Guidelines for some parameters from Kleypas et al
Most hobbyists are familiar (I hope) with the scientific review and statistical analysis of various environmental parameters of coral reefs called Environmental Limits to Coral Reef Development: Where Do We Draw the Line?. Integrative and Comparative Biology (1999) by Kleypas et al.
If you have not read this paper yet, it’s available for free from here
I’ll summarize some of the findings (skipping the aragonite saturation and light penetration):
- 90% of world’s coral reefs have less than 0.02 mg/l phosphate and modal value is actually below detection
- 90 % of world’s coral reefs have less than 0.04 mg/l nitrate and again modal value is below detection
- Average temperature is 25 – 30 C and average of averages 27.6 C
- Salinity is 34 – 35 with very few reefs classified as low or high salinity
- In general, salinity and nutrient levels differ very little between coral reefs as most of the variance came from light and temperature
So, there you have it, correct values for some vital parameters to simulate pristine coral reef.
Next time some one claims that coral reef animals “need” measurable phosphate or nitrate you’ll know better. Although there are a lot of nutrients in reef waters, they are not in dissolved inorganic form, instead they are bound into small living particles (plankton) and/or are recycled extremely fast. We should also stop telling beginners that it is okay to have 10 mg/l NO3 or 0.1 mg/l PO4. That simply is not true and only results in problems that must be dealt with unnatural and aggressive actions.
Feed a lot and export a lot!