Explain why Roberto can break the SPS rules and succeed?

[chris_pull]

I might be completely wrong but from reading through the build thread, I’ve not seen this mentioned. It almost seems to me that there’s no cycling phase: just add corals, filtration and fish. The reason I think this is that Roberto said he didn’t have an ammonia spike. If this is the case, I could imagine that it means there’s basically no phase early on where nutrients are high, organics are high, and no prolonged period where bacteria and other microbes are growing and competing with one another. Instead, this means nutrients are low to start, stay very low, and hence no undesirable microbes can get a foot hold. As corals and fish are added pretty much immediately, the tank is seeded with the mature and beneficial bacteria they carry, instead of a few artificially introduced strains. I might be way off but perhaps this is something different to most other tanks, which have prolonged periods of cycling.

 

[Perry]

Roberto has been a staple of sps reefing for as long as I have been active on sps boards since 2006 on RC. He is a legacy for sps keeping, his username is different from the old site, and many around R2R parts are just finding out who he is. This project looks no different than the several I have seen over many years. Clean, elegant, brightly colored corals, with excellent placement. He, as many "old scholers", strive for a low nutrient system, using different systems and techniques to achieve those results. I think Roberto introduced Carlos Morena's tank to the sps forum on RC back in the day, Carlos was a legend, known for his siporax system using several specialized bins with water passively running through them for very low nutrient systm. His tank was featured TOTM on RC back in 2012. It's easy to find via Google search. Again, nothing new here. I think these rules don't apply so much as tanks have gravitated towards blue light, higher nutrients are ok, as blue light doesn't grow algae like day/sunlight spectrums do. I think this is where the confusion began. Let's take a popular IG blue lit tank, put under 10k lighting, and see what happens in 2 weeks or so. Nothing new in reefing other than lighting trending towards blue, this shift has allowed much more forgiveness in parameters for keeping nutrients. I use led by the way, lol.

 

[Sshannon]

I only used only dry rock and my tank is covered with it. Came in on the tank inhabitants.

Using only dry rock is not a complete solution to prevent it, if that's what one is trying to achieve.

I managed to kill off all coralline algae off any frags that came in by accident. I had ongoing elevated ammonia for a solid 3 weeks. Lost a lot of livestock, but not corraline for 3 years. Once everything stabilized, new frags pieces brought in the corraline.

 

[VinsFins]

Here's my secret to keeping the reef clean. My 180 reef is 24 years old. I grow the nasty algae in the sump. It has to be somewhere so I grow it where it can't be seen. When you start to see the hair start in the main system. Add Mexican turbo snails, thy will keep the rock clean unail the cooling takes over. Balance and patients is the key. The faster you grow algae in a sump the quicker you'll get the desired results.

 

[VinsFins]

Here's my secret to keeping the reef clean. My 180 reef is 24 years old. I grow the nasty algae in the sump. It has to be somewhere so I grow it where it can't be seen. When you start to see the hair start in the main system. Add Mexican turbo snails, they will keep the rock clean until the Coralline algae takes over. Balance and patients is the key. The faster you grow algae in a sump the quicker you'll get the desired results.

 

[mrsaltwatertank]

He is not the only one. There are others who have done this with success, and I think the theory is that the dead rock gets seeded by the coral colonies and bypasses the usual wait through the ugly stages. How much is method and how much is luck???

Certain not the only one. I've done this with my tank and my client tanks several times.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Some of us are just rules breakers


50g cube
Unstable big 3/no3/Po4
Led only (hydras)

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Whatever the secret is...it works. I love Roberto's tanks!

 

[Roberto Denadai]

Whatever the secret is...it works. I love Roberto's tanks!

There´s no secret There are many paths that end at the same point. Just choose the one that works for you.

Cheers

 

[Daniel@R2R]

There´s no secret There are many paths that end at the same point. Just choose the one that works for you.

Cheers

I completely agree. What I'm thinking is that maybe some of the assumptions people make about keeping SPS aren't necessarily true (maybe the "rules" aren't actually rules). Perhaps you've tapped into some ways that the rest of us need to learn from. I love following your build thread, and I'm so grateful you share your success in your beautiful reef with our community.

 

[ajm83]

I completely agree. What I'm thinking is that maybe some of the assumptions people make about keeping SPS aren't necessarily true (maybe the "rules" aren't actually rules). Perhaps you've tapped into some ways that the rest of us need to learn from. I love following your build thread, and I'm so grateful you share your success in your beautiful reef with our community.

I bow down to Roberto, because I think you have to be seriously patient & skilled to keep a tank with such low nutrients as this one.

I can only speak anecdotally around my own experience of course but a bit of nutrients seems to give the corals a bit of a buffer for husbandry mistakes. When I kept a ULNS tank it really felt like it was a see-saw (teeter-totter?) and one small mistake could cause a big reaction in the acros.

 

[Perry]

Something to ponder...
Would a tank full of bropsis, bubble, hair, or cyano be considered ULNS?
If based on hobbyist test kit results, the answer is yes.. hmmm