Sucsessful No Light - Low Light Nanos?

[Guest AbSoluTc]

I am thinking about setting up a NO (as in NONE) LOW light tank. This would house mushrooms, zoo's, ricordia and other deeper dwelling corals.

 

Has anyone tried this? Any input? Suggestions?

[jovis67]

ALL I GOT TO SAY IS " GOOD LUCK"

correst me if im wrong (which i problly am) doesn't sunlight have vitamins that every thing needs to grow? also how will you feed them. and y would you even WANT to do this its crazy. when i first started reefin the first thing i was told was that light is the most inportant thing for a reef tank. and back again to WHY would you want to do this???

[Guest AbSoluTc]

Not being rude but - at 100 meters below the surface of the ocean, how much light is there? I forget

[NaNO ReeFiN]

Well then go for it and tell us how it went..

[Mnesarchus]

Call me crazy, but I think any coral should need some light of the proper spectrum, like at least a single NO.

 

JMO, though.

[jovis67]

at 100 meters below the surface of the ocean, how much light is there? I forget

yea but their is still light and their is light higher up.

but just awnser my ? y would you WANT todo this

good luck

[oceanhighz]

not to argue, but there are places where you can dive 100 meters and there is still plenty of light to see your way around, therefore the corals that are there are getting light and spectrum, just not much. Good luck with your project though, let us see how it turns out should be interesting.

 

Brandon

[tinyreef]

while i don't agree with your choice of experimental animals (ricordias? ??? ) i understand why tho. it's the same 'why' that started nanos (not the current 'it's a cool desk decoration' trend) and the same 'why' brandon429 asks about his picos.

 

i would think the most important aspect you need to address is the correct food formula to sustain the animal and replace the nutrients gleaned from the symbiont algae. sugars produced by photosynthesis must be replaced (which sugars and what quantities?).

 

another issue that jovis touched upon is that the animals' tissue may itself generate vitamins or substances from the light like human tissue generates vitamin b?

 

i'm assuming the experiment is to try and force a photosynthetic animal into a non-photosynthetic (or low-photo, you still gotta see the animal) state of existence. replacing the light energy with chemical (i.e. food) energy, right?

 

otherwise there are many natural non-photosynthetic animals that do the darkness existence.

[Guest AbSoluTc]

Tinyreef touched on it a bit. However, my choice of corals were examples. Not exacts.

 

Did you know strawberry anemones thrive in NO - LOW light? They actually look there best with NO light. I know, I have them and you should see them at lights out.

 

Thats just ONE of the many animals that require NO - LOW light. Its an experiment. I have to start somewhere. I also find that mushrooms look their best and biggest uner low light.

[lizbeth]

I've got an interesting unintended experiment going on. Two weeks ago I trimed the razor macro, threw the trimmings into a bucket (white bucket) of saltwater leftover from a water change. Tossed the vented lid on and there it sits doing just fine. I'm amazed....guess it doesn't need much light or heat to survive.

 

Go for it!

[Bocephous]

there are several gorgonia's that do best in very low light. A tank with no lighting would be possible but the availability of corals from such depths is very scarce. good luck on your deepwater tank.

[printerdown01]

Mushrooms, zoo's and ricordia ALL need light in order to live... Almost all corals will need light to do well... BUT what about doing a crypt zone? This would essentially be filled of sea-squirts, beautiful sponges, you could also add gorgonia... The system should work fairly well, and make a very interesting display, of creatures that every reefer stretches their neck out in order to catch a glimpse of under their rocks... Dave attached a link to this site a while back, hope it helps: http://www.dynamicecomorphology.com/getzoned.htm . I think it is very important to remember that there are MANY zones even within "reefs." By the way 300 feet down there is VERY little light (the diffuse light entering your tank would be about the same) but there really is NOT anything to see! Coral is almost non-existant, which is why most recreational divers have no desire to go deeper than about 150ft... Also as a side note, you would have to find corals that actually live at 300 ft, as far as I'm aware no one collects stuff from that depth (decomp sucks!)...

[OscarBeast]

Just a thought, but creatures that don't require light usually need it indirectly. Light is not just for the corals in our tanks. Through photosynthetic processes, it removes C02 and oxygenates the water. The light also feeds small little creatures that other creatures eat that provide natural food in the water column.

 

Corals and such that don't need light usually need tons of food. They catch the massive amounts of marine snow that falls from the higher water levels.

 

IF you were to go about doing this, you would want to setup a nice large lit sump with LR and lots of Macro to use to stabilize the dark tank and to provide food, since adding DTs, Marine Snow, etc probably won't be enough.

[e12pilot]

Well,

In the clear waters of the caribbean, and other tropical places corals in > 100ft. of water still receive light. They receive a lot of the blue spectrum of light, as it is the last to be "cut out" by the water.

 

While that may be true for tropical corals, many other invertebrates are possible to keep with little light. For instance up here in the pacific northwest a variety of inverts(anenomes, encrusting corals) live just fine in the 60ft. range where most of the time we need lights to look around.

 

So yes, it is possible to use little to no light, but don't expect to successfully keep tropical corals that live in waters with > 150ft of visibility. Keeping inverts that live in < 15ft. of visibility and receive little amounts of light would be easier. But something tells me that you won't like those for your home aquarium.

 

Peter

[ajroahkni]

Black coral divers in Hawaii go down to 2-300ft to collect coral for the jewelry trade, so maybe that'd work. Also, I think sun corals (in HI) are found at the same depth.

 

Maybe you should black out the back & sides of the tank and then use a blacklight or something to replicate the spectrum of light that reaches that depth.

[printerdown01]

I think OscarBeast also has a good point... Sunlight is an important input in reef environments whether in the lit or unlit portion of the reefs. There is only 1 environment known to man to live completely independent of light... and you will have a VERY hard time trying to plumb a geothermic vent into your tank. I do however think that you would be albe to do a cryptic zone, if you added phyto and some other foods to the water. It certainly wouldn't be a traditional reef tank, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. p.s. I have yet to dive to 100 ft and actually have 100+ feet of visibility, the further you go down the less vis... But I guess it could happen...

[e12pilot]

Printerdown:

Well since horizontal viz is around 3/4 - 1/2 of vertical vis @ 100 feet you would only need around 50-75 feet of horizontal vis in order to see the surface. Quite easy to do in most tropical locations.

 

It is funny, there seems to be a large contradiction in terms of what vis is like in tropical places compared to cold water locations. What we call 15ft. here in the northwest would be often called 5ft. by someone who is used to diving in Hawaii for instance. Instructors in Hawaii have been know to not take students out in < 50ft of vis, whereas I will take a student out in < 1 ft. of vis.

 

Point being, light still reaches corals @ > 200ft. in the tropics quite easily. So I don't think that a photosynthetic tropical coral would survive in tank with little or no Blue/Indigo/Violet light. It would be very interesting to see what would happen though.

 

Peter

[Guest AbSoluTc]

Let me smoov out a couple things here. I wanted to try a no light tank and see how some things fared. I also would like to do a low light tank.

 

By low light, I mean 03 lighting only. Nothing else. No daylight, nothing. This would replicate deep water reefs rather well. Also taking into consideration that most deep water corals flouresce, running only 03 light would be a beautiful sight. All the colors just make you go oooOOooo

 

This is just an experiment. We have these huge tanks running 250, 150 and other halides - yet I have never seen a low/no light tank. I have seen maybe 1 or 2 LOW light tanks by accident, that appeared to look rather healthy.

 

I am also planning on a cryptic zone system. Just as soon as I find Anthony Calfos book on it.

[Mnesarchus]

Nevermind it being possible... wouldn't a no light tank be ugly as hell? You couldn't even see what was inside...

[ajroahkni]

Heh, heh.

 

Think he's gonna do it so that it glows from within. Only 03 and darker bulbs.

[OscarBeast]

Mnesarchus, that is a good point. People have lights on their fish only tanks so the can see their investments, not because the fish need it. Why the heck would someone invest in a tank that you can't see anything in.

 

Actinic 03 lighting isn't really low lighting. It is visually darker, but not necessarily lower, or less intense. This is why some of your accidental "low light" tanks are somewhat healthy. Looking low and being low are two totally different things.

 

If you want your definition of a low light tank, replace those halides you have and pop in some 20,000Ks.