Is there a wrong way?

[Luckki]

I am going to say this, there are some people that claim their corals do well at 7.8 pH with low lights and there are some that have the opposite with the same corals 8.4 and high intensity. Why do they thrive? I know I have not been back in the seat long but it seems like consistency seems to be the key. These are living creatures and like all creatures they adapt. I’m not saying that what you are doing is right or wrong, but it is working for you. If it doesn’t turn out well, then you learned something in the process. I’m sure there was someone out there in the past that said “Hey that fish is really cool I want to put it in a tank and show it off.” It struggled and they learned a bunch maybe had some failures, but they tried again, and again. Now they are breeding those finicky fish in their tanks. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[ptrick21186]

I understand. I'm asking why? Why are the chances of success not great? It seems a lot of people are going based on aesthetic preferences.

I understand. I'm asking why? Why are the chances of success not great? It seems a lot of people are going based on aesthetic preferences.

I believe I had this is my comment. You won't have enough surface area to support enough of the biodiversity your tank will need long term.

Your tank is so much more than just calcium, Magnesium, alk, and salinity.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Went to my LFS to see what they have, which was pest riddled. I was describing my tank and the confusion on the owners face gave me a good laugh.

My tank is 1 years old. I tried sand. I tried rock. I tried fish. I tried GHA.

Ended up with a bare bottom, fish-less, coral on large 3" disks. My astraea snails are happy. My coral are happy. I'm happy. It's clean (no known pests), super easy to maintain. Easier to learn as I'm a beginner. I can dip and pickup to inspect if I want. I can easily relocate. I can always add rock and sand in the future.

To anyone getting started, you don't need to go with the norm!

Snails keep it clean

My LFS

As long as you are happy. Ive seen growouts/growths in frag tanks

 

[Lavey29]

I understand. I'm asking why? Why are the chances of success not great? It seems a lot of people are going based on aesthetic preferences.

How many have tried this setup to say it won't work long-term?

I was planning to keep the same setup when going to the 40L.

I'm not going out of my way to clean the tank, the snails are doing it themselves. I only clean the sides of the glass using my Mag Float. Heck, even my snails have grown in size since I've got them.

Well let's start with some basics. Where are your beneficial bacteria colonizing to build and sustain your biome? On your rocks? In your sand? Perhaps on your frag stands but I doubt in sufficient quantity due to their sterile appearance. Your bio balls may be able to sustain bacteria in your nano tank when combined with weekly water changes but again, let's revisit in 3 months and see how your frags look.

I don't think there is anything wrong with trying different approaches but some things have been proven to work for many decades now.

 

[ptrick21186]

We're definitely not saying what you're doing is IMPOSSIBLE. Just going to have different challenges. For instance you say you don't need to clean because your snails are cleaning for you. But those frag plugs are pure white. No way snails alone are cleaning those to look like that. There's just nothing growing on them. So what you think is super efficient snails is more likely lack of anything actually growing. Which in turn means your snails are actually slowly starving to death.

 

[dr_vinnie_boombatz]

We're definitely not saying what you're doing is IMPOSSIBLE. Just going to have different challenges. For instance you say you don't need to clean because your snails are cleaning for you. But those frag plugs are pure white. No way snails alone are cleaning those to look like that. There's just nothing growing on them. So what you think is super efficient snails is more likely lack of anything actually growing. Which in turn means your snails are actually slowly starving to death.

I don't hand clean them, maybe it's the lighting in the morning picture, they are not pure white - I'm looking at them right now are they're a light brown with algae. The tank has been setup like this for a few months. I'll set a reminder to post an update this summer. Will share good and bad!

 

[ptrick21186]

I don't hand clean them, maybe it's the lighting in the morning picture, they are not pure white - I'm looking at them right now are they're a light brown with algae. The tank has been setup like this for a few months. I'll set a reminder to post an update this summer. Will share good and bad!

I'm definitely intrigued by this post! Wishing this tank the best! Send more pics and keep posting!

 

[Wonton Soup]

Hey if it's what you like to look at and you think it's working then more power to you, but let's see a full tank shot already.

 

[Tired]

Light brown algae growth and nothing else, after a few months, isn't a good sign. For long-term stability and health, you need a thriving ecosystem in your tank, which generally needs surfaces to live on. Not just flat discs- rock. Or some of those bio-brick things that are more or less fake rock, if you can manage to keep them from getting sealed up by coraline.
That coraline really should be growing. My thought would be that the reason it's not is your tank can't hold a year's worth of maturity, and that you probably pulled out a lot of the progress towards maturity along with the rock. You have nothing to buffer parameter swings, nowhere for your ecosystem to live.

A surge of algae when a tank is newly set up is normal. That's the ugly stage- pest algae running amok on all the new real estate. In proper conditions, it settles out sooner or later, and develops into a nice layer of non-pest algae growing all over everything. Those near-sterile discs are gonna get hit with something sooner or later, unless you keep absolutely 0 nutrients in the tank. Which, if you did that, would kill your corals- they need algae doing well inside them to live.

And, yes, aiptasia in a sale tank doesn't actually mean anything bad. It just means aiptasia got in there and are too much of a pain to remove. As long as the aiptasia on the actual frags being sold is minimal (not zero- minimal, as in easily spotted and dealt with by the buyer), it's fine. They mean absolutely nothing about the health of a system. What does mean something about the health of a system is a layer of healthy, ideally diverse non-pest algae all over everything, which I see in that sale tank.

Also, although it's true that reef tanks don't always have to match the norm, people who are starting out really should go with known, established methods. Tinkering with new things is best done after someone has practice in the basics. Please do not advise newbies to experiment wildly.

Edit: if you really like that look, why not look into something like a HOB fuge? You could put a fair bit of rubble rock in there, which would grant your tank a good bit more stability than it has, without changing the looks of the main tank. You could also pop some sort of interesting shrimp or small crab in there. Heck, a clear HOB filter with a handful of rubble rock would be an improvement, particularly if you had your LFS give you a couple of blank, algae-covered frag plugs to seed it. You can easily inspect the plugs and snip off any portions containing aiptasia.