reef

To some degree but i doubt Hobbyist will pay for the higher price as it cost money to culture corals. power is getting expensive and if are going to do it you need to make money. Corals are smaller so hobbyist expect to pay less. Many corals can also not be cultured More likly to work overseas due to the larger market but in NZ we just dont have enough hobbyist to make it worth it for any business.

Was doing some reading and came across this. Importers: • According to CITES, the United States is the largest importer of live coral and reef rock, bringing in more than 80% of the live coral trade (more than 400,000 pieces a year) and more than half of the marine aquarium fish sold worldwide. • Other major importers of coral products are Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada. HOW MUCH IS BEING HARVESTED FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE? • According to the CITES database, in 1996, permitted coral exports produced 2.5 million pieces of live coral, 739 tons (670,000 kg) of raw coral, and 31,000 colonies of black coral. • About 3,000 tons (2,721,600 kg) of coral enter international trade each year for use in aquariums, according to the Ornamental Aquatic Trade Association. • CITES reported 19,262 tons (17,474,486 kg) of black corals were imported into 70 nations from 1982-1997. If you look at the stats they dont make for pleasent reading. Image how much is imported these days as those stats are based around 1996. No good.

Maybe , but very little, but everything looks realistic, the tank would look even better in real life. Colours are not That unnatural in that tank. Every feature tank is photoshopped.

That is a lot of power, Just checked my power bill today $700 a month. Got shock as i never check it.. Prices are getting out of control in NZ.

RC tank of the Month http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-05/totm/index.php

Used DT products, http://www.dtplankton.com The gizmo is a container to grow brine shrimp/algae and roiters,. Had some phyto which i was feeding the rotifers. Is was not for my tank other than if i had surplus i would throw it in. No one said that it does no do anything,. as above. Sure their will be some indirect benefits to these corals from the increase in other microfauna resulting from the feeding of the phytoplankton. Like anything in marine keeping, Balance. also on the DT site Phytoplankton often causes coral polyps to extend, but it does not directly feed most stony corals. The benefit provided to stony corals by phytoplankton is to increase the amount of zooplankton available for the corals to feed on. Although copepods do not need to feed on live phytoplankton, the fats that they store are determined by the fats that they consume (in other words, they are what they eat). Therefore; higher quality phytoplankton will produce more nutritious copepods. Feeding live phytoplankton will also cause the mysid population to bloom by increasing the population of copepods that they feed on. I am all for trials. i am the trial king. always like to keep a open mind. You Need quite a lot of phyto for a 2000L tank.

Sure their will be some indirect benefits to these corals from the increase in other microfauna resulting from the feeding of the phytoplankton. Like anything in marine keeping, Balance. I use a variety of coral foods and dont overdo it. We have closed ecosystems so too much of a good thing can be bad.

It was zooplankton in this case, however Interestingly, research indicates that the scleractinian corals rejected algae and other plant material. Research indicated that even if plant material was ingested it was not digested and regurgitated. This has interesting implications for the hobbyists since it could lead to the conclusion that "green water" or phytoplankton may not be a suitable food for hermatypic scleractinian corals.

From China oh and some information. THE USE OF PHYTOPLANKTON - I am sure like many of you, when I first started out, the store shoved a bottle of phytoplankton at me and said I would need it to feed my corals. Of course years later, I find out that corals do not actualy consume phytoplankton, they may inadvertantly capture it, but will soon reject it. Despite their rapid response to elevated nutrients, phytoplankton are not particularly important primary producers, by themselves, in terms of efficiency. The reason they are so important on a regional or global scale is simply by virtue of the fact that the upper 200m of oceanic waters is filled with phytoplankton and covers over 70% of the earth's surface Psuedo-phytoplankton" is probably available in tanks in significant amounts when substrate associated algae are put into circulation by strong water flow or during tank glass scraping In fact, Fabricius (unpublished data) found that an inability to feed on zooplankton was widespread amongst zooxanthellate soft coral genera on the Great Barrier Reef (i.e. three species of Sarcophyton, two species of Sinularia, Cladiella sp., Nephthea sp. and Paralemnalia sp.). The role that zooplankton play in the nutrition of photosynthetic octocorals is, as yet, unclear but new information is showing that they contribute only a small portion to the nutritional budget of many octocorals (Fabricius et al., 1995a and b).

Impressive growth on the acros

Photos of baked bean tank and none flourishing corals

my gonioperas have been going for 3 years without phyto. I dont know what florishing corals is? Must be something wrong with my tank. Pitty you just started keeping marines oceandose, as i covered a few years ago that goniopores need iron. That is why dosing reef solution helps keeps them alive. That is because they are being bombarded with small particles, you get the same thing when add any other foods or stir the sand. Something you observe once you keep marines for many years. Well show us you tank to see how my baked beans corals look better than your roast dinner corals?

I have cultured phyto about 5 years ago to breed fish, not dose my tank. I have dose the DT products and pure phyton from Niwa. Maybe they dont know what they are doing. Phyto Plankton can be overdosed and even though it is alive can cause nutrient problems due to the fertilisers used to grow them and the some even have copper in them. All suplus Phyto not used has to go somewhere . As yet i have not seen any far better benefical results for corals than the dried stuff. I quess if we see photos of your tank the corals will be spectacular compared to a tank not using Plankton. Many SPS corals dont use it. would be interesting to see how leather corals use it as they use desolved organics. Yes plankton is the foodchain for the oceans, however so is po4, ammonium, nitrate etc, we see what happens when they get high in a close system. the same is with plankton. Feather feathers will do fine with dried foods coral foods and stirring the sand, seems better than buying a new phyto culture every few weeks as it has a limited life unless you got lots of time to feed it and keep it pure.

Great work, Why don’t you have the magazine online? Give subscribers a password to read it, Will save lots of time and postage. I am sure we have computer gurus who can help.

I find if you stir the sand weekly it will stay clean, tank goes cloudy , but the next day the water looks crystal clear. If you sand gets really dirty it means you have too may nutrients.

Best to feed dried phyto food like reef roids and other dried coral foods, Waste of time feeding live phyto plankton as it can pollute your tank as it can container fertiliser which is used to grow the plankton. good maybe to feed it every few months. phyto does not last long and you have to get fresh stock ever two weeks or so. You could grow your own but again takes lots of work to maintain. I would feed it if it would improve my corals but after using it i noticed nothing except more nutrients in my tank so i stopped. The dried food is more than enough to keep them alive. Make sure the feather duster gets lots of current. Try stirring you sand up so it can feed from the particles, works well. Feather duster wont eat flake food, too big.

Only way to find out is to see all the items that make up the RO filter so we can compare. Anyway , either will be ok.

It is the same thing, the ultrafiltration might have a one of the canisters that can take out smaller waste.

2 days

About 500 Plus. Easy fish to breed as they are mouth breeders. The male holds the babies.

Here is some of my family

Some new photos

Don’t bother, it depends which department you deal with and they don’t take any responsibility to get anything done. You have to deal with the decision makers not the ground staff as they are just order takers.

That is another story we wont get into. and many organisms on corals are not nasty.

That is not wrong, because some hobbyists would use the containers to maybe do a water change etc, and then use it to collect sea water. Which can come in contact with the ocean? the point is that there is a risk and MAF are looking closely at the hobby and even told me that are looking to maybe closing it down due to the risk of introducing a new organism, not necessary from collection sea water but the risk from getting the fish/corals in. Give MAF an excuse and they will use it. We know for a fact no tropical coral will live in NZ waters, but they still make it almost impossable to add any to the MAF list. That is the mind set you have to deal with. I have had to mitigate many issues with importing and i dont want to be overcome another hurdle with the collection of seawater by hobbyist. Especially given the people you are dealing with in MAF. They just don’t care about the Hobby and just keep putting the screws into make it harder.