MY DRY ROCK/BAREBOTTOM REEF TRUTHS.

[X-37B]

Yeah and that's the whole thing. Maturity I I don't want Seeded dead rock. I want critter filled,live rock.

Gotta love live rock!

 

[Maximitsurugi]

I think that maybe eventually we will find out how to hack tank maturity and inoculate/bottle it. Some say it's the micro biome and this is most likely true but I'd like to know exactly how the corals know this is present or not?

Is there a bacterial or microbial/genetic marker present in the water of a mature reef? I'm not convinced it's the rock itself completely as Acros are grown on string in the ocean.

Down the rabbit hole we go...

Any ideas Masters? @ReefSquad @Mike Paletta

 

[Maximitsurugi]

Masters seem to be on retirement. Anyone has a truth that I missed ?

 

[Taipan88]

truth#7

You don't have enough Coral.

No! Nooooooo! NO!

You don't have enough coral to dose even the lowest amount on the bottle. But I have X gallons! Forget it, you don't have the coral load. But aminos say minimum amount to dose is X. Maybe dose a half that or better yet, leave it alone. My corals look X I need Trace Elements! I'll mix some Tropic Marin into my 2 part. No. No you don't. You need a water change maybe.

I bet this was half my nutrient issue.. Dosing, when there was no need to dose due to coral uptake.

 

[Taipan88]

I strongly believe in the old "Blue Thumb".

This as well, I've seen this across many hobbies..
Had a guy who in everyone elses opinion didn't feed their reptiles "enough"
The guy also had the oldest collection of anyone else I have seen. Snakes and reptiles pushing past 20 years old. ( Very old for Elapids ) His Theory.... Aussie elapids are boom and bust feeders. They wont eat for 3 to 4 months of the year, he replicated this.
His snakes were never the fattest, or the biggest, but by far they were the oldest of anyone I've known. Fast as hell, and active.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I upgraded tanks and decided to use dry rocks. It’s been two years and I’m still having a hard time keeping corals alive.
my last tank was with live rock and I was giving corals away.

 

[BrettBos]

Interesting post!
#5 is pretty funny, imo. Been doing this for over 30 years.

For me the simple truth to a successfull reef tank is to have a plan from day one and focus on keeping your desired parameters in range.

Its really that simple, imo.

Without a plan most will fail.

 

[BrettBos]

I must throw in that im a live rock guy. I did start my current build thread 120 with 50/50 live and caribsea dry. Alot less headaches, and I would rather deal with pests than the time it takes for a dead rock tank to mature.

Agree, real liverock is best. Started in early 90s and liverock was a joke. Even shipped in from Figi not that great. Just too much time in transit back then.. Started new tank last April with Gulf aquacultured and was pricey but with gorgonians and corals that lived easily thru the cycle that barely existed. Never seen liverock like that. Did have a few pests but well worth it. U will get them eventually anyway so have a plan. All very easy now with google.

 

[ToadallyNC]

So after well over a year and putting all the new aged science and techniques to use, I am now on the other side of what feels like tank maturity, where I can speak to Acroporas.

Truth #1

The only benefit to starting with dry rock is to DIY your custom aqua scape. All other reasons are a candle in the wind. Yes you have grand ideas of being pest free etc but that leads me to...

Truth #2

Systems without pests are a unicorn. I don't say they can't exist, I'm just saying that it's more a possibility that persons who claim they don't have pests are either unaware of its existence due to its location or they have an active pest control method employed keeping the numbers low to invisible. The only benefit one could consider to be a half merit is that with a dry rock system, you are the weak link. Eventually, YOU the user will put something into the tank that will lay dormant for ages and then will pop up leaving you wondering "When?"

Truth #3

There is more to tank biology than cycling, seeded media and bottled bacteria. This is the great unknown.

I started with tons of seeded media that was years old, in my sump and a few pieces in my display, I used added bottled bacteria, etc. As a point I'm also barebottom but my sump has an entire 14 x 12x 10 chamber of sand and rubble from a living reef. This helped greatly to get started and I started growing coralline specs in a week but things didn't take off until quite a while later.

Truth #4

Coralline is a good indicator of reef readiness but it is NOT the end all and be all for growing Acros. Some types of acros will live and even grow but there is an unknown biology/chemistry factor that, until this is reached/Obtained/Achieved, will hinder other types of acros from growing. From my personal experience, hardy stags can go in early and I've had luck with Valida as well. Everything else seemed to just stall out or swung back and forth between looking fine today and horrible tomorrow. If you meet a stick that has lived through hell and back it's still only a 50/50 chance of holding on until stability arrives.

Can these odds be improved, YES! But!!....

Truth # 5

Everybody is a master of....absolutely nothing!
We reef keepers get lucky. The successful ones are the those that have achieved two things IMHO. The first being, they have a system. Whether it's a planned system or just a bunch of habits BUT all these do is improve odds. Nothing more. In the end, for all our big talk, we know almost nothing still.
The second thing that's achieved is sort of my own theory that others MIGHT share. I believe in the theory of beginners luck but in reefing I strongly believe in the old "Blue Thumb". This is the guy that does all you do or even less. He is lazy to our eyes and laid back but anything he tosses in his tank will grow out of the water. He's the guy you ask everything, you test his water personally when you get a frag from him and his params may be the same as your or even waaaay off the BRS recommends. Then you sit in front of your tank depressed, wondering why your stuff doesn't move and wondering if putting on a cheerleading outfit and doing a jig will get them going. FIGHTING!!!!

But that ain't it. The guy has just earned, somewhere along the line, the blue thumb. He's the professional basketball player that couldn't miss a simple shot even if he just lazy shot it.

Oh and to make it worse, he can start a brand new tank from scratch and still outgrow you. He will though, almost never start a tank with dry rock. He don't care bout no stinkin Negative space Scape. Lol. Give him a wall of age old cycled rock and let him get to work.

Truth #6

When copepod populations naturally boom on your rockwork where you see them running like roaches from crevice to crevice, you are close to some level of maturity. I'll take that even a tad over coralline as a marker for maturity for me. It means that something biological is supporting life at the micro level that corals seem to be able to pick up on.

Truth #7

Enjoy the Lower half of your tank, the first year of BAREBOTTOM, dry rock. There are tones to explore in LPS and Softies until you get to maturity. Barebottoms can be hacked to speed maturity to a point if you have live sand elsewhere whose water feeds directly to your return without too much filtration. Eg, I have live sand from a nearby reef. My sump is built similarly to the IceCap sumps but larger and my would be water reservoir holds sand and rubble with one wall lower than the others so water overflows and the return piped off to feed it, which then overflows back into the return. The sand is deep but the water that feeds it can be turned off in case of emergency.

Truth#7

You don't have enough Coral.

No! Nooooooo! NO!

You don't have enough coral to dose even the lowest amount on the bottle. But I have X gallons! Forget it, you don't have the coral load. But aminos say minimum amount to dose is X. Maybe dose a half that or better yet, leave it alone. My corals look X I need Trace Elements! I'll mix some Tropic Marin into my 2 part. No. No you don't. You need a water change maybe.

Truth #8

Keep your alkalinity between 7.5 and 8.5. I choose 8 personally until I'm mature. Higher Alkalinity drives growth but you don't want growth now. You want things that have lived in the sea for millennia to develop, mature and stabilize in parameters that are more at home to them. After that, you can mess with driving growth.

Truth #9

Fish are the secret to feeding your reef. It's not aminos. Trust me. Aminos are useful if you stripped the water, which you shouldn't, but if your system is mature and stable, and your fish are fat then nutrients aren't a problem as long as they are in a safe range. I'll go further to say that Nitrate and Phosphate concentrations are what we get hung up on but ideally, corals prefer 100% ammonia or was it ammonium? ITS Whatever comes out the fishes gills or pee places. Go ask Randy Holmes Farley or something.

I might eventually touch on lighting but that's even more contentious than Trump.
Did I miss a truth? Share yours.

@revhtree We need a R2R Hall of Fame where we highlight one of the great ones each year and you give them a Trophy. Maybe even livestream it. I nominates Randy Holmes Farley. I'm drinking....leave me alone. Lol

Interesting post! All are valid truths IMO. Especially #9. I’m going through a fallow phase right now, and coral growth is nonexistent. Can’t wait to have my fish back.

 

[ActualProof]

So after well over a year and putting all the new aged science and techniques to use, I am now on the other side of what feels like tank maturity, where I can speak to Acroporas.

Truth #1

The only benefit to starting with dry rock is to DIY your custom aqua scape. All other reasons are a candle in the wind. Yes you have grand ideas of being pest free etc but that leads me to...

Truth #2

Systems without pests are a unicorn. I don't say they can't exist, I'm just saying that it's more a possibility that persons who claim they don't have pests are either unaware of its existence due to its location or they have an active pest control method employed keeping the numbers low to invisible. The only benefit one could consider to be a half merit is that with a dry rock system, you are the weak link. Eventually, YOU the user will put something into the tank that will lay dormant for ages and then will pop up leaving you wondering "When?"

Truth #3

There is more to tank biology than cycling, seeded media and bottled bacteria. This is the great unknown.

I started with tons of seeded media that was years old, in my sump and a few pieces in my display, I used added bottled bacteria, etc. As a point I'm also barebottom but my sump has an entire 14 x 12x 10 chamber of sand and rubble from a living reef. This helped greatly to get started and I started growing coralline specs in a week but things didn't take off until quite a while later.

Truth #4

Coralline is a good indicator of reef readiness but it is NOT the end all and be all for growing Acros. Some types of acros will live and even grow but there is an unknown biology/chemistry factor that, until this is reached/Obtained/Achieved, will hinder other types of acros from growing. From my personal experience, hardy stags can go in early and I've had luck with Valida as well. Everything else seemed to just stall out or swung back and forth between looking fine today and horrible tomorrow. If you meet a stick that has lived through hell and back it's still only a 50/50 chance of holding on until stability arrives.

Can these odds be improved, YES! But!!....

Truth # 5

Everybody is a master of....absolutely nothing!
We reef keepers get lucky. The successful ones are the those that have achieved two things IMHO. The first being, they have a system. Whether it's a planned system or just a bunch of habits BUT all these do is improve odds. Nothing more. In the end, for all our big talk, we know almost nothing still.
The second thing that's achieved is sort of my own theory that others MIGHT share. I believe in the theory of beginners luck but in reefing I strongly believe in the old "Blue Thumb". This is the guy that does all you do or even less. He is lazy to our eyes and laid back but anything he tosses in his tank will grow out of the water. He's the guy you ask everything, you test his water personally when you get a frag from him and his params may be the same as your or even waaaay off the BRS recommends. Then you sit in front of your tank depressed, wondering why your stuff doesn't move and wondering if putting on a cheerleading outfit and doing a jig will get them going. FIGHTING!!!!

But that ain't it. The guy has just earned, somewhere along the line, the blue thumb. He's the professional basketball player that couldn't miss a simple shot even if he just lazy shot it.

Oh and to make it worse, he can start a brand new tank from scratch and still outgrow you. He will though, almost never start a tank with dry rock. He don't care bout no stinkin Negative space Scape. Lol. Give him a wall of age old cycled rock and let him get to work.

Truth #6

When copepod populations naturally boom on your rockwork where you see them running like roaches from crevice to crevice, you are close to some level of maturity. I'll take that even a tad over coralline as a marker for maturity for me. It means that something biological is supporting life at the micro level that corals seem to be able to pick up on.

Truth #7

Enjoy the Lower half of your tank, the first year of BAREBOTTOM, dry rock. There are tones to explore in LPS and Softies until you get to maturity. Barebottoms can be hacked to speed maturity to a point if you have live sand elsewhere whose water feeds directly to your return without too much filtration. Eg, I have live sand from a nearby reef. My sump is built similarly to the IceCap sumps but larger and my would be water reservoir holds sand and rubble with one wall lower than the others so water overflows and the return piped off to feed it, which then overflows back into the return. The sand is deep but the water that feeds it can be turned off in case of emergency.

Truth#7

You don't have enough Coral.

No! Nooooooo! NO!

You don't have enough coral to dose even the lowest amount on the bottle. But I have X gallons! Forget it, you don't have the coral load. But aminos say minimum amount to dose is X. Maybe dose a half that or better yet, leave it alone. My corals look X I need Trace Elements! I'll mix some Tropic Marin into my 2 part. No. No you don't. You need a water change maybe.

Truth #8

Keep your alkalinity between 7.5 and 8.5. I choose 8 personally until I'm mature. Higher Alkalinity drives growth but you don't want growth now. You want things that have lived in the sea for millennia to develop, mature and stabilize in parameters that are more at home to them. After that, you can mess with driving growth.

Truth #9

Fish are the secret to feeding your reef. It's not aminos. Trust me. Aminos are useful if you stripped the water, which you shouldn't, but if your system is mature and stable, and your fish are fat then nutrients aren't a problem as long as they are in a safe range. I'll go further to say that Nitrate and Phosphate concentrations are what we get hung up on but ideally, corals prefer 100% ammonia or was it ammonium? ITS Whatever comes out the fishes gills or pee places. Go ask Randy Holmes Farley or something.

I might eventually touch on lighting but that's even more contentious than Trump.
Did I miss a truth? Share yours.

@revhtree We need a R2R Hall of Fame where we highlight one of the great ones each year and you give them a Trophy. Maybe even livestream it. I nominates Randy Holmes Farley. I'm drinking....leave me alone. Lol

Hahahaha, get it out, man!! I’m another “90’s reefer” (1996, to be exact). I’ve always been fascinated by the absolute over-complication that plagues the hobby. Everybody has their ups and downs, and everybody has lost livestock - if they’ve been in the hobby for a while… some in the first day, right?! In my 24 reefing years (25 next month), I’ve always held close to me another “hard truth” that so many people seem to forget to mention:

“KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS AND DISGUSTINGLY HAIRY FOREARMS OUT OF THE TANK”. Seriously. Don’t let your skin contact the water. There are instant chemical reactions, no wonder how clean of a person you *think* you are. Get shoulder-length rubber gloves and soak them overnight in vinegar after you’ve handled them with your oily, repulsive hands. Go months without putting your hands in there. It horrifies your fish when you do it and poisons your animals. Imagine how you’d feel being locked in a closed system with your great uncles Brut Faberge aftershave or whatever. You’d wanna die. Your fish associate your presence with eating, but they otherwise loathe everything about you.
Mix up water with “seawater” parameters and then don’t touch it. Your corals with then “grow out of the water” like you said. Every time you enter the environment, consider that 100 steps backward. Avoid it.

 

[fishybizzness]

First tank started with live rock at 6 months. No dosing or anything other than regular weekly water changes with nsw. Second started with dry rock at a year. Nuff said. I would never start another tank with dry rock. Its just not the same experience in any way.

 

[WVNed]

Oh darn. I am doing it wrong again.
Sigh

 

[fishybizzness]

Pardon the butterfly fish, my noob ignorance. Lol. And running with a cannister filter and hob skimmer.

First tank started with live rock at 6 months. No dosing or anything other than regular weekly water changes with nsw. Second started with dry rock at a year. Nuff said. I would never start another tank with dry rock. Its just not the same experience in any wa

 

[BigSkyRich]

So after well over a year and putting all the new aged science and techniques to use, I am now on the other side of what feels like tank maturity, where I can speak to Acroporas.

Truth #1

The only benefit to starting with dry rock is to DIY your custom aqua scape. All other reasons are a candle in the wind. Yes you have grand ideas of being pest free etc but that leads me to...

Truth #2

Systems without pests are a unicorn. I don't say they can't exist, I'm just saying that it's more a possibility that persons who claim they don't have pests are either unaware of its existence due to its location or they have an active pest control method employed keeping the numbers low to invisible. The only benefit one could consider to be a half merit is that with a dry rock system, you are the weak link. Eventually, YOU the user will put something into the tank that will lay dormant for ages and then will pop up leaving you wondering "When?"

Truth #3

There is more to tank biology than cycling, seeded media and bottled bacteria. This is the great unknown.

I started with tons of seeded media that was years old, in my sump and a few pieces in my display, I used added bottled bacteria, etc. As a point I'm also barebottom but my sump has an entire 14 x 12x 10 chamber of sand and rubble from a living reef. This helped greatly to get started and I started growing coralline specs in a week but things didn't take off until quite a while later.

Truth #4

Coralline is a good indicator of reef readiness but it is NOT the end all and be all for growing Acros. Some types of acros will live and even grow but there is an unknown biology/chemistry factor that, until this is reached/Obtained/Achieved, will hinder other types of acros from growing. From my personal experience, hardy stags can go in early and I've had luck with Valida as well. Everything else seemed to just stall out or swung back and forth between looking fine today and horrible tomorrow. If you meet a stick that has lived through hell and back it's still only a 50/50 chance of holding on until stability arrives.

Can these odds be improved, YES! But!!....

Truth # 5

Everybody is a master of....absolutely nothing!
We reef keepers get lucky. The successful ones are the those that have achieved two things IMHO. The first being, they have a system. Whether it's a planned system or just a bunch of habits BUT all these do is improve odds. Nothing more. In the end, for all our big talk, we know almost nothing still.
The second thing that's achieved is sort of my own theory that others MIGHT share. I believe in the theory of beginners luck but in reefing I strongly believe in the old "Blue Thumb". This is the guy that does all you do or even less. He is lazy to our eyes and laid back but anything he tosses in his tank will grow out of the water. He's the guy you ask everything, you test his water personally when you get a frag from him and his params may be the same as your or even waaaay off the BRS recommends. Then you sit in front of your tank depressed, wondering why your stuff doesn't move and wondering if putting on a cheerleading outfit and doing a jig will get them going. FIGHTING!!!!

But that ain't it. The guy has just earned, somewhere along the line, the blue thumb. He's the professional basketball player that couldn't miss a simple shot even if he just lazy shot it.

Oh and to make it worse, he can start a brand new tank from scratch and still outgrow you. He will though, almost never start a tank with dry rock. He don't care bout no stinkin Negative space Scape. Lol. Give him a wall of age old cycled rock and let him get to work.

Truth #6

When copepod populations naturally boom on your rockwork where you see them running like roaches from crevice to crevice, you are close to some level of maturity. I'll take that even a tad over coralline as a marker for maturity for me. It means that something biological is supporting life at the micro level that corals seem to be able to pick up on.

Truth #7

Enjoy the Lower half of your tank, the first year of BAREBOTTOM, dry rock. There are tones to explore in LPS and Softies until you get to maturity. Barebottoms can be hacked to speed maturity to a point if you have live sand elsewhere whose water feeds directly to your return without too much filtration. Eg, I have live sand from a nearby reef. My sump is built similarly to the IceCap sumps but larger and my would be water reservoir holds sand and rubble with one wall lower than the others so water overflows and the return piped off to feed it, which then overflows back into the return. The sand is deep but the water that feeds it can be turned off in case of emergency.

Truth#7

You don't have enough Coral.

No! Nooooooo! NO!

You don't have enough coral to dose even the lowest amount on the bottle. But I have X gallons! Forget it, you don't have the coral load. But aminos say minimum amount to dose is X. Maybe dose a half that or better yet, leave it alone. My corals look X I need Trace Elements! I'll mix some Tropic Marin into my 2 part. No. No you don't. You need a water change maybe.

Truth #8

Keep your alkalinity between 7.5 and 8.5. I choose 8 personally until I'm mature. Higher Alkalinity drives growth but you don't want growth now. You want things that have lived in the sea for millennia to develop, mature and stabilize in parameters that are more at home to them. After that, you can mess with driving growth.

Truth #9

Fish are the secret to feeding your reef. It's not aminos. Trust me. Aminos are useful if you stripped the water, which you shouldn't, but if your system is mature and stable, and your fish are fat then nutrients aren't a problem as long as they are in a safe range. I'll go further to say that Nitrate and Phosphate concentrations are what we get hung up on but ideally, corals prefer 100% ammonia or was it ammonium? ITS Whatever comes out the fishes gills or pee places. Go ask Randy Holmes Farley or something.

I might eventually touch on lighting but that's even more contentious than Trump.
Did I miss a truth? Share yours.

@revhtree We need a R2R Hall of Fame where we highlight one of the great ones each year and you give them a Trophy. Maybe even livestream it. I nominates Randy Holmes Farley. I'm drinking....leave me alone. Lol

The hard truth for me is the more I drink the better my aquarium looks

 

[3429810]

One reason to go with dry rock is price. I spent around $300 on 90 lbs of Carib sea rock. That 90 lbs at $15/lb for live rock near me would be around $1350. Guess it comes down to are the headaches worth $1000.

 

[Maximitsurugi]

Hahahaha, get it out, man!! I’m another “90’s reefer” (1996, to be exact). I’ve always been fascinated by the absolute over-complication that plagues the hobby. Everybody has their ups and downs, and everybody has lost livestock - if they’ve been in the hobby for a while… some in the first day, right?! In my 24 reefing years (25 next month), I’ve always held close to me another “hard truth” that so many people seem to forget to mention:

“KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS AND DISGUSTINGLY HAIRY FOREARMS OUT OF THE TANK”. Seriously. Don’t let your skin contact the water. There are instant chemical reactions, no wonder how clean of a person you *think* you are. Get shoulder-length rubber gloves and soak them overnight in vinegar after you’ve handled them with your oily, repulsive hands. Go months without putting your hands in there. It horrifies your fish when you do it and poisons your animals. Imagine how you’d feel being locked in a closed system with your great uncles Brut Faberge aftershave or whatever. You’d wanna die. Your fish associate your presence with eating, but they otherwise loathe everything about you.
Mix up water with “seawater” parameters and then don’t touch it. Your corals with then “grow out of the water” like you said. Every time you enter the environment, consider that 100 steps backward. Avoid it.

I'm loving this! Lol. Brut Faberge. You know you're using chic repellant when your cologne foubles as an aftershave. Lol. I'm 100% guilty of this but please don't lump me into that category....I'm a Givenchy Pi kinda guy. Lol

 

[ScottR]

@Maximitsurugi good post. I’ve been saying this for years about dry rock set ups. They’re not impossible but they have many flaws. Draw a Venn diagram with dry and live rock and one can pick the good and bad. Personally, if I were to do an SPS system, I’d go with live rock. Live rock itself is a broad term though. Defining what true live rock is will be another discussion. I like to refer to some live rock as simply established rock.

 

[BigSkyRich]

I think that maybe eventually we will find out how to hack tank maturity and inoculate/bottle it. Some say it's the micro biome and this is most likely true but I'd like to know exactly how the corals know this is present or not?

Is there a bacterial or microbial/genetic marker present in the water of a mature reef? I'm not convinced it's the rock itself completely as Acros are grown on string in the ocean.

Down the rabbit hole we go...

Any ideas Masters? @ReefSquad @Mike Paletta

So the question for me is as I begin my new 130 gallon FOWLR tank does dry or live really matter?

 

[Maximitsurugi]

@Maximitsurugi good post. I’ve been saying this for years about dry rock set ups. They’re not impossible but they have many flaws. Draw a Venn diagram with dry and live rock and one can pick the good and bad. Personally, if I were to do an SPS system, I’d go with live rock. Live rock itself is a broad term though. Defining what true live rock is will be another discussion. I like to refer to some live rock as simply established rock.

I think the closer we get to understanding the biome, is the closer we will get to speeding tank maturity. I was on a live stream of @ReefBum last night and we had a great time with Mike Paletta. I asked a question but due to the limits of the chat, it was misinterpreted but I still wonder if there is something we are missing, like a chemical marker that tells corals that the tank is mature and they have permission to grow.
I get NSW off a Reef nearby and the corals behave like they breathe fresh air after a water change but after you skim for an hour or two, that dynamic changes because we pulled something from the water, so I'm thinking that the rocks bacterial inhabitants etc provide some chemical trigger when it's population is high enough or a specific type is present that says that the tank/water is "mature".

 

[ActualProof]

@Maximitsurugi good post. I’ve been saying this for years about dry rock set ups. They’re not impossible but they have many flaws. Draw a Venn diagram with dry and live rock and one can pick the good and bad. Personally, if I were to do an SPS system, I’d go with live rock. Live rock itself is a broad term though. Defining what true live rock is will be another discussion. I like to refer to some live rock as simply established rock.

Yes!! Established rock and “live rock” are like the two iterations of Van Halen… very different, one definitely preferable to the other, but you’ll take either in a pinch.
To me, “live” rock is going to be completely, 100% encrusted and crawling with hundreds of organisms (algae, sponges, corals, bacteria, ooze, slime, stars, nems, crabs, worms, snails, bivalves, etc), every square millimeter. It is also home to everything we consider “pests”…. Your dinos, valonia, diatoms, cyano; however, there are so many organisms competing for space that no one thing can “take over” and reach plague levels. Checks and balances. Tough neighborhood. Whatever you wanna call it. Nobody has an advantage. “Established rock” is cycled, home to whatever limited species it’s been exposed to, and covered in algae and bacteria. If it’s been “nuked” or began as “dry/dead rock”, it is also a relatively empty canvas. Undeveloped tracts of land. The first neighborhood that pops up is going to rapidly consume all the resources and hunt the bison to near-extinction. Time is the great equalizer, and no plague lasts forever. All you have to do is keep your water consistent, and continue to occasionally “seed” your tank with some more potential residents. Little bits of rubble from fellow hobbyists will do the trick. “Plagues”, “infestations”, and “outbreaks” are 100% temporary, and they’re all due to a lack of ecological diversity. None will last forever. Dry rock is GOING to experience this, but with enough time and exposure to more life forms - balance will prevail.

You may follow the online guides to a tee, and do every single thing that you’ve been correctly told to do, and wake up to find your semi-established dry rock covered completely in snotty dinoflagellates. It’s because they can. Don’t take them out, because you’ll just create space for more to join the party. It may seem counterintuitive, but just go get another little piece of rubble from a friend or the LFS, and drop it in there. Don’t freeze/panic and just stop, because you’ll prolong the issue. Be patient, and allow some other things to enter the ring and compete. The party will eventually end, guaranteed. “Don’t chase numbers” is great advice. I used to constantly test, and still felt that I didn’t test enough. A controller changed everything, and 1.5 years ago I added a Trident (which reminds me that is about due for service!). It’s very convenient, and awesome to be able to monitor things and speculate on “trends”, but guess what? I’ve still never used that information as a reason to add anything to the water to change the chemistry… because I have absolutely learned that any change that occurs quickly is bad, stability is far more valuable than “ideal parameters”, and the less I put my hands near the tanks the better they do.

*these statements only officially pertain to my own life and are not meant to encourage any action or non-action on your part. Novelty use only. Adult supervision required. Give me a Red Stripe.