?Old Tank Syndrome?

[Woodstock]

This month's Advanced Aquariust Online Editorial by Terry Siegel is about Julian Sprung's ideas on Old Tank Syndrome. This article intrigued me!!!

Based on his own extensive experience and that of other experienced reef keepers Julian observed that as reef tanks age, despite water changes, carbon and other forms of chemical filtration, skimming, substrate cleaning, and various additives these aging reef tanks appear to lose their capacity to support the range of sea life that they did initially. Although these observations by Julian and others are by their very nature anecdotal, they appear to hold more than a grain of truth. The question, however, is what is responsible for this syndrome? Testing the typical water purity parameters has not revealed anything of significance.
Julian's talk did not offer any definitive answers, but raised many possibilities, not the least of which is a gradual shift in bacterial populations, dominant corals changing the water chemistry to benefit themselves, but detrimental to other species, etc. In a future issue we will present Julian paper.
I'm beginning to think I ought to break down my reef tank, reestablish it with new water, substrate, and live rock. With a 10-foot reef tank such an idea practically gives me an anxiety attack. Some of the corals have grown so large I doubt if I could get them out of the tank without breaking them.

What do you think the answer is to "old tank syndrome"??? Larger water changes? More carbon? New rocks? How old is your oldest reef tank?

[cheeks69]

I honestly believe OTS is neglect and a buildup of phosphate levels that begins to inhibit coral calcification especially those that have an aged SB.

[corvettephreek]

i agree, also funky bacteria buildups can proliferate in your SB, in rocks, under calcium deposits, all places where we cant see. the ocean is stable only in the fact it constantly moves water around in such high volumes it does not experince such fates. i strongly beleive a yearly or every few yearly large water change is important, simply for the fact that bacteria builds up fast, and in large numbers. a good scrub down with some sponge and seawater wouldnt hurt, either. cant hurt to be safe, eh?

[Cougra]

I think there is more to old tank syndrome then simply neglect. No matter how well you clean the tank and have the most advanced filtration methods there will still be a point in which things start to go wrong and something needs to be done to jumpstart the system again.
I think it's important to occassionally introduce new life/rocks into the tank to revigorate bacterial populations in the tank and introduce more surface area for them to spread onto as well.
Live rock becomes clogged over time and needs a break so it can shed all the detritous that slowly gets pulled into the pores. This issue can be address by simply removing the rock from the system and putting it in another container with good water movement and a heater. I don't think you would need to do this with all the rock in the tank at once or drastic measure such as replacing all the rock and sand, but if you were to simply have some extra rock and changed out 5 to 10% say of the rock at a time to give it a break to clean itself out.
Occassional larger water changes should be done as well and I think there is a lot to be said about the water quality becoming unbalanced over time. There are a lot of chemicals in the tank that we can't see or measure that will slowly build up or be completely depleted over time as well. An example of this was commonly seen in freshwater tanks before people realised the importance of water changes and led to the myth that fish will only grow to the size of their environment. This was caused by the release of feromones in an aquarium and once the levels got to a certain level it stunted the growth of the fish.
Many different animals use allopathy to try to defend their niche and we don't really pay that much attention to these chemicals that are released by the animals themselves. I think that chemical filtration is very limited and isn't very well understood, even by the experts.

Of course this is just my opinion from what I've seem happen with my own tanks as well as from what I've heard/read from other friends and people in the hobby. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the most advanced system and I occassionally miss/postpone a water change here and there but I do care for my tanks.
I have noticed that every time I added something new to my established tank that there are a lot of changes in the tank and I can't test what is happening with test kits but can definately see the different reactions of the established inhabitants.

One thing that I think really needs to be emphasized is that we need to understand more about old tank syndrome before jumping to any conclussions. We can't just say X persons tank is getting "OTS" because they were neglectful and we can't let Y person shrug off the responsibility of caring for their tank by stating it was "OTS" and Y couldn't do anything about it anyways. I do believe that neglect can and will speed up the process but I don't think it's that clear cut.

[ScottT1980]

I believe it has validity, and is logical (which is why I think most accept it as truth). However, there certainly are outliers. I mean, the guy on RC that has glass and chains and whatnot in his tank, he claims the tank is 20+ years old. He has a good bit of macroalgae in his show tank, it makes me wonder if they aren't "detoxifying" it somehow. Heck, perhaps we need to be putting metal into tanks (in jest of course). I don't know, it is just a "case-study" but I find his tank quite remarkable.

It just seems to me that we are missing something, or a few things, which I suppose keeps the hobby interesting. My best guess still remains bacterial dynamics and accumulation of bound waste by-products. Either way, changing out substrate seems to be the appropriate solution.

Could mangroves prolong the life of a tank (better, than say macro)? Would be interesting to see...

Take er easy
Scott T.

[cheeks69]

I think the example you bring up Scott is perfect. He added asphalt, copper, glass, chains and the tank looks great and is actually over 30 years old. I can see a buildup of phosphates in the LR and SB but there's many tanks that have been setup for years and they look great. I always do WC's use a PH or turkey baster to clean the rocks and have never had problems most of my rock is around 4 years old never had any algea outbreaks except when starting the tank got a bit of Cyano.

Scott why would mangrooves make a difference ?

[Dakota]

dont know about this havent ever had a tank up long enough without changing something to say that it was original. i can say that i ditched my DSB and went bb over a year ago. i think that to much stuff ends up in the sand bed and people just really hate the thought of taking down a tank to replace the sandbed. i was getting algea blooms even though i was on top of my water changes. now i still do 20% a month have a very small cleanup crew for the tank feed like crazy and have no prblems at all couldnt be happier. i like cougra thoughts about doing a large water change and this is something i have thought about myself. maybe doing like 50-60% every six months or once a year. i dont know just a thought. also changing out some rocks is a good idea also i am currently trying to plan a way to expand my sump area so i can add a large amount of rock. changing rock out of this would be much easier. also have any of u tried to use a ph with some tubing attached to the end and use that to blow out the rock in your tank. i know the turkey blaster trick but this works so much better. hard to believe how much stuff gets into the rock. dont get me wrong not bashing DSB but i think that may be some of the problem?

[Michael_Lambert]

Thank god, i never keep a tank up and running long enough to have to worry

[ScottT1980]

Originally Posted by cheeks69

Scott why would mangrooves make a difference ?

This sort of defines my line of thinking. I just did a quick scholar.google.com search, and this was the first thing that comes to interest. I am really not all that versed in mangrove ecology. However, in ecology classes and on my trip to Belize, I was told that the mangrove ecosystem is a detoxifier. However, whether that is correlated simply to the mangrove plant or to the ecosystem as a whole, well, I don't know...

[cheeks69]

Wouldn't skimming or using Macro-algea do the same thing ? I know there was an article either in advancedaquarist or reefkeeping which mentioned that because mangroves are very slow in growth there not as effective as caulerpa or other macros in nutrient export. Also isn't the buildup of nutrients what could be toxic ?

[Mad Mike]

Substrate, evil evil stuff it acts like sponge. You have to IMO have a means of export, serious export. You grow algae it has to be harvested and thrown out, water changes are huge but they have to be sizeable. I honestly dont think 10% is enough. I wish I was more chemicaly adept, but when you think about PPM and toxins and you change 10% of the water it's nothing. You have less polluted water but it's still polluted.

Massive water changes are the key IMO. When you think about the ocean and the constant flow of water it's unimaginable. Evaporation; rain, river flows, ice caps melting, it's constantly cleaning and replenshing. We have to mimic that as best we can. The massive flows of clean water going across a reef is in the millions of gallons, probably more. Does anyone honestly think their tank is clean and the enviroment is proper because you do a 10% change once a week or once a month?

[prow]

anyone know the filtration types that seem to get OTS? like a skimmed system verses a non skimmed system?

[64Ivy]

My tank will be 10 next year, 7 as "SPS" dominant, and I don't see any signs of OTS. It has always been barebottomed and it has always been aggressively skimmed. I use a kalkwasser doser as a topoff and about 4 years ago, I added a macroalgae refugium to help with nutrient export. Once or twice a month, I'll go into the tank with a hose attached to my sump pump and really blast between and behind the rockwork. You'd be surprised how much stuff gets blown into suspension.

I suppose if it's true that sandbeds eventually get 'full' and begin to leach out phosphates, etc. then I guess it stands to reason that live rock eventually does too. But I'm an NOT about to tear down a 500g tank every few years so what I do is keep extra LR in my sump and THIS is what I'll change every so often. Also, when fragging out corals, I'll find myself replacing LR from time to time. So far, it seems like this is enough.

[Warnberg]

I think that OTS would greatly depend on load.... a lightly loaded tank may never go thru OTS as long as it is properly maintained...

New Tank Syndrom, Old Tank Syndrom... what next?

JMO

[Woodstock]

Excellent comments everyone!

Originally Posted by Warnberg

I think that OTS would greatly depend on load....

JMO

I believe that is the key... there are many, many factors that effect the load and sinking abilities of each aquarium. I do think that having a BB tank allows for better export of nutrients/nasties that would otherwise stay in the sand. I also think that having low nutrients keeps the rock from clogging as quickly if at all..again, depending on the ratio of nutrient import/export.

With my BB, I am convinced that my export of nutrients is far above my imports. The diterus, skimmate, macro algae removal, and coral fragging that I get from my tank on a weekly basis is FAR more that what I feed! I am considering doing a large water change though....