mysterybox;141689 wrote: http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic75685-9-1.aspx">http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic75685-9-1.aspx</a>
Eric Borneman:
There are relatively few tropical coral reefs that are in the 70's except perhaps slightly more subtropical ones during winter or those that happen to exist in areas of persistent upwelling or colder currents. Few of the animals, especially corals, are collected from these areas. Temperatures on the reefs where are animals are collected are generally always above 80 and generally below 88. Daily swings of from 0-12 degrees F are not uncommon and can happen several times a day. Temperature is truly not one of the things to worry about in tanks unless you can say what strains of zooxanthellae are present, where the corals were collected from, what species (and thus their environmental sensitivity), synergistic stressors (as corals do well near their upper thermal limits) and to ensure that temperatures do not exceed, say, 90F for extended periods of time. A swing from mid70's to 90 (for example, a heater malfunction) that lasts for a day will probably cause problems for some animals if they are acclimated to a constant temperature. The problems with losing animals from temperature related events is what happens when they die in a closed system and most of the mass tank losses from such events is probably not a direct result of high temps alone. But, I also feel that given the multitiude of things that can go wrong in tanks and the fact that they are tanks withouth the inherent variability of the ocean, that pushing temps to the uppper limit where they might be happiest in the wild may not be ideal in tanks. So, I think 82-84 is right where you have some safety margin in upper thermal limits and within the range where most tropical reef corals and those collected for the trade do best.
Well, after most post with Eric Borneman & Jonathan Bertoni, I have since raised my temp to 82. Sprung & others give it an awesome argument, but common sense says 82 is it!
I target 82 F as the base temperature for my tanks. I haven't seen any reason to go lower for a tropical reef tank. I agree with Eric's analysis. There's a lot of studies in this area, if you want to do some research.
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Jonathan Bertoni
Hobby Experience: 8 years[/QUOTE]
but the problem is that if your tank is at 82 and you get a frag from someone who keeps their tank at 72ish that is a big jump so i keep mine in between at 77-78 so there is less of a jump if at all.
if the corals you get are from the wild then keeping our tank that high is reasonable.
