Aquarist - the Regulator
Starting a Marine Tank V
Written by Thursday, 29 August 2002 00:00
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Photosynthesis in a Marine Tank.
The addition of more tubes over the tank (4 marine white + 3 actinic blue) resulted in a tremendous amount of photosynthesis. Not only the regular algae (the preferred food for all brazing snails and mollusks) but also macroalgae on the live rocks benefit from it. The light intensity is a bit over 1 Watt / liter (4 Watts / gallon) while the tank depth is only 42 cm (approximately 16,5").
The "leaf" of a Mediterranean species of macroalgae shot in the "midday" time (6 hours after the lamps were turned on). Usually you can see the first tiny bubbles forming within the first hour (while the tank is still illuminated by the actinic blue lamps only).
Things are changing and taking shape. In contrast to freshwater tanks which are decorated in detail before any fish is added, when you work with live rock this has to be done slowly and stepwise. Going too quickly will simply destroy the delicate balance which you have managed to establish in your tanks. The addition of new rocks, invertebrates or fish has to be preceded by the upgrading of the support system which in addition has to be checked for its performance in advance. A chiller not performing as it should will kill everything within 24 hours, since the heat from the pumps is enough to raise the temperature to over 27C. For the cold water marine species I have decided to keep this is too much. Filtration is another issue. The introduction of the new external canister filters has to be introduced slowly, while the old internal filters are gradually removed one by one.
The tanks as they looked in early February. The internal filters are still running together with the external canister filters. One internal filter was removed every 15 days to make sure that the biological filtration will always be adequate. The introduction of new species is a very slow procedure since you have to make sure that they will survive and that they are compatible. On top of that, increases in bioload shall be small for the filtration system to reach the correct capacity. The chiller is already in place for the right tank which houses no tropical species. The temperature was gradually dropped to 18C from 27C (one degree C per day). All the inhabitants responded very well to this change - which closely resembles their natural habitat.
The two tanks at night lighted by the 3 actinic tubes. The actinic tubes will be turned on one hour before the 4 full spectrum white ones and will be turned off one hour after them (14 hours / day for the actinic and 12 hours per day for all of them). It is true that 12 hours of full lighting is a bit too much for a temperate tank but this doesn't seem to bother the inhabitants while it results in enough algae growth to feed all the invertebrates.
The chiller is connected in line to the external canister filter. As you can see, the temperature indication is still 24 Celsius which means it is the third day after its installation.
One of the UV lamps is also connected in line to a canister filter.
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