corals out of water?

[Peter Houde]

What corals cannot tolerate exposure to air (up to a couple or few hours) when performing water changes?

 

[JCM]

A few hours? Not many will be happy about that.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

If we were talking a few minutes, almost all can handle that.

If it's gonna be hours, pretty much any coral will have some lasting damage or die outright.

Why do you need so long to do a water change. This is a task that shouldn't take more than like 10-15 minutes.

 

[damsels are not mean]

What corals cannot tolerate exposure to air (up to a couple or few hours) when performing water changes?

Why do water changes take that long? But anyways most should be fine. I would turn lights off and keep them damp. This is pretty natural for lots of corals actually and I have had even some LPS survive being left out on the counter for a few hours.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

LPS survive being left out on the counter for a few hours.

Last time I did that (about an hour), it survived but was angry at me and didn't open up for over a week. Definitely stunted it's growth substantially.

 

[Tired]

That's going to annoy pretty much any coral, but depending on what "a few hours" means, some of them should be fine. Heck, some corals can survive being imported in nothing but wet newspaper. Draping wet paper towels over them will help.

Water changes shouldn't be taking that long. For one thing, smaller, more frequent changes are better than infrequent larger ones. You should mix your water first, so you can drain out the old water and then add the new water in fairly quickly.

 

[Andreas' Reef]

I have never heard of a water change taking hours. But, there are some corals that can survive like half an hour out of water because of an adaptation to low tides in shallow reefs.

 

[HudsonReefer2.0]

Sps can b exposed in their natural habitat for an entire low tide cycle.

 

[Peter Houde]

If we were talking a few minutes, almost all can handle that.

If it's gonna be hours, pretty much any coral will have some lasting damage or die outright.

Why do you need so long to do a water change. This is a task that shouldn't take more than like 10-15 minutes.

My tank is two feet deep. I do a 25-30% water change weekly. The water level is down at least 30% because a lot drains into the sump when the power is off. The level isn't at its lowest for the duration of the change, but it takes time to siphon out old water and there's always a couple hour delay to get the last 10 gallons in because I have only so much capacity to premix and aerate new water and then restart the pump. I've never exposed corals - yet. But I'd like to place some closer to the surface if there are any that could tolerate it. I think some corals are exposed at low tide in the wild.

 

[Peter Houde]

That's going to annoy pretty much any coral, but depending on what "a few hours" means, some of them should be fine. Heck, some corals can survive being imported in nothing but wet newspaper. Draping wet paper towels over them will help.

Water changes shouldn't be taking that long. For one thing, smaller, more frequent changes are better than infrequent larger ones. You should mix your water first, so you can drain out the old water and then add the new water in fairly quickly.

I change water weekly. I can't do more often than that. And I do premix and pre-aerate most of my water, but I don't have the capacity to pre-aerate the last 10 gallons, so there is a delay in getting the pump restarted. The sump sucks down extra water from the DT as long as the pump is off. It would be a lot easier on ME if changes didn't take so long but it's hard to know where to cut corners. I'm just asking for advice before I do something stupid.

 

[Peter Houde]

If we were talking a few minutes, almost all can handle that.

If it's gonna be hours, pretty much any coral will have some lasting damage or die outright.

Why do you need so long to do a water change. This is a task that shouldn't take more than like 10-15 minutes.

 

[Peter Houde]

Maybe if I had a micro-tank.

 

[Peter Houde]

Sps can b exposed in their natural habitat for an entire low tide cycle.

So, that's got to be a couple of hours, no?

 

[gbroadbridge]

I change water weekly. I can't do more often than that. And I do premix and pre-aerate most of my water, but I don't have the capacity to pre-aerate the last 10 gallons, so there is a delay in getting the pump restarted. The sump sucks down extra water from the DT as long as the pump is off. It would be a lot easier on ME if changes didn't take so long but it's hard to know where to cut corners. I'm just asking for advice before I do something stupid.

Something is not right there.

There should be no way that water in the DT can fall more than a couple of inches - you probably need to install a siphon break to prevent that.

It sounds like you need bigger mixing containers, or smaller changes more frequently.

 

[ZoWhat]

I don't know about going hours.....

In my 15yrs I've had several emergency WCs where I had to get 50-75% of the DT waterlevel O U T.

During a 45-60min WC to get DT to back to 100% .... I used a super clean squirt bottle filled with tank water to squirt all the coral exposes to air. Squirted every 10mins. LIGHTS O F F.

I would say nearly ALL coral if the polyps are kept MOIST should fair really well.

But I'd get super nervous at the 90min mark

.

 

[i cant think]

Sps can b exposed in their natural habitat for an entire low tide cycle.

Surely there would be Atleast some die off from this though? Unless that die off gets knocked off by the waves and can regrow over time.

Also, I thought GSP would do well with being out of water for 30 minutes to an hour as I had it on the back wall but it died off for some reason however I do believe it was due to this.

 

[NickHolmes]

Sps can b exposed in their natural habitat for an entire low tide cycle.

I can smell that

 

[damsels are not mean]

Surely there would be Atleast some die off from this though? Unless that die off gets knocked off by the waves and can regrow over time.

If this caused dieoffs there would be no shallow reefs as it happens every day in many places some for several hours at a time.

 

[Harold999]

I have never heard of a water change taking hours.

Some use tea cups apparently to (re)fill their tank.

 

[REEFTIDE]

I wouldn't recommend a few hours but most can do 30 min just fine