I have been keeping reef tanks for close to 20 years now. The last time I set up a new tank was 10 years ago. I moved from NY to FL 3 years ago and took a short break. I am now setting up a new tank. Between being away from the hobby for the last 3 years and also having my last new tank setup 10 years ago I noticed a lot of change in products available. One of the main things that I noticed is that real live rock is EXTREMELY expensive! I remember buying rock at a high price at the LFS for 8 bucks a pound, it was available for close to half of that via online vendors and always available on the forums from tank break downs. I honestly do not remember how I cycled my tank 10 years ago. If I had to guess I probably used Fritz, went through all the ugly stages and forgot about it later after being successful. However that was with real rock from the ocean. While I know that I can probably still source some rock (I am actually selling over 150 pounds FYI from my tank which is still running in NY), I chose to go with dry rock and trying something new this time around. I also don't want to deal with shipping the rock from NY and the tank sizes are very different. I had a 350 gallon tank in NY and used very large rock sizes on that tank, while my new tank is 112 gallons being a cube at 36 X 36. My question is, can I seed the dry rock with microbacter 7 and then dose vodka to provide a carbon dose for the bacteria? I have never used microbacter 7 in the past but it seems like the go to these days. I also noticed that there are so many other brands that sell bacteria, and that they all claim to be different strains. Can I mix them and use more than one at the same time to have a more diverse bacteria population? I did dose vodka on my tank years ago and had pretty decent results. I am not sure which nutrient reduction method I plan on using but I am leaning towards doing vodka again. The thought process is that instead of reducing higher nutrient levels later on, I could add the microbacter to seed the rock and probably 1 or 2 of the bricks used for bacteria to colonize on (since man made rocks are extremely dense). I would then feed the bacteria with vodka as my carbon source, and find the medium in dosing to bring the nutrients to the levels that have been reported to promote success (not zero). I can monitor nutrient levels and also have PO4 and NO3 on hand to manually add it back, I can also feed more although I really don't want to get to that and rather keep it at bay with the vodka rather than stripping and adding back in. I am also going to focus more on feeding the coral this time with amino acids and other food sources, although I have not done enough research on what I want to use for that yet. I do plan on running a refugium as well, not with algae though. Just a cryptic area to keep the bricks in and also promote pod and sponge growth. I am also going to try to supplement calcium, all and magnesium using Tropic Marins all for reef. Dosing one thing seems a lot easier and they say that it also replenishes trace elements. While I used Kalkwaser for ever, I hated how much it always taxed the equipment.
Thanks,
Adam
Thanks,
Adam
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