Reef Tank without fish?

[brandon429]

The first thing Eric Borneman told me in 2001 on rc was the same thing, never forgot that. I told him I had some clavularia growing in a fishbowl on a rock and wanted to know if the lighting alone would handle things.

**inputting fully cured live rock, and letting it degrade slowly over time can be an unstated feed source for him. it'll liberate it's micro animals for a long time, and at some pace the micros are feeding on regenerative photosynthetic creatures on the rocks, somewhat self regenerative


but not net regenerative, it cannot be, that violates known trophic laws which GM did not rewrite whatsoever.


a slow devolution

 

[brandon429]

a challenge

coach someone live time to run the same thing here from their house GM. let's track that independent outcome.

dont use live rock, use white base rock. outbound work is what vets best practices statements in reefing, not unaudited reflection of what people said on the web.

it would be simple to coach someone on how to make a pico reef that works a long time using white base rock, and feed, sound methods can be replicated. run this claim as a live time work thread strictly outbound coached live time in the thread. someone agrees to set up the system in their home, you guide it live time in the thread and they post the updates.

 

[SueAubu]

220g for comparison

I love my 220, except for the part where I can't reach the bottom. How deep is this?

Disregard: I found where you answered. Mine is 30 or so. Bad for girl arms. Lol

 

[Steven Garland]

I usually keep coral only. I usually keep such small tanks fish are out of the picture. Keeping nutrients up and plentiful can be a challenge. I dose neophos and neonitro.

 

[GlassMunky]

I don't know, but its not magical. Are your corals actually growing?

You tell me where it comes from. What all goes into the tank? Tap water? Coral foods? Invert foods? corals that die? Breakdown of detritus that accumulated previously?

But I can say with absolute 100% certainty, any coral that is growing takes up N and P in significant amounts, so unless it is added somehow or something else dies in the tank, they are not growing overall. That's no stronger of a statement than saying a human child won't grow without food.

Yea they have grown tremendously. Like over 10x size and fragged and regrown.

Only thing added to the tank is top off water from a RODI. No coral food, no invert food, nothing.
only source would be things like algae dying or detritus being recycled as I stated.

I also love how you can not look at my tank and you just know I’m wrong because of your schooling. Yet my tank is alive and thriving despite what you think you know

 

[Doctorgori]

I don't see why a little ammonia dosing couldn't provide what corals need.

Would be less scary in a COWLR tank.

this got me thinking

its nice to know that when on vacation, no disease is going to wipe out my fish / come home to a gray reef tank. fish are cool but giant liability compared to fishless.

added with this

You mean a frag tank?

almost exactly but more like a colony tank on a plastic rack

But I can say with absolute 100% certainty, any coral that is growing takes up N and P in significant amounts

… and with all “biologicals”, live rock and anything else save for corals removed from a system, you could theoretically get a more accurate gauge … I’m thinking a all plastic sterile setup

You must have a source of N and P to make coral tissues, algae, or any other organism that is greater in amount than what was there are the start. .

this statement would drive the experiment

dont use live rock, use white base rock. outbound work is what vets best practices statements in reefing, not unaudited reflection of what people said on the web.

I’m thinking about a tank with no nitrifiers or nitrification sites beyond the tank walls and inert coral holding racks. Limit the number of consumers and other variables. Glass, water, corals , plastic racks , nothing else
Dose N & P; log; et et
Anyway, I’ll leave how to actually rig something up to the more educated names around here…
Any ideas on how to set up a “ Dose only” tank ? Could you then create the perfect “Coral Food” by nailing the exact N&P dose? (along with Alk, Ca, trace et)

A No live rock ,No fish, No filter , coral only display tank

It's sorta a crossover to the ammonia vs nitrate thread with a skittering of the “do you even need bottled bacteria?” idea in another currently active thread

edit add: Put another way, are we all overthinking it with corals? Could someone in theory just grow corals on racks without all the live rock filters or nitrification cycle ?

 

[VintageReefer]

No fish. No “regular” dosing. Corals growing. No water changes. Setup in February. Perfectly balanced ecosystem. Modest cleanup crew handles sand, glass, and rock cleaning. Occasionally add all for reef or a few drips of aminos. Everything photosynthetic. I do target feed the Cynarina once in a while

Had to remove 2 or 3 different small torches I added, then a frogspawn, also Duncan’s - they grew too fast for such a small tank. I put the slow growing Cynarina in to eliminate the “coral ocergrowth” issue. Have to farm the gsp regularly. Regret this choice but I do like the movement / color

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yea they have grown tremendously. Like over 10x size and fragged and regrown.

Only thing added to the tank is top off water from a RODI. No coral food, no invert food, nothing.
only source would be things like algae dying or detritus being recycled as I stated.

I also love how you can not look at my tank and you just know I’m wrong because of your schooling. Yet my tank is alive and thriving despite what you think you know

Yep, I can know it. it's simple fact. It has been established for hundreds of years. Growing organisms need a variety of elements, especially N and P.

If you literally believe you are adding none, I'm surprised your reaction is one of rejection of the concept rather than wondering where it is coming from.

Have you ever measured nitrate or phosphate in the water?
What was on the rocks and where did they come from at startup?
where did the sand come from?

 

[VintageReefer]

I have the same setup as @GlassMunky

I designed this tank to be a closed ecosystem. It’s nearly fully photosynthetic. I don’t add anything but RO top off and all for reef. I don’t do water changes.

Before the Cynarina that is occasionally fed I kept torches for months and did not feed the tank at all. The lid stays on, and I only added ro top off. My findings are:

They started small, as did the gsp

And then grew

And the torches grew to the water line, gsp encrusted rocks, I had to remove a war coral that was over growing the plug

 

[dr_vinnie_boombatz]

My Fluval 13.5g has astraea snails and coral only. Stable parameters (average over last 3 months: 6.53 nitrates and 0.08 phosphates). I feed the coral every 3 days. Started dosing recently and coralline kicking into gear.

 

[VintageReefer]

Since starting in february:
1 mushroom has multiplied to 3

3 torches added. One grew to the waterline and had to be replaced.

Added a different small torch. This outgrew the tank also along with the other one

My notes 5/24:
“I put small baby 1-2” torches in this tank, and in a few weeks they are 4” or more I’ve swapped torches several times and they just grow fast and need to be replaced”

Replaced torches with frogspawn.

“I decided to put in a frogspawn instead. And now…it’s grown bigger than it’s ever been. It’s hitting 3 walls of the tank now. Gonna have to trade this out also”

At that point I swapped for the Cynarina with is officially the first time I started putting any kind of food in the tank. The Cynarina was receding and had skeleton exposed, and in this system it fully healed, recovered, and is looking great. I feed it 2-3 mysis a month but prior to the Cynarina the tank was never fed

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yup you know everything I’m doing even when you don’t know me.

I asked what you are doing. I obviously do not know what you are doing. Maybe your cat pees in the tank and you don't know it (I sure don't know about that). That would solve the problem of missing Na nd P.

You can say anything you want within the terms of service, which limits me as much as you.

 

[i cant think]

I’ve had FOWLR tanks but are there any Coral only “without fish” tanks around? (COWOF yet another acronym lol)
anyway I did a tentative search already: nothing…
but is this even a thing and: or are there threads already?
has Anyone thought about it?

There’s Invert only systems, I believe there’s a Macro/Invert system somewhere here.

 

[GlassMunky]

I asked what you are doing. I obviously do not know what you are doing. Maybe your cat pees in the tank and you don't know it (I sure don't know about that). That would solve the problem of missing Na nd P.

You can say anything you want within the terms of service, which limits me as much as you.

there is no issue. There’s no “missing” n and p
It’s just there in the tank getting recycled like I originally said.
But then you came back saying it’s not possible while also in the same sentence saying that the decaying algae is that fuel (exactly the same thing I said)

 

[alann]

I would guess that N or P is coming from either RODI or rocks leeching over time. Rocks can leech N and P over a long period of time. If you have inverts, maybe it's waste? Dunno, but I believe you really do need at least a little bit of N and P like randy said for corals to grow.

 

[Steven Garland]

Wow this went left,real quick. I miss the days where you could converse without people getting upset.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

there is no issue. There’s no “missing” n and p
It’s just there in the tank getting recycled like I originally said.
But then you came back saying it’s not possible while also in the same sentence saying that the decaying algae is that fuel (exactly the same thing I said)

How is coral expanding 10x recycling?

Where is it coming from?

We are not saying the same thing about the algae. Ongoing algae decay and regrowth is recycling. It is not an ongoing source of N and P.

The only way algae decay can supply enough N and P for those mushrooms to grow 10x is for a big pile of algae (as big as those mushrooms and other coral tissues) to have been there initially that decayed away.

Was that the case?

Obviously yours are getting N and P from somewhere.

My main purpose in continuing to discuss this is to make sure folks do not take away from this thread that they can put corals in a closed system and expect it to keep on growing and expanding corals with no inputs.

 

[brandon429]

Make a short term ecosystem, claim perpetual viability. No need to even break a decade. Easy bar?

Stony corals aren't autotrophs

These systems won't age they're in slow starvation, or being fed and not disclosed/ detailed such as starting with dry rock vs cured which is why the proofs aren't outbound new jobs completed with dry rocks

This method isn't copyable, if it is, someone start the guide thread let's track lifespan compared to feed input setups.

A food source has either been installed and is in slow decline, and sustenance for a while for those up the trophic chain, or it's being secretly fed. Somewhere, input isn't being found yet.

A lot of frag tanks are permanently unfed but they're not retaining corals they're throughputting and I agree corals can go a while without feed if the par levels aren't set to burn mode

Why does any of this matter

Because the most fun in reefing for me is predicting what other people's reef tanks will do and then waiting for their updates to see if X did occur as stated

And for Stony corals to be solely photosynthetic is a breakup of the entire prediction model used, web nerds want to know best methods or fallacies wherever they may be found. If feeding is a waste of time that will remove one giant headache for me.

But we need a live time demo

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I would guess that N or P is coming from either RODI or rocks leeching over time. Rocks can leech N and P over a long period of time. If you have inverts, maybe it's waste? Dunno, but I believe you really do need at least a little bit of N and P like randy said for corals to grow.

If the rocks came out of a very high phosphate tank, or were dry rock that was previously contaminated with phosphate, as some is, then I agree, it can be a significant source, and may be the source of P here. In that case, it will eventually run out, but may take a while.

 

[Garf]

there is no issue. There’s no “missing” n and p
It’s just there in the tank getting recycled like I originally said.
But then you came back saying it’s not possible while also in the same sentence saying that the decaying algae is that fuel (exactly the same thing I said)

Curious as to why you are convinced phyto additions (presumably to another tank) are a major benefit, but this tank gets nowt.

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