True but in actual practice I have never had that problem. I maintained aquarium systems up to 1700 gallons for customers for years and the most vulnerable time was the first year. After that the systems were rock solid and then became money makers on the maintenance fees. I guaranteed populations of fish and inverts at certain levels (numbers and types) as part of the contract. Risky on my part? Not really due to the success I had with the systems design. Populations stabilized along with the maturity of the systems. I know this is just observation on my part but I often had multiple systems under contract in two states sometimes a six hour drive one way. So I had to have confidence in the systems with a 6 to 8 hour delay before I could be on site. I had a mix of systems some with UV and some without. All systems had trickle filters, protein skimmers, ATO, light timmers, real live rock at 1 lb. per gallon, filter feeders, macro algae, and of course fish! I topped off the ATO sumps with a portable DI filter. I kept my own tanks the same way and was wholesaling fish and inverts to local stores to build interest in marine aquariums. I was building and selling the tanks, filters, light systems, and stands so I wanted to build up interest in the local stores as a way to drive sales of the aquariums and related equipment. It got to be too much and I let the tank maintenance go and the stores were handed off to Quality Marine for their livestock needs.
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). I think before I left we started switching some of the tanks over to wet-dry filters. But no trickle filters, protein skimmers, UV or diatom filtration.
