One thing that impacts that thread is the reported accuracy of numbers stated
Notice how in 99% of jobs listed there, any parameter measurement is accepted as accurate by all respondents? If you say your nitrate is zero, they'll agree every time and aim to fix that. That's nearly every job shown.
Check the pages, when someone posts their nitrate or po4 levels, the umpires make the advice based on the numbers posted. Rarely are the levels verified or challenged.
But what if we take time to search out test kit accuracy comparison posts across the web for nitrate or po4 across kit brands and types = 100pm~ variance in reported nitrates from the same sample, depending on the kit. How accurate are hobby test kits in the hands of the masses?
I hate to recommend test- based dinos control to anyone on the web until a simple search on test kit accuracy audits shows much tighter ranges.
If the chemists here were running the tests and reporting the levels and were only using pool strips I'd believe them. Chemists and the well- practiced don't have trouble verifying their levels in threads, but that's not the masses.
reef2reef has ten+ pages of search returns on test kit audits, and the grand summary of those threads for me is that everyone is horseshoeing in this game and dealing in guesstimates if they're not chemists
And that for me explains why the 90% majority outcome of that huge thread is dinos tanks becoming GHA tanks and cyano tanks, but almost never simply fixed tanks. Invasion species outcompete one another agreed but the tanks by and large don't look good even after 6 months of work, I feel that trending is fairly shown in a scan of pics from that giant dinos thread
we're adding fertilizer to peoples tanks who reported 0 nitrates but that was just on red sea colorimetric kit (for example) but ran on another kit the fact they were actually at 100 ppm before we drove it to 190ppm easily explains the gha forest situation
Manual gardening as stated, lifting out your rocks and cleaning them off, then setting back clean in the tank is harmless and fast and can't cause dinos and has nothing to do with numbers debates. It's using manual reef dentistry to force opposite results until someone writes an 800 page thread where 90% of the jobs on file are simple fixes
We don't have one of those yet, so we all do the best we can
When your rocks are full of coralline and corals, the system will be more mature and better rejecting of dinos
Work the rocks manually until you don't have to.
Quarantine matters big time also
Observing your new coral batches in a separate holding system for months before they go into your tank is what pros do, the non masses. You can check for invasive dinos this way, aiptasias etc. It's what zoos do
Nobody who manages 1 million dollar zoo reef systems inputs new animals into the tank, that's what the masses on reef forums do
Reading up on quarantine building is an opposite something that benefits this planned battle and you'll see it's criticality in fish disease management
***qt hypocrite alert
I myself do not qt. and for the times bad things got into my tank, I directly ripped out those bad things in 1 minute, I left only the good things in place all these years. so yes I'm skipping quarantine, but I triple dog dare six strands of GHA to show up in my reef. it's too scared to do so lol
when a bad aiptasia anemone hitched in because I didn't quarantine, instead if injecting it, or boiling the area like the masses do, I cut the rock portion the anemone was on clean off the rest of the rock and thew it out. hard to have an aiptasia problem with an attitude like that
in a small tank, you can attitude it into compliance against any invasion I'm 100% sure of that its the large tankers/the inaccessible that need all the extra luck.
