Balancing your System

Why is balancing your system important? Most people think of a balanced system as one that doesn't have hair algae. And when their tank gets out of balance, it does have hair algae. Or so they think. …

Your System is Always in Balance

But the truth is that your system is always in balance. Really ! The natural processes in your tank are always responding to the changes that are occuring in the system, whether to adding more food on or removing nutrients. It is constantly RE Balancing your tank. The system is always in balance, but the question is, is it balanced in the direction YOU want to go?

Obviously if it's full of hair algae, then that's not the direction you want to go, because corals to the typically cannot compete with hair algae and survive. So it's important you rebalance your system to allow your tank inhabitants to survive and thrive. A lot of what we talk about on this webpage is how to rebalance your system in FAVOR of your corals and fish, and AWAY from all of the nasty things such as hair algae and parasites and other non-desirable items within your aquarium. Your goal is to have a healthy system. You can provide the healthiest system possible for your corals, and your fish, and your other invertebrates by paying attention to balancing and shifting it in your favor.

Balancing Soft Coral Systems is Different from SPS Systems

The balancing that you do on a soft coral system is going to be quite different than the balancing you do on a SPS coral system. Even though it's possible to keep both in the same system, neither one will truly thrive in a system that is set up for both. We recommend that you focus either on stony corals or on soft corals and certainly as a beginner you should start out with soft corals. They're much easier to keep their hardier, and it's much easier to balance a Soft Coral system. We strongly recommend that you start out with soft corals and then in the future if you want to switch your system to stony corals, you can do this fairly easily. Or if you want, you can set up an additional reef tank for stony corals.

The differences in the stony coral system for in versus the software system are primarily in water quality. The dissolved nutrient load is important. And in both systems the dissolved minerals content is important but is vastly more important in SPS tanks.

Balancing your System for Soft Corals

For Soft Coral systems, its actually better to have a higher nutrient load on the system as long as hair algae isnt a problem. What that means is you can do more feeding. Of course the key is who don't feed them so much that you're having a hair algae monster problem.

With soft corals, they definitely require the dissolved nutrients in the water in order to do well. It is very possible to have TOO clean water when you are keeping softs. This can starve them. The number one way to provide his nutrients for Soft corals, and easiest way for you, is for you to feed your fish. Make sure they eat all the food that you feed them. You don't want the food going down to the bottom of the aquarium uneaten. The food that is eaten by the fish will be excreted into the water. Excreted means they will urinate their waste product into the water and a fishes waste products, like ours, is primarily nitrogen , in the form of ammonia.

Nitrogen is a fertilizer and the fish basically become continuous fertilizer dosing machines (dosimeters) as you feed them and as the food is processed in their digestive system. During the day they are periodically excreting it into the water and fertilizing the corals. Because the corals have the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their cells and the algae is a plant of course. And plants need fertilizer plants require fertilizer in order to grow. So the idea is to feed the fish, and the fish feed the corals. Some corals can also be fed directly

How much to feed? It just depends on your system. I would increase the feeding gradually because you don't want to reach a tipping point your system where you overload it with nutrients and upset the balance. If you inject too many nutrients into by feeding, the system in a short period of time will read balance in favor of hair algae . So in a balanced system, you should have no hair algae corals growing quite rapidly and fat and healthy fish.

It's also important to get the right kind of fish. Be sure to check out our section on community fish that are best for your reef tank. .

Balancing your System for SPS Corals

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