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Chuck, first off thank you for what you are doing.
second, i wish i could hold my breath that long and dive more than 5 feet without severe ear pain. (ruptured ear drum as a kid).
anyway, a couple of things stuck me after looking at all the pictures. the acroporas seem to have been displaced to deeper more nutrient deficient water, there is a lot of sandy areas around and between the corals.
there were few very colorful corals and most colonies of all colors did not seem that large.
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Carl
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| Hi Carl, All of the photos shown were taken in 15 to 20 feet deep not too far away from a reef wall crest, that itself begins at about 20 or so feet deep. The photos, again, are on the shallow flats that slope gently upwards to the shore. Hard to describe, but will try. From the actual reef wall crest (where it drops steeply) back towards shore, there is pristine reef with very few spots that are not coral colonies, as you get further in shore from the drop off, the corals tend to be in isolated small "islands" with an average of ten feet of sandy, sparse sea grass areas inbetween. One such "island" was nothing but an acropora colony that was massive, at least 15 feet across and amazed me at how much life, including fish, lived down under the living coral in the forest / tangle of coral branches. Color, I guess I could and should blame the hobby for that misperception about coral reefs. I have never seen anything that comes close on the reefs that the acropora / montipora colored stick show tanks appear as. Color, other than shades of browns and greens is actualy a rare thing to see on a reef, as far as corals go. If I do see something red, blue or yellow, 9 out of 10 times, its either a sponge, tunicate etc etc. rarely a coral. When I do see a coral that is not brown or green, you can bet I will get a photo of it...lol, Chuck
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yes, i know about the brownness of reefs having read Veron's books. i do like the pretty colors but will try to have fewer larger specimens (eventually) in my tank. i love the Waikiki 5000 gallon tank aquascaping with large colonies of the various corals. i will try to emulate that look more with my tank. and that will take much patience, years of it.
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Carl
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And here's the thing - why isn't there more effort on this front. Colorful coral selection and growth is kind of easy already. yes, it is pretty, but why aren't more advanced aquarists working on the splashes of color as sponges and tunicates? That, to me, is the holy grail at this point. Availability is an issue of course, as is feeding, but this is the direction we need to move, I think. Thanks for the updates and the other comments in the thread. Keep this one going. I stickied this because I find it arguably one of the most important threads in the hobby for educating and understanding since so many people do not or have not had the pleasure of seeing the real thing. Algae covered rocks that used to be coral reefs don't count!
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| Thanks Eric, and on that front (show and tell), I believe my mistake has been that instead of setting the camera for greater pixel content, I have been going for max amount of photos that can be taken, will give it a go next time. Sponges and tunicates, yeah, thats what I would call a holy grail myself, I have tried to do just what you mentioned and most times end up nuking my tank slightly when a harvested sponge fails, which they always seem to do. Except for a very shallow air tolerant yellow species, I also have only found one blue species that stands up to being collected and my tank's conditions at the same time. So far though, I have tried enough that I have a good feel on which ones to avoid, which for now, is a lot more than ones that I know I can keep. Tunicates, thats gonna be even more of a challenge I think. I can get them home okay and never have them touch air, but its the long term that I have yet to have any success with. Am sure it is food related. I also believe I am getting a far greater understanding of this areas reef as to why it is the way it is. Having parked myself at 50 feet on the reef wall and my poking around on it while drifting along, I noted a few things that at first did not stand out right away. I expected to see large coral colonys jutting out from the wall yet could not see any. Then I realized that the crest and the wall itself is very "crumbly" for lack of a better word. Most every coral is growing on very loose substrates, I found that I could pick any spot on the wall, and could make it wiggle. Same for the rest of this area as well. I am positive that as life goes about its business on the reef, good chunks of it must break free from time to time and fall down the wall, making any coral jutting out from it, at risk of underwater landslides so to speak. I fear that an earthquake would cause the reef's coral encrusted surface to just slide off. And wonder how often that has occured already. I can only imagine what the bottom looks like, I bet it is a big pile of boulders and rubble from the years gone by. Being a "sea" or better described as a VERY wide channel, and not the open ocean fronts normaly thought of, only allows for tidal movement to create the flows needed, no such thing as swell or wave action to speak of. Being a narrow (relatively speaking) channel of sorts, with large and small islands on both sides of it, means it also gets a great deal of run off, both naturaly occuring from rainfall and that dumped in by man. Which equates into a lot of silt and detritus being constantly moved. Water clarity here is about half of what I normaly expect to see on a ocean front reef. There is a great deal of particulates always in the water. Easy to see as a thick "dusting" everywhere, thankfully corals and other life forms can clear themselves of it. But get down in the cracks / crevices, and it reminds me of when having to empty a vacuum cleaners bag. Such a heavy particulate load, and am sure the nutrient dynamics are different as well, probably explains the mixture of stony and soft corals I see, which is split just about 50/50. Lots of xenia! But... I also noted that the xenia at depth, (30 feet) do not pulse, but those found near / on the grass beds pulse like crazy. Please don't ask me why...lol I can not wait to get my new housing next month and be able to get some real details. but overall, I think the reef here is finally starting to sink into me as to its nature. Chuck
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The crumbly wall description is great. That is an odd thing because it's a lot of bioerosion and coral growing and dying underneath, breaking, growing, eroding, crumbling, settling, tumbling. This is not always so and sometimes those walls are really solid except a crumbly veneer - especially on windward reefs - giant solid caves of limestone with solid crusts of coral and still the particulate snow. But, the crumbly wall thing is really interesting in how it seems to limit a lot of big corals and also that detrital mass of carbonate and organic mush that feeds all the myriad inverts we still don't have a prayer of keeping. Maybe if we stopped trying so hard to remove all of it from our tanks and utilized it instead of disposing of it? I just gave away some purple vase sponges from my sump - like giving away frags. They are everywhere. Its the settling area for all the waterbrone debris, and that's where they are doing the best. I don't skim it out, so they get a feast in there.
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Eric Borneman (7/19/2007)
The crumbly wall description is great. That is an odd thing because it's a lot of bioerosion and coral growing and dying underneath, breaking, growing, eroding, crumbling, settling, tumbling. This is not always so and sometimes those walls are really solid except a crumbly veneer - especially on windward reefs - giant solid caves of limestone with solid crusts of coral and still the particulate snow. But, the crumbly wall thing is really interesting in how it seems to limit a lot of big corals and also that detrital mass of carbonate and organic mush that feeds all the myriad inverts we still don't have a prayer of keeping. Maybe if we stopped trying so hard to remove all of it from our tanks and utilized it instead of disposing of it? I just gave away some purple vase sponges from my sump - like giving away frags. They are everywhere. Its the settling area for all the waterbrone debris, and that's where they are doing the best. I don't skim it out, so they get a feast in there. See, now you have me wanting to challenge myself (my tank) even further, although I can't imagine what more (actualy, what less) I could do. There is no mechanical filtration at all, no floss, artificial sponge and so on, the skimmer has been out of action for six months or more as well. Maybe now would be a good time to try some tunicates / sponges again as it has been a good long time since my last effort(s). Thanks for reminding me of my sump also, good gawd, the glass is covered in a few sponge species, and get colonial tunicates from time to time as well on it. But if I personaly put them into the tank, no good. Guess it comes down to chance on what species hitches in on rocks or water borne being matched to my systems abilities to provide. A lot of it may also be simply because in the high light environment of the tank, algae competition, no matter how slight, is just too much for them, hence doing so well in the dark areas of the sump. I think. 
Chuck
___________________________________________________________ "My life is free now, my life is dear" - Black Sabbath
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