+3
Will never run an ULNS again.
@GoVols -- Freddie!! your thread always disappears from my alerts!!
@mdbannister -- Fix the broken alert system! I have faith in your ability to learn coding and rework the website to a future glory! Also I've almost started calling you mbdannister accidentally. So if that slips out you've been warned !
Yeah, I think nutrients are undervalued and the 90's stigma from that flawed 70's paper on the GBR nutrient levels have been causing problems for a long time. What people fail to realize is test kits from yesteryear are NOT as accurate as they are today. The Salifert guy said in the early 2000's when you were testing nitrates at 0 you really probably had 2-5. In the later 2010 era 0 was more like 1-2, and since around 2015 we can almost test for true 0, but it's still like 0.25.
Equipment is getting better, and people are throwing in all these things to strip the water sterile. Putting in GFO when it's not needed, running carbon 24/7, filter socks, chaeto reactors, zero water changes, Bare Bottom.
Modern reefing is a perfect storm of things that can be good individually being bad shoehorned together. It's creating an unstable environment that is too harsh on corals. And the easily solution is, IMO, nutrients -- which act as a buffer for everything corals go through.
- The zero water change methods are based on dosing trace, but most people still don't believe in trace... That's funny because yesteryear water changes were ALL about replenishing trace.
- Chaeto in a zero water change system require extra metals, or chaeto will strip the water bare, eventually stop taking up nutrients, then corals will begin to pale and fade.
- Filter socks remove all the goodies that slowly turn into food for our corals -- We need waste breaking down in real time to give a balanced "diet" to our corals. Some research has shown they use up trace amounts of Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Yes, we don't want detectable ammonia, nor do we want detectable nitrites, but corals use it in trace quantities.
- Running Bare Bottom keeps the tank cleaner, too clean. The sand is a nutrient sponge.. That is true. But IMO, and the growing opinion of others (WWC, Sanjay, Rich Ross, etc etc etc) is that nutrients are good... So, a nutrient sponge isn't necessarily a bad thing.
- Modern skimmers are better than ever and more efficient every year.
You put all these things together as most people do, and you start having serious problems -- Because all of these things interact with one another, and they are all a link in the chain. One effects the other, and the whole chain effects the tank at every level.
The only downside to nutrients is when you introduce an inedible pest algae like I have... I never had GHA problems, or any slime algaes... Even with very high nutrients. But once I introduced something my snails wont eat (Bryopsis / Bubble Algae) then yeah, it can run away from you. Fluconazole worked great for me, unfortunately in MY tank, when all the good algaes die out and stop competing with Dinos... Then Dinos take over. This has happened 100% of the time for me. And every time I kill dinos, I need to kill them a new way when they come back... This time I had to buy a UV.... I can't afford to get a new species of dino that's unkillable!
@WallyB -- As you can see, my opinion has not changed. If anything, I am painfully consistent
