14 genera of coral in a vase for six years/allelopathy is not what we thought it was

[brandon429]

thats cool you have an LED tank with coralline we don't see that very often, nanos showing that combination aren't common like the tanks with clean walls. its usually a splash of sps in a very clean tank with hardly any calcification in the fine areas like the corners and walls of the tank, hopefully my coralline will remain like yours when I make the switch one day to free up all that lighting clutter around the tank.

coralline is the important alkalinity meter for the untested/dosed tank...when it begins to whiten thats a signal to up the dose slightly for another several months, to keep up with calcification in the bowl. Im up to half a cap now each day. one of many interesting differences between pico reefs and standard reefs is the rate of ion consumption when both systems are matured...the amount Im adding to my bowl each week would likely burn a tank 10x as big

we noticed this when others were trying to apply the same dosing to 10 and 20 gallon tanks and were getting 14+dkh/8.4 pH etc levels and dead animals. My bowl eats it up and barely holds params posted above, the number one reason you don't find gallon reefs out past a year or two is because we've been told not to dose in a system that would command near daily full water changes when matured. The dynamics of the micro reef are markedly different in several ways

consider this as well>the bubbler I used simply because it was cheap, the dynamics hadn't been revealed yet. The way the lid sits on the -inner diameter- of the vase neck takes all the splash and directs it back down without making saltcreep (notice the lid area is free of crust) so I knew cheap motion could be had with an airstone. After hooking it up it worked very well
It turned out with later online reading people were bubbling their water samples to degas CO2 before pH readings and it dawned on me my system doesn't store CO2/carbonic acid the way old tiny systems do with their bioload/bacterial respiration/detritus stores, pH fluxes and algae outbreaks are the bane of the usual pico reef once it hits two years. by degassing constantly, I get a really consistent pH between night and day and it also is an upwelling type of current, not just circular/laminar which may indeed play a role in the distribution of micronutrients/sandbed fauna, these are the details that work themselves out in time...

with full air input as the sole source of motion, there is positive pressure to vent under the lid so evaporation while restricted still occurs. I have to topoff 3 to 4 days

guys like cichlidmania26 on youtube modified the reefbowl in such a way as to go 12 days without a topoff, no tank anywhere can touch that in a house setup

he uses a powerhead for 95% percent of the motion, and only dribbles in a few bubbles to keep the lid space marginally refreshed. His topoff can go two weeks holding .023 to .0245, a reasonable shift over time. Thats a pretty big deal in reefing circles, to be free of the auto top off

just don't bump them with a nerf ball lol

the other two are frogspawn and caulastrea, frogspawn is when the side of the bowl is shown, its behind the alveopora on the glass