is a great video Tim. Grats on the longevity of the tank, quite the accomplishment.

Glad to see your coral banded is as careless as mine, stomping on the corals.... :P

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  • 2 weeks later...

This thread merits being at the front of the line.

Tim,

I have been chatting with Paul B. He shares a thread with Albert Thiel on Nano Reef website. I do not think that Paul does any scheduled water change. He collects mud and stuff from Long Island Sound estuary system. When he eats clams, so do the fish in his tank. He feeds heavy with nitrates in excess of 40 ppm. His fish are all in breeding shape. He once took a fish covered in ich and introduced it into a display tank with many fish in excellent breeding shape. The introduced fish with ich gradually got healthy with no ich epidemic in his tank.

He is a unique individual and quite a maverick. He was Airborne Calvary during Vietnam War and spent several years as a POW. We are discussing writing a book together, Red Stick which narrates the Khamer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia. He like my brother Robert are both war heroes and men of distinction.

I continue to look forward to your leadership and success in your reefkeeping techniques.

La bonne temps roulee,

Patrick

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Paul also uses an under gravel filter. He is a real character. And for those that don't know , Paul's tank is 40+ years old. Patrick, my dad was a war hero with a bronze star, silver star and two Purple Hearts. He had several books written about him. I can bring one by next time I come over. One book is what the movie hamburger hill was after. Another time my dad was a green beret escorting the secretary of defense and the helicopter pilots were both shot and my dad crash landed the heli and saved 16 people. Got a thank you letter from the president and a Silver star for that.

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Paul also uses an under gravel filter. He is a real character. And for those that don't know , Paul's tank is 40+ years old. Patrick, my dad was a war hero with a bronze star, silver star and two Purple Hearts. He had several books written about him. I can bring one by next time I come over. One book is what the movie hamburger hill was after. Another time my dad was a green beret escorting the secretary of defense and the helicopter pilots were both shot and my dad crash landed the heli and saved 16 people. Got a thank you letter from the president and a Silver star for that.

Please bring the book. I knew that someone in ARC had a war hero father, I did not realize that it was you. I salute your father.

Patrick

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Subsea, in his thread on Reef Central PaulB says he does about a 20% water change about every two months. His thread is about 80 pages long though and he says it somewhere around a third of the ways through.

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I would love to hear more about your dosing regimen. This is one area I still struggle with understanding. What do you dose? How much/how often? And how did you figure out the right quantities?

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Subsea, in his thread on Reef Central PaulB says he does about a 20% water change about every two months. His thread is about 80 pages long though and he says it somewhere around a third of the ways through.

The thread on NanoReef is 300 pages. Even though I claim no scheduled water change, I do some water change when and if I vacumn the top inch of substrate. Whenever we export macro, it is 95% water and need be replaced. Another source of water exchange.

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