I also had somewhat of a bigger tank and downsized to a 56 gallon DT about 4 + years ago. I do still have a 30 gallon fuge and 20 gallon sump hooked up to it but this smaller tank is perfect and I am not wanting the work or expense of a bigger system anymore. The smaller tank is home to 16 fish and I am content with that. I do have a lot of rock to give those fish adequate territory space and I do feed heavily to keep 'hangry' behaviors at a mimimal.
This assumes " live rock" has a certain filtration capacity. Does it? Can it be determined? Compared to base rock?
I agree when you have enough rock it can be hard to see the fish. They are more comfortable and less aggressive behavior. I have found if you keep your tank in an active room the fish come out more. When strangers come into the room they hide. So it depends on what you want for a display a tank full of Acropora frags with few fish, a mixed coral tank, a fish only or a tank with mixed corals not just frags and some fish. See a lot of displays with frags and people seem proud to have hundreds of frags in their display, they get bored watching them grow into colonies. I know some grow their frags out to sell more frags. My last conversation with my son was he was bored because his coral has grown and no more room for new corals or fish and not much maintenance. Told him that means success, start another tank..
last weekend, i threw together a tank with an Acrylic 25 Gallon Cube from out in my garage with a small Eshoppes sump with a Red Solo Cup of sand from my 150 display and one piece of Pukani from the sump ( about 12x8 inches ) no skimmer, no other filtration, a large pair of clowns, 2 montipora colonies, 1 Pavona colony and 1 small mushroom rock, and have been running the Kessil 360 at 100% power 50% color for 12 hours a day since Sarurday. Have full polyp extension, and have not even had a haze on the inside of the acrylic. A tank, a light, a sump, a pump = instant tank with one eatablished live rock and some established substrate.
i ordered 60kg of
I don’t do the rock walls nowadays but it’s still one of the best looking tanks to me. Like looking at the reef in the wild from below or the side.
I started in 72, it was under gravel filters with air stones in the pickup tubes and dead bleached coral as decorations. We didn’t keep corals but did try keeping things we had no business trying like anemones which slowly died because of mainly what I think was lack of proper lighting. We also weren’t using RO D I units and protein skimmers where not widely used and if they where they where insufficient.
Skimmers, UV units, , RO, ozon, bioballs, diatom earth, bio, refuge, sump, it all was available late 60 ties. What filtration method is available now not available in the 70ties? Enough light and correct spectrum was available. What we did not have was a cheap method to measure parameters. Only pH and salinity. Corals where not commercialized and not available. Corals started to be commercialized in EU the period in Germany and other EU countries import of reef fish and invertabrates was banned or and limited , this was half the 70ties. Corals where not on the list of Cites that time. Wilkens published the use of kalkwasser in the 70 ties. Keeping corals in home aquaria in EU, it must have been late 80ties. In the US the Dutch system ( sump with bioballs) became popular late 80ties and 90ties, published in the Netherlands in 1969 (Frank De Graaf. Handboek voor het tropisch zeeaquarium. Tweede druk. A.J.G. Strengholt N.V. Amsterdam, 1969.)
