Jon
what we do is the antithesis to keeping absolutely consistent water levels/params that people hold onto
a fringing reef zone can be quite harsh too, in nature
why has the hobby been hesitant to embrace ‘rough handling’ and why is the abrupt new water used not killing your corals
the alk water removed isn’t a direct exact match to alk going back in, why do we keep getting away with this across tanks?
I think it doesn’t kill my corals because they’re happy to have any water, after being nearly dried into jerky as an extended air contact video is made lol.
prediction: all required measured bac communities flux, then rebound to total stability, after being rip cleaned and the act is found to be the fountain of youth to reef tanks.... to the dismay of 98% of the hobby who also practice hands off reefing very well.
An opposing system with higher numbers of satisfied reefers, more than old school reefing can claim, has elbowed its way into the hobby. I’m not saying old school mud storage is bad, I’m saying rip cleaning / occasionally resetting the organic loading like a fringing storm garners higher number of happy reefers when tracked five years vs old school ways. We lose less coral, due to invasions. Rip cleaning is a specific address to correct the issues that hands off compilation of waste causes, it earns a high degree of tank tuneups we can show in work threads.
you are testing the good extremes for our hobby by rip cleaning twice, then DNA sampling. No number of rip cleans is harmful, can’t wait to see if measures allow for the collected results.
Drawing off top water, at least 80% of it for reuse after cleaning, wastes far less water and actually keeps params fairly consistent for those who care about that. The goal is the organic waste stores, creativity in access wins
even systems that have active sandbed-turning fish still demonstrate live rock retention. I’m not sure the degree of current needed to unplug rocks is sustainable or practical for daily running, it seems stormlike intervention doesn’t have a replacement yet for causing a streamlined way of running across tracked systems. Nearly all pico reefs do what you do, the data set to pull from is now massive. Yours is the first big system I’ve seen subjected to the harsh handling so common for easy access pico reefs.