The question
Thank you. The 15 steps was a good read. I noticed that you would turn the lights on pretty early in the process. What’s your thoughts on the lights off approach for 4 months?
The answer
I know I'm not who you asked, but the only way you're going to get done with the ugly stage is to have your rocks covered in beneficial algae. It can't grow with no light. If you start with live rock, all that the darkness will do is kill off your beneficial photosynthetic critters.
The ugly stage really is nothing to worry about. It looks bad, but it doesn't hurt anything. Just keep it off any corals, and it's fine.
IMO - the "dark" period will kill will kill both beneficial and nuisance organisms. Its a general method. Its better for me that I know that I have beneficial organisms with and fight the nuisance ones when they show up.
A important question nearly not mentioned in the video is the nutrients levels
In order to favour the good photosynthetic organism - the need both micro and macro nutrients are important. Different organisms have different demands of concentrations in the water. especially when it comes to N, P and C. The "good" ones is mostly in need of inorganic nutrients - some of the nuisance (read mostly dinoflagellates) can switch to organic nutrients if the inorganic getting too low. Some nuisance organism have developed a fantastic ability to use very low concentrations of inorganic P (read PO4 and diatoms) - some have developed a fantastic ability to convert N2 gas into NH3/NH4 in different ways (read cyanobacteria) Some organisms have developed a ability to move down in the substrate in order to collect frisläppt PO4 (read dinoflagellates and some cyanobacteria). Some need more trace compounds compared with other photosynthetic organism. Iron has been mentioned as positive for some nuisance organism and iodine as positive for some good ones (green algae). If its this way is uncertain because all photosynthetic organisms needs both - but it can be that way that the concentrations of these (and other trace and semi trace elements) is critical. The classic example - in reef "science" - in order to starving an unwanted organism to death is diatoms and silicate. Diatoms need silica in a high amount in order to build their internal skeleton. The idea is to use RO water free of silica - RODI water. But - the ugly truth is that the moment you stop in a coral rock or coral sand - your water is no longer free of silica. The use of ICP tests has revealed that the normal silicon level in our functioning aquarium is around 100 - 300 µg / L. IMO - the thinking is right here but the result in reality will show that it is a rather unnecessary thing to try to zeroing Si concentrations unless the silicon levels in the tap water are very high - at least if your aim is to limit the living space for diatoms.
What I´m trying to say is that its important that some inorganic N and P is present in the start in one or another way.
In our reefs - with alkalinity of around 7 in dKH - inorganic C is always present in one or another form
P is of huge interest here (read dissolved PO4).
In the old days - we use living rocks that have been taken out of the ocean. Most of us that did not "cure" them get in some smaller amount of PO4 into our water at day 1. Concentrations high enough to create new life. This PO4 was not only bound in organics (the "the living" things in the rocks) - it was also bound in a chemical way (calcium phosphate) in the rocks. This chemical bound phosphate serve as a warehouse for phosphate in the water column (according to the current equilibrium constant between bound and dissolved PO4) - if it is to low in the water column it release PO4 - if it is to high in the water column - it it binds more PO4. The living rocks not only serve as a PO4 producer from decaying organisms - the rocks in themselves also functioned as a PO4 source.
However - nowadays we use mostly (and thank you for that) dry rocks mined from ancient coral reefs on dry land. It seems that many of these rocks had lost its calcium phosphate during the millennia they have been untouched and leached by rainwater, among other things, These rocks seems not act as a warehouse for PO4 when putted into our aquariums - on the contrary, they will act as a magnet for dissolved phosphate until they become in the equilibrium with the contents of the water column. With other words - your rocks will serve as a giant GFO filter in the beginning.
Hence - I will address the the problem with more "uglies" (read diatoms, cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates) in the start process when using dry mined rocks not only to low biodiversity - but also to lack of inorganic dissolved N and P in the start (read NO3 and PO4)
Now to the dip question. Should we dip our corals? I do not. Why?
Our corals are not only the animal and the zooxanthellae (the algae within the anima) It is also a huge amount of bacteria and microorganisms living in slime of the corals. There is even some theories that some corals (mostly soft and some LPS) farm bacteria in the slime as food. The slime of our corals serve as an
agar plate for microorganisms and - very important - the biome can be different between different corals. If we put in a coral from the wild - its full of microorganism that is beneficial for it and they are already established at this special life space. It will serve as a refugium for beneficial bacteria i our aquarium. You not only put in a coral in your aquarium - you also put in a whole micro ecosystem in your aquarium - both microorganisms and self-sufficiency living space. The same when we ad frags from well established and functional aquariums.
And what are we recommended to do - dip the coral in order to get rid of possible bad organisms. We will also lose all of these beneficial microorganisms in the slime and present an unused agar plate for other already established microbiome in the actual aquarium. Adding this coral was our chance to put in a refugium of natural microorganisms into our aquarium - but we missed that because fear of introduce a bad guy - that we don't even know if it exist or not.
I have never dipped any new coral - but if I get a outbreak of something bad - I maybe dip my existing corals if all other options are tested¨and failed.
Sincerely Lasse
www.bulkreefsupply.com
