I have two brilliant little books on Marine Invertebrates and Marine Fish - one by Shimek, the other by Scott W. Michael. Now usually advise is something you take with a grain of salt since in the reef hobby, the only two certainties are
"The faster you go the worse things will get"
and
"Nothing else is certain"
However, those two books have never been wrong. So many times I thought I needed my cup of salt, but today I realised I need to start listen to what is written in there.
For starters, my beautiful sun coral was healthy for many months in direct lighting - something the book suggested is not good not due to intolerance, but due to competition with algae. I ignored this.
As you can see on the right, the coral was very healthy when I just acquired it. However that proved to be naive since after about 3 months the macro algae started getting a hold on it.
A recent picture shows the result of neglect... I had the coral directly under bright lighting the whole time, and even though I have barely detectable Phosphate and Nitrate levels, once the macro algae gets a hold it does not let go.
For now I have attached it sideways to a piece of LR so hopefully there will be less direct light, hence hoping to starve the algae.
There are many other similar incidents. Below follows a couple:
- Purple Tangs are extremely aggressive and it is NOT a good idea to keep similarly shaped tangs in a smallish (< 300g) tank.
- Green Brittle Stars are the most ferocious invert predators out there. But they are also incredibly cool.
- Ribbon eels are incredibly difficult to get to feed.
- Blue Linka Starfish are also difficult to keep.