About corals and new tanks...a little caution.

[Sk8r]

You may be used to thinking of your new tank as a recently-resolved toxic zone barely able to support life...and that's somewhat true: in fish keeping, it's fragile, and you daren't push it.

It is one other thing, however: depending on the salt mix you used---if reef salt, high in calcium, magnesium, etc---it is also a very friendly home for corals, including stony coral, granted you have enough light for their photosynthetic aspect (they harvest sugars from sunlight and carbon). In fact---it may never be that friendly again. The water is pure, now that your bacteria are on the job, nitrate has hit bottom (they hate nitrate. If ammonia should happen, they're not that bothered by a smidge, but they really, really hate high nitrate.)

So this is your tank before it has been through all the ups and downs of early reefkeeping, before there have been mistakes and incidents, and problems with chemistry. And you pop a light-appropriate coral into this tank, and granted you don't screw up the salinity or drop some chemical in, it's going to be well-fed by the light and the balance of elements in the water, and it's probably going to grow. You don't have to target feed them: they've been living in the ocean without it for millions of years. Sunlight and water, and the stray morsel of fish poo. Or its components.

There is a honeymoon period for corals early on in a tank. Nothing is messed up yet. Including the fact that the balance of trace elements and major elements is exactly perfect for coral---later it will get skewed off, some elements never used before more is added, and some declining due to lack of maintenance.


THEN---things go south. Why? the water quality has gone 'off' and nitrates are rising. Particularly nitrates. Which, remember, they hate. Your skimmer may have lunked along barely doing anything, and now its doing something, which tells you, yes, there is crud in that water that is capable of breaking down into nitrate, and if your skimmer is good it will get it---and if it is not that great---well, problems multiply.

This is where a coral-keeper needs to get conscientious about the tests, if ever you slacked, keep a notebook of test results, because numbers all look the same---until they don't. And your need to know how long 'this' has been going on or when the downturn began is rather critical. THis is where you may need to clean up your water with additional changes...maybe a bigger-budget skimmer; (if you're running softies you should be running carbon bags from the beginning, and changing them every couple of weeks, on a schedule: the things can become nitrate factories if forgotten and allowed to crud up.)

In general, you can re-create the honeymoon, but it's a lot better if you know what's going on, and if you are testing regularly so you can spot the slow, slight changes and know how to fix them just matter-of-course as they begin to be an issue. Dip them, inspect them, read about a species before you buy it!!!!!!!!!!!!! don't try, as a novice, to mix stony and softies in the same tank---know what you're buying, and in general, ask advice.