I did do a 4 month cycle but I made a couple of mistakes. One was not doing a big enough water change to really drop nitrates before I put in fish. I’m convinced that is part of the current outbreak of algae, it just took a while to manifest. Second was the lack of utilitarian fish as part of my stocking plan in order to have something to really keep it at bay from the start. Third was the decision to feed heavily from the start. I wanted to really fatten up my fish to keep them healthy but that comes at a price in terms of water quality, especially because my skimmer is underpowered for my tank, even though it’s made specifically for my tank. It would be fine if I had two fish and no corals but that’s not the case. The galling part of that is the clownfish really have not grown or put on the weight I expected them to, unlike the wrasse and the two dartfish which are very healthy looking. If I was you I’d try to find a couple of people on here running sps dominant nanos successfully and try to copy from someone who’s already made it work.
Fair enough, that makes sense then. Getting them nitrates down from the start is a huge deal. Great advice on following some tanks, I’ll see if I can find any nice nano sps build threads.