There seem to be different kinds of any acro that do OK in both elevated levels of building blocks while some suffer. Tenuis is no different... some will stop growing and die while others don't seem to matter at all, but more of these seem to do OK. Echinata is perhaps the easiest species to see where ORA Hawkins can do OK in a lot of tanks, but something like Ice Fire, or most other kinds, are an impossible task to some. Most stags don't seem to care at all. I do not think that these corals adapted in just a few decades, so they have something in them to allow them the tolerance. In the end, I keep my residual building block levels low and have very high availability through ammonia/ammonium and the various types of phoshate/phosphorous/organic/inorganic so that no living thing is deprived of what it needs to grow yet also is not growth limited by higher concentrations.
There is no chance that I would start a tank with dry rock as long as I could get live. I don't buy into the whole "pests" argument and I can do math where the cost to fight dinos, hair, etc. can be WAY more than just purchasing live rock. I might have to use only dry some day, but if I do, it the dry rock will likely be in a bin with some light for a year, or more, until I can see pods and sponges everywhere and all of the phosphate is gone. I can still get really nice live rock locally from people getting out of the hobby for nearly nothing and while it is usually neglected, I can get it back to full functionality in a handful of months.
