New research project

[ahiggins]

Hi everyone, been a long time since I’ve popped on here. Finishing up my masters program and I need some help designing a project.
If you don’t know me, I’ve done a decent amount of research/work with rock/flower nems in the past. I’m about 6 years into my overarching project and the next goal is to correlate (or not) color morphs to specific occurrences or parent colors.
Design:
I would like to have separate tanks that flow to a large sump area. Ideally somewhere between 6-10 smaller tanks housing selected breeding pairs of my current stock (one male and female in each). I’ve thrown around the idea of 8-10 gallon tanks that all pull from and return to one larger main “sump” if you will. These tanks will be identical to each other with lighting, flow, temperature, parameters, etc.

I envision:
I don’t have much experience with plumbing so I need ideas on how to make this work. The larger tank (40ish gallons) will house the heater/filtration/skimmer/rock/sand/cuc/fish and the smaller tanks will only have , a bit of sand, nems, and presumably the return pump equipment. Maybe a snail or two each if needed. I need to be able to turn off the flow/pumps when an “event” is happening but I haven’t worked out how yet-I’m thinking I may need to do one small pump each.
Still working on the design-if you have any constructive criticism of my ideas or have some thoughts on how I could make this work, let me know

 

[mattdg]

If you can stagger the level of each of the 8-10 individual systems, you could put 4 to 5 of them on either side of a centrally placed system (larger tank) and plumb them together so that the water flows from tank to tank and out the last two tanks, into a central sump. The sump could then return to the central system, directly above. I actually designed something like this, that I call the rack and rubble frag system. If you google it, you will find a few videos on the Craft Aquatic youtube channel. It's been in operation for 4 years now and should give you some ideas to work with. The R&R only incorporates two tanks, but the principal is similar. One thing to note is that even with shared water, connected systems all develop their own individual characteristics, based on flow / light / heating / cooling / bacterial populations, macro/micro fauna and a countless other factors. I wish you luck with your research project.

 

[bnord]

poor plumber, but a researcher and sounds like a great idea. ;one to hear more about what variables you would look at.

 

[ahiggins]

If you can stagger the level of each of the 8-10 individual systems, you could put 4 to 5 of them on either side of a centrally placed system (larger tank) and plumb them together so that the water flows from tank to tank and out the last two tanks, into a central sump. The sump could then return to the central system, directly above. I actually designed something like this, that I call the rack and rubble frag system. If you google it, you will find a few videos on the Craft Aquatic youtube channel. It's been in operation for 4 years now and should give you some ideas to work with. The R&R only incorporates two tanks, but the principal is similar. One thing to note is that even with shared water, connected systems all develop their own individual characteristics, based on flow / light / heating / cooling / bacterial populations, macro/micro fauna and a countless other factors. I wish you luck with your research project.

Thanks, I’ll take a look

 

[ahiggins]

poor plumber, but a researcher and sounds like a great idea. ;one to hear more about what variables you would look at.

I’ve been doing this for about 6 continuous years now, trying different variables. It’s fun to me plus I love seeing all the babies.

I’ve already concluded that the following, after about 14 full spawn cycles (cycle= correlated male release to female release) do not have any effect on male spawn or female release:
1. Lunar cycles
2. High temp
3. Low/high nutrients
4. High/low intensity lighting (used 30% as my baseline-what I keep my “normal” display nems at)
5. Flow*

* flow does play a part in female reception, needs very low-slight flow for best reception percentage.
**stress due to physical movement of the rock the nem is on or significant physical disturbance of the nem is linked to female polyp release with a caveat that it’s not correlated. It’s a little less than 60-40, with 40 being actual release.
***Im on the start (male release) of N16-cycle 16

What does have an effect (correlation of 95% or better)
1. Low temperature “spike”
It was actually found by accident lol but after about 8 months of testing, I was able to support the new hypothesis

There’s more in my notes but these are the bullet points

 

[ahiggins]

As for this specific project, I’m going to look strictly at color correlation between baby and parents with everything else being as constant as possible.

 

[Trueruby]

I’ve been doing this for about 6 continuous years now, trying different variables. It’s fun to me plus I love seeing all the babies.

I’ve already concluded that the following, after about 14 full spawn cycles (cycle= correlated male release to female release) do not have any effect on male spawn or female release:
1. Lunar cycles
2. High temp
3. Low/high nutrients
4. High/low intensity lighting (used 30% as my baseline-what I keep my “normal” display nems at)
5. Flow*

* flow does play a part in female reception, needs very low-slight flow for best reception percentage.
**stress due to physical movement of the rock the nem is on or significant physical disturbance of the nem is linked to female polyp release with a caveat that it’s not correlated. It’s a little less than 60-40, with 40 being actual release.
***Im on the start (male release) of N16-cycle 16

What does have an effect (correlation of 95% or better)
1. Low temperature “spike”
It was actually found by accident lol but after about 8 months of testing, I was able to support the new hypothesis

There’s more in my notes but these are the bullet points

How did your research go? Did you find more correlation with temperature drop?

 

[Dan_P]

Hi everyone, been a long time since I’ve popped on here. Finishing up my masters program and I need some help designing a project.
If you don’t know me, I’ve done a decent amount of research/work with rock/flower nems in the past. I’m about 6 years into my overarching project and the next goal is to correlate (or not) color morphs to specific occurrences or parent colors.
Design:
I would like to have separate tanks that flow to a large sump area. Ideally somewhere between 6-10 smaller tanks housing selected breeding pairs of my current stock (one male and female in each). I’ve thrown around the idea of 8-10 gallon tanks that all pull from and return to one larger main “sump” if you will. These tanks will be identical to each other with lighting, flow, temperature, parameters, etc.

I envision:
I don’t have much experience with plumbing so I need ideas on how to make this work. The larger tank (40ish gallons) will house the heater/filtration/skimmer/rock/sand/cuc/fish and the smaller tanks will only have , a bit of sand, nems, and presumably the return pump equipment. Maybe a snail or two each if needed. I need to be able to turn off the flow/pumps when an “event” is happening but I haven’t worked out how yet-I’m thinking I may need to do one small pump each.
Still working on the design-if you have any constructive criticism of my ideas or have some thoughts on how I could make this work, let me know

I am confused on one point. If the aquaria (treatments) are all connected to one sump, isn’t there a chance of mixing spawn material with the other treatments?