Is your tank more stable because it's more mature? or is it more stable because you have learned and honed your hobby? Can you quantify in any meaningful way that it is more biodiverse (when talking about microorganisms) than my tank was in week 2?
*aggressively passionate
I'm finding this thread to be one of the bests!
Lol this place has become such a cesspool.
I think both are applicable. I'm quite sure maturity means more biodiversity and microfauna available but developing personal reefing skills plays a key role also.
I think what they were getting at is that corals can take weeks if not months to show outward signs of a stress event and that at less than a month old it’s a little early to be claiming that adding corals early in a the cycle didn’t negatively affect anything (they’re most likely fine, but it’s too early to make a definitive claim).
I don’t disagree with you that it’s difficult to quantify, and that it takes experience to be able to identify when a tank is mature (though there are definite clues). But even if it’s hard to quantify or not fully understood, IME saying ‘tank maturity plays 0 role in coral health’ is an objectively false statement (just like saying that it’s a lie that corals can be kept from day one). It really just comes down to the species.
Would you say a tank cycled with complete dry dead rock is bio equivalent to a tank started with all live ocean rock? Of course not right, the mature ocean rock offers a significant advantage in tank start up.
Well, that's how it started
Sure, both are important... However, and this is my opinion, your growth in the hobby is playing the larger role in parameter stability than your micofauna are. I agree with you in that when you were a novice, adding a coral in the second week would have been a fatal flaw for that coral most likely. However, I also believe, that given what you know now, if you started a new tank tomorrow, you would be able to add corals to it immediately and be successful.
Agreed, which is why I amended it... I was generalizing, and the generalized statement was false, however, the spirit of the statement given the other information I had already supplied, was that it definitely doesn't apply to every coral, and most corals are fine without the "maturity", not all, but definitely most Sofies and Hardier LPS species...
I think there is merit in believing in the benefits of a “mature” tank if we are talking about biodiversity. From a microbiome perspective, I can guarantee there to be less diversity in a tank that was setup for only 2 weeks compared to one that is setup for a year. This diversity can definitely be quantified but the benefits from this diversity are what can only be inferred by comparing to other systems. If you look at the gut microbiome in people, people who are healthier have much more balanced and diverse populations of gut flora. If there was more funding in this hobby for research, I’m sure you could identify and measure what specific benefits are added by having a tank with more diverse and balanced micro and macro fauna.
I was hoping someone would say what you just said here, and don't get me wrong, I am TOTALLY not against biodiversity in fact I am a huge proponent of it. The issue I take is with how "maturity" is measured, and while you and others may not mean to, you attach timeframes to maturity, which we all do to some degree, but it's something I try to stay away from.
