thanks tons for posting, that's perfect for our thread pls upload any pics too that's the best.
Any sand you have in the tank even with no rocks would support fish, and corals laying all over the bottom 100% coverage just fine. A tank with nothing in it and only bac on the walls isn't enough surface area, but any form of rock or sand, or both, sure is so no matter what you do with # pounds of live rock your filter will run. Go easy on fish, wait till the tank matures to add them (most say to add them soon, we digress) then you can't go wrong.
your pic is great, that tank can handle an entry bioload if we go easy on fish a while
they need to be completing quarantine/fallow periods anyway before going into anyone's reef so that method of fish disease control is also a nice indicator of when new reefs are ready to receive fish
pretty much any increment of truly live rock, the kind with coralline and animals stuck to it, classic group B, will run your reef and you can not only transfer it among tanks safely without losing its power, you can starve it and expose it to air a really long time and the bacteria still don't die. In many ways this thread is about photographing ways we don't follow anyones rules about live rock... we simply post what they'll tolerate. Strive to keep the rock basically wet/sprayed with saltwater any creative way while working with rock and you can't go wrong.
this includes actions like lifting out that rock and burning/scraping/guiding off any noncompliant algae before it takes over. that rock can sit on your kitchen cabinet for 30 mins easy and not die, I expose my entire reef tank drained to the air for that long routinely. I don't use fish, so that is an ok test for my tank, its what the tides inflict on real reefs as well.
we're really not doing anything secret with live rocks here, nature handles them roughly. Its only aquarists and their books/authors who were concerned about live rock emersion in the early times of reefing materials and instruction making. now that we know nature handles them roughly, that gives us the ability to arrange the tank any way we want and access that rock in any way we need to guide it, this makes an aquarium live forever.
If I could convey the most important trick I know in reefing to show thanks for you posting, it would be the secret to zero lifespan reefing.
How to make sure your reef never dies, biologically. it will live forever at the microbial level, at the purple live rock and sponges and corals and some shrimp level. fish come and go, shrimps and crabs die and get bought for the reef tank in cycle. but live rock, live rock animals, and corals, those should be living forever once bought and they will if we force that to occur by specifically keeping our tank clean in the right ways.
its not that some reefs you setup might live using this way, its that 100% of reef tanks setup will live this way and the cost to ensure that is more work than normal at the start, until maturity sets the cruise control. we know the drumbeat to success for a group of rocks, water, sand and corals and associated life, and the secret is a way of thinking from us its not about needing certain machinery to keep our reefs going (although machinery and automation reduces work/fine w me)
So you mentioned the sandbed, before you even use it, *or in your next big cleaning run in the future* it should be rinsed to total perfection per this thread below:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445
the secret to making a reef that will never age and die (with continued guidance) is to know that direct access is the key to lifespan. Not giving the system any other physical option other than to run as you already know it will. That big sandbed thread is about making reefs detritus free, that's because detritus is the source of tank aging. Detritus is whats dangerous to have in the sandbed if the power goes out, because mud/waste/detritus supports orders more amnts of bacteria than normal, and they use up all the oxygen quickly in an outage, or pumps off scenario, than a tank with no sandbed. per the thread, an occasionally rip cleaned sandbed is totally safe.
the thing you want to avoid is building that tank like it is, and letting it go pretty much as normal rules would have you do. Being hands off, avoiding upsets, thats not best for nano reefing. it will do fine like that a while, quite a while, but slowly that sandbed is storing waste (and if you stirred it, it would cloud to prove it) and we keep buying animals and corals. we eventually bring in an invader that isn't there now, but on top of a stored-waste condition, and it blooms and takes over the tank.
the opposite of that condition is: starting with clean sand, cleaning it deeply occasionally, inspecting your rocks outside the tank and coral surfaces occasionally to pick off bits of invader that may be anchoring, all forms of direct gardening on the actual substrates.
lifespan in reefing is NOT about testing the water and responding. Its about making sure the tank doesn't store up detritus long term in ways it will cloud in the tank if we disturb things. If you simply take a nano reef apart every once in a while and blast clean it, then you can feed it like mad in the interim and pack it full of hungry corals that never die, never get disease, because they're well fed and in high redox water. due to our work, and detritus removal, not due to fancy chemistry and supporting equipment.
reefing is NOT about arranging a set of living/expensive/rare/costly items and sitting back and seeing what happens. well it was, in the 90s
what happens is full on invasion and corals that sometimes live, sometimes die, some reefs get cyano, some reefs get bryopsis, and the tanks are controlling all these problem reef owners.
When someone gets lucky with hands off reefing, and after they've lost a few tanks unnecessarily to hone their craft of guesswork, they then publish that information so thousands of people in turn can copy a guess system and cycle through hundreds of various losses before honing a hard-to-replicate craft, of placing things in boxes and seeing what happens.
1% of tankers out there simply clean their reefs in some creative way better than all the rest.
they do -nothing-fancy
they simply work. and the reef lives. and by arranging your reef in certain ways, things like power outages and minor temp insults when you forget to turn the heater on in the winter, don't wipe your tank. Hope this gives you the most powerful start you can have. My one gallon reef is twelve years old due solely to these arrangements, the metabolism of a one gallon reef is orders faster than any other reef, 12 at one gallon is equivalent to a multi decade old 100 gallon easily. small reefs register everything faster than larger ones.
all of the material held in this thread about cycling and in the sand rinse thread is the basis for why the reefbowl has no lifespan, it cannot die of old age as long as someone does the export occasionally. water changes are not total export, having a sandbed that passes a drop test sure is. the thing most likely to kill my reef is a nerfball or some form of elbow insult accidentally, it has the footpring of a coffee cup.
Any sand you have in the tank even with no rocks would support fish, and corals laying all over the bottom 100% coverage just fine. A tank with nothing in it and only bac on the walls isn't enough surface area, but any form of rock or sand, or both, sure is so no matter what you do with # pounds of live rock your filter will run. Go easy on fish, wait till the tank matures to add them (most say to add them soon, we digress) then you can't go wrong.
your pic is great, that tank can handle an entry bioload if we go easy on fish a while
they need to be completing quarantine/fallow periods anyway before going into anyone's reef so that method of fish disease control is also a nice indicator of when new reefs are ready to receive fish
pretty much any increment of truly live rock, the kind with coralline and animals stuck to it, classic group B, will run your reef and you can not only transfer it among tanks safely without losing its power, you can starve it and expose it to air a really long time and the bacteria still don't die. In many ways this thread is about photographing ways we don't follow anyones rules about live rock... we simply post what they'll tolerate. Strive to keep the rock basically wet/sprayed with saltwater any creative way while working with rock and you can't go wrong.
this includes actions like lifting out that rock and burning/scraping/guiding off any noncompliant algae before it takes over. that rock can sit on your kitchen cabinet for 30 mins easy and not die, I expose my entire reef tank drained to the air for that long routinely. I don't use fish, so that is an ok test for my tank, its what the tides inflict on real reefs as well.
we're really not doing anything secret with live rocks here, nature handles them roughly. Its only aquarists and their books/authors who were concerned about live rock emersion in the early times of reefing materials and instruction making. now that we know nature handles them roughly, that gives us the ability to arrange the tank any way we want and access that rock in any way we need to guide it, this makes an aquarium live forever.
If I could convey the most important trick I know in reefing to show thanks for you posting, it would be the secret to zero lifespan reefing.
How to make sure your reef never dies, biologically. it will live forever at the microbial level, at the purple live rock and sponges and corals and some shrimp level. fish come and go, shrimps and crabs die and get bought for the reef tank in cycle. but live rock, live rock animals, and corals, those should be living forever once bought and they will if we force that to occur by specifically keeping our tank clean in the right ways.
its not that some reefs you setup might live using this way, its that 100% of reef tanks setup will live this way and the cost to ensure that is more work than normal at the start, until maturity sets the cruise control. we know the drumbeat to success for a group of rocks, water, sand and corals and associated life, and the secret is a way of thinking from us its not about needing certain machinery to keep our reefs going (although machinery and automation reduces work/fine w me)
So you mentioned the sandbed, before you even use it, *or in your next big cleaning run in the future* it should be rinsed to total perfection per this thread below:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445
the secret to making a reef that will never age and die (with continued guidance) is to know that direct access is the key to lifespan. Not giving the system any other physical option other than to run as you already know it will. That big sandbed thread is about making reefs detritus free, that's because detritus is the source of tank aging. Detritus is whats dangerous to have in the sandbed if the power goes out, because mud/waste/detritus supports orders more amnts of bacteria than normal, and they use up all the oxygen quickly in an outage, or pumps off scenario, than a tank with no sandbed. per the thread, an occasionally rip cleaned sandbed is totally safe.
the thing you want to avoid is building that tank like it is, and letting it go pretty much as normal rules would have you do. Being hands off, avoiding upsets, thats not best for nano reefing. it will do fine like that a while, quite a while, but slowly that sandbed is storing waste (and if you stirred it, it would cloud to prove it) and we keep buying animals and corals. we eventually bring in an invader that isn't there now, but on top of a stored-waste condition, and it blooms and takes over the tank.
the opposite of that condition is: starting with clean sand, cleaning it deeply occasionally, inspecting your rocks outside the tank and coral surfaces occasionally to pick off bits of invader that may be anchoring, all forms of direct gardening on the actual substrates.
lifespan in reefing is NOT about testing the water and responding. Its about making sure the tank doesn't store up detritus long term in ways it will cloud in the tank if we disturb things. If you simply take a nano reef apart every once in a while and blast clean it, then you can feed it like mad in the interim and pack it full of hungry corals that never die, never get disease, because they're well fed and in high redox water. due to our work, and detritus removal, not due to fancy chemistry and supporting equipment.
reefing is NOT about arranging a set of living/expensive/rare/costly items and sitting back and seeing what happens. well it was, in the 90s
what happens is full on invasion and corals that sometimes live, sometimes die, some reefs get cyano, some reefs get bryopsis, and the tanks are controlling all these problem reef owners.
When someone gets lucky with hands off reefing, and after they've lost a few tanks unnecessarily to hone their craft of guesswork, they then publish that information so thousands of people in turn can copy a guess system and cycle through hundreds of various losses before honing a hard-to-replicate craft, of placing things in boxes and seeing what happens.
1% of tankers out there simply clean their reefs in some creative way better than all the rest.
they do -nothing-fancy
they simply work. and the reef lives. and by arranging your reef in certain ways, things like power outages and minor temp insults when you forget to turn the heater on in the winter, don't wipe your tank. Hope this gives you the most powerful start you can have. My one gallon reef is twelve years old due solely to these arrangements, the metabolism of a one gallon reef is orders faster than any other reef, 12 at one gallon is equivalent to a multi decade old 100 gallon easily. small reefs register everything faster than larger ones.
all of the material held in this thread about cycling and in the sand rinse thread is the basis for why the reefbowl has no lifespan, it cannot die of old age as long as someone does the export occasionally. water changes are not total export, having a sandbed that passes a drop test sure is. the thing most likely to kill my reef is a nerfball or some form of elbow insult accidentally, it has the footpring of a coffee cup.
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