Hey Matt.. You make a good point, absolutely...
Here's where I'm at on philosophy.. And one clarification.
The pics of the tank at the beginning of this thread were indeed my old tank- it was a 500 gallon system with a Deltec ap 1004 skimmer which was rated at like 2000 gallons or something.. I had a 50 gal sump with a 250w mh over it growing cheato like it was a weed on steroids...
I never tested anything but alk on it and fed rediculous amounts of food. Probably had about 40 fish.. Yes maybe more..
I tore this tank down after about two ish years to do renovations. I'm not sure where it would have been in another year without any testing...
I believe this tank thrived on pure dumb luck. I set up a large enough system with overly large support and it coasted blindly along until I tore it down.
With the first version of my current system, which is smaller in every way, I chased numbers into the ground. But more importantly, I tried to change and tweak something every week as things got worse and worse. Each change I made, I hoped would miraculously fix the tank but each change only made things worse..
When I re started this tank- along with starting this thread, I promised myself to be more patient and prudent.
I believe that there is such thing as beneficial tweaking, it just has to be done with patience and observation.
Last month, I had been stable and healthy with an n of 5 and p of around .12. Things were fine..
However, I don't believe this to be optimal conditions.. Yes I could have left it like that but I wanted to do some 'beneficial tweaking'. I upped the flow a bit on my aio pellet reactor and upped my n additions a bit to compensate.. This adjustment lowered n to about 2 and p to about .07- which is closer to where I want to be- maybe n a bit higher- and maybe p a bit lower.. And really, not a huge change...
This brought an immediate green (not red) cyano outbreak and then I added more fish which raised my n and p back to where they were before..
All in all not a huge change in husbandry, but for some reason a huge impact on the system..
My goal is to get numbers into a range that is both balanced and closer to accepted norms- for me, n in the 5ppm range and p below .07
I have to say (sorry Andrew!) I'm not entirely on board with the bfc unless you are starting from a point of low nutrients. If you are having trouble controlling nutrients already, adding more fish isn't going to help, imo..
Yes, stability is key, no question. And changes should be done incrementally..
I do believe that changes can be positive.
Maybe I'm wrong on this one, but I think that stability at lower nutrient levels is better than stability at higher nutrients.. And I'm sure this point could be debated..
So, somewhere around tweaking my aio reactor, I messed with the balance and threw things off a bit but I don't think it was catastrophic.. I guess we'll see when I get home on Sunday.
The lesson in chasing numbers, imo, is that it needs to be done methodically- not that it shouldn't be done at all.. Perhaps another good debate..
This hobby is full of potential debate, that's what makes it so addictive.. So many right ways of doing it... And so many ways to screw up!!
I will be testing everything when I get home, having a good hard look at the corals and then I will decide to act or just watch things.. But if I do act in some way, it won't be a drastic move, that's for sure..
