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The Tao of Marine Aquaria--Tips for Our Hobby and Life
Adam H. Whitlock
Continued from page 4Lesson Fifteen: The World is a Complex Place
One of my favorite lines from a movie was spoken between two friends after they had dealt with a person who, in their estimation, was, shall we say, "a few cans short of a six-pack". Shaking his head, one friend comments to the other, "Same planet, different world". Amusing, yes, but a keen insight, also.
Imagine yourself petting your dog good-bye and driving to the airport. Along the way, you stop at a fast-food restaurant for a burger. After checking in at the ticket counter, you note that you'll be earning 6,195 frequent-flier miles and your flight will arrive in time for you to catch a late dinner before turning in. Nothing unexpected. But after landing, you find yourself having a difficult time getting even the simplest point across. No one understands your language. Still, you manage to rent a car by making engine sounds and waving your Visa card. Then the adventure really begins as you find yourself driving on the wrong side of the road and narrowly escaping death. Shaking from the experience, you pull into a restaurant to eat and recover. You are relieved to find that the menu is complete with pictures of the foodstuffs so you can point to what you want without knowing the language. It then dawns on you that instead of pictures of cows and chickens, you are looking at pictures of dogs and snakes! Suddenly losing your appetite, you ask out loud, "How will I ever manage to get to Jirigong?"
The sweetest sound to ever reach your ears interrupts your self-pity. Someone is asking you if they can help--in English! "Yes!", you reply, a smile reappearing on your face. "I've met with nothing but trouble since my arrival, and I'm beginning to fear I will never reach my destination of Jirigong. How many miles is it to the village? Which road do I take?"
"I'm sorry, friend," replies the man, "but someone has sold you a bill of goods. There's no road to Jirigong, so I'm afraid your car is useless. As for distance, no one has bothered to measure it. It's rather meaningless, what with the changing weather and all. If the clear skies hold and you keep up a good pace, you should be able to make it in a day's walking. Just beware of the cattle. They're a bit territorial about the trails, and it wouldn't do to be seen pushing them out of the way. The locals consider them sacred, so walk around or wait for them to move. Better have a good meal before you start. I recommend the grilled dog; the snake is a few days old."
Praying that Rod Serling will rescue your sanity by revealing that you are in the Twilight Zone, you can't help but recall that phrase, "Same planet, different world." The people look the same, the cars operate identically, the same animals are walking around, yet all the rules are different and you're no longer sure you have what it takes to survive. The same situation is true when we set up an aquarium. A friend may have the same style tank, use the same filters, feed the same food, and try to keep the same animals. But you can't keep a tang alive to save your life, while his look healthier than the ones you've seen on the reefs in Hawaii. He, on the other hand, can't seem to keep a cleaner shrimp scampering around for more than a month while your pair is thriving and constantly laden with eggs. How can this be when everything else is the same? Because everything else isn't the same; you just don't know how or where to find the differences.
Each aquarium is a world unto itself, governed by its own rules and subject to its own peculiarities. We can only follow the example of other aquarists up to a point. We then have to become careful observers of our own little world and start working within its boundaries. This can be both a joy and a burden of the hobby. Either way, it can be hard work. I think it's fair to say that there is no such thing as a successful casual aquarist. The world--or rather, each world--is a complex place. The sooner we begin to understand the one(s) we have chosen to create, the sooner our animals will begin to thrive.
Lesson Sixteen: We Don't Know What We Don't Know
The term "sophomore" comes from the Greek words sophos , meaning wise, and moros, meaning foolish; thus a sophomore is a "wise fool". It is used to describe students who have reached the point in their studies where they know more than nothing, but haven't yet realized how much more there is to learn. As a result, they are overconfident and prone to jumping to erroneous conclusions. We would do well, as aquarists, to remember that, as a group, we are still little more than sophomores.
Need an example to prove the point? Let's start with something basic: the composition of saltwater. Salt and water, right? Wrong! (Unless you intend to gargle with it.) Seawater has twelve major components (sodium, magnesium, calcium, potassium, strontium, chloride, sulfate, bromide, boric acid, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen (see Martin Moe's The Marine Aquarium Reference for more details)) and too many trace elements to list here. We all know the importance of salinity, pH, and temperature for our animals, and reef keepers track calcium and a few other things, but what happens if the germanium level rises or falls? What if our fish or corals don't get enough of the trace element promethium? Heck, we don't even know which trace minerals are essential for us as humans (a factor underlying the profits of many a vitamin company), let alone what is critical for a Pseudochromis fridmani or an Acropora micropthalma. So, who are we to claim that we are experts or knowledgeable aquarists? We may be experienced, perhaps, but not knowledgeable.
This recognition should not lead to a sense of defeat, however. Just humility. We do know enough to keep many species alive in captivity, and we know which parameters to monitor to keep things on a fairly even keel. We just need to remember that these are only indicators, not the complete story. So, if our nitrate and phosphate levels are both low and we still have an algae problem, it doesn't necessarily mean that we need a new nitrate test kit or that the books on our shelves are wrong. It just means that something is going on that no one has figured out yet. We're so ignorant, we can't even name the process, let alone understand it or counteract it.
If we are diligent in our observations, we may discover the causes of some of these mysterious problems and link them to testable indicators that will make the hobby even easier for the next generation of aquarists. But any pride in our success should still be tempered by the recognition that we still won't know what we don't know.
Lesson Seventeen: The Solution to Pollution is Dilution --Martin A. Moe, Jr.
Have you ever wondered why people continue to live in horrendously polluted cities, crime-ridden neighborhoods, and flood plains where rivers routinely wash away their homes? If you answered, "Stupidity", I'll give you half credit; but there is another factor involved: adaptability. We may not be as good at it as cockroaches, but we're no slouches at the game. Our fish can be pretty good players, too. But just because an animal is capable of adapting to rotten conditions isn't a license for us to abdicate our responsibility to keep our aquariums in the best shape possible.
There is a lot of debate these days about the prudence of doing regular water changes in a marine aquarium. There are those who are strong believers in doing up to 25% every week and those who claim that the stability of water parameters is so crucial to some corals that they never disrupt things by doing a water change. There is a third category we might call "contingent water changers". They monitor their tanks and do a water change only when some parameter, like the nitrate level, hits a magic value. So, who's right and who's example should you follow? Unfortunately, I can't tell you. I can, however, give you some food for thought to help you arrive at a decision that will be best for you and your aquarium. (As discussed two lessons ago, each aquarium is a world unto itself, so you'll have to observe the effects of your initial plan and then modify it until it accomplishes your goals.)
We'll start by addressing the concerns of those who feel that water changes are unnecessary or overly disruptive of an aquarium in equilibrium. My first question would be, by what means is the fact of this equilibrium being determined? Whether we look at the daily flux in pH, alkalinity, or temperature, there can be no doubt that our aquariums are dynamic places under even the best of circumstances. We can monitor some trends and either accept that they are within bounds or compensate with additives, but recall the previous lesson: We don't know what we don't know. Just because the nitrate level is zero doesn't mean that the tank couldn't stand an improvement in water quality. Other pollutants, like phosphates, could be on the rise or trace elements could be falling to unhealthy levels. Unless you want to buy every test kit on the market and develop new ones to check currently untestable parameters, how will you know for sure? Even if you could perform all the tests, would you really want to have to deal with all the necessary supplements to maintain the optimum levels? Still, there would be no way of decreasing levels that were too high without developing new and more complex water treatments that might cause undesirable side effects (including poverty!).
The quickest and most complete way of both replenishing lost elements and reducing excessive levels of pollutants is by changing a portion of the water volume. Regardless of its source, the water you used to fill your tank initially was considered adequate to sustain life in your aquarium and acceptably free of pollutants. Thus, it is a standard with relatively well known and agreeable parameters. How could you go wrong by making your aquarium water more like this standard? The only question is, how do you go about making safe, periodic corrections since it is true that some species will suffer if a rapid change in their environment occurs?
In my opinion, the best approach to making water changes is to do it regularly. If you wait too long between changes, more water will have to be replaced to bring parameters back into range, thus posing more of a threat to delicate creatures. The cost could also be higher, since more mixing or collecting containers will be necessary. Additionally, the irregularity of the procedure will make it more stressful on your fish, who adapt pretty well to routines, but tend to panic at unpredictable change. With all of this taken into account, I think a two-week schedule is advisable for a tank with many fish or an otherwise heavy bioload. An invertebrate aquarium or lightly loaded system might be OK for a month at a time. You'll have to experiment and see how your system responds.
As for the volume of the water change, again, experimentation will be necessary, but the more frequent the changes, the less you'll have to replace. Anything below 10%, however, seems unlikely to make much of an impact, so something in the range of 10-20% is probably appropriate under normal circumstances. (The shock of the new water should also be lessened by taking steps to match the temperature, pH, and salinity to the tank conditions.)
In summary, the world, in general, and our aquariums, in particular, are very complex places. While we've learned a lot about mimicking the ocean environment, there's a lot yet to be understood and, in the meantime, we don't even know what we don't know. Finally, the only way we can deal, globally, with the myriad parameters of our water, both replenishing lost trace elements and reducing build-ups of unwanted pollutants, is by performing regular water changes. Remember Martin Moe's legendary words, "The solution to pollution is dilution!"
Next time, we'll consider lessons eighteen and nineteen, "Cleanliness is Next to Godliness" and "Take Your Vitamins!"
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