I agree that’s the low end of the scale compared to most tanks. thats a no environmental impact reef / pretty cool and rare.
there has never been a documented case using digital ammonia meters I’ve seen of a reef display unable to carry a common bioload after cycling in bare bottom condition, without sand.
nano reefs do this routinely and though they don’t carry as many fish as your larger tank will, they are scaling the bioload + dilution factor such that a calibrated seneye will read pretty much the same on both your systems.
lastly, we hear about threads where folks go on vacation and come home to all dead fish in an ammonia-spiked tank legit…the water is gray; fish disease or a hardware issue killed the fish when the owner wasn’t home to make a save
The sole function of the extra surface area was to protect against that loss, that ammonia cascade when the first three fish died. Your daily running reef will need no help; that media’s sole function is to help during a dieoff challenge.
and it never works. Those threads exist because no degree of internal padding will prevent a recycle from a multiple fish kill event. That’s the one thing that forces a reef to lose control of its cycle, with or without the extra media. Regarding daily running, and common insults like a two hour power outage, or a normal overfeeding event, those won’t crash your reef with a common bioload in tow. There’s no data ever posted to show that description failing to reef correctly and keep animals alive day to day. The reason I mention seneye is because it’s field of users do not report .25-.5 in 97% of running reef tanks, we feel it’s a tighter reference vs the status quo.
we run giant rip clean threads rinsing full beds in tap water for hours to reset them, and we make sandbedded tanks go bare bottom and we never check ammonia. Surface area is literally no concern even in multi $$ work threads where the harshest actions are ran so we can move tanks, uninvade them effectively. The sum total of the work threads on file is why I think your tank is fine with or without the extra media.
I have found that aiming all focus and study at implementing top fish disease prevention protocols is what‘s important, shoring up a cycle is never important. this will help to know during cleaning time for the extra media; the reason you can take it out and rinse in tap water to remove detritus is because you didn’t need the media in the first place. You’re taking a neutral impact item, rinsing it, and putting it back as neutral impact in every measurable way other than detritus capture.
