Fliger
New member
Well Sean and Bomber are long gone but I just wanna say that I can't thank them enough for bringing this up. I didn't really follow their recipe :lol: but I did in theory. I had basically cooked mine for several months before putting them in my tank. It was all Marshall Island huge hand picked pieces, and ask my friend Sidewinder - it stank beyond belief. After a few months of cooking - it was all smoothe as a baby's but. Here is a pic when I first added it to my tank.
I fully expected the fuzzy algae that always seems to form - but it didn't come after one, two, three months. I switched out skimmers several times and have not been running a skimmer now for the last 3-4 months. To my amazement - still absolutely zero algae other than coraline. I feed a ton, I feed my fish and my LPS, I add quite a bit of Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast and Roti Feast after the lights go out - still no algae.
I don't run zeo, I rarely do water changes. I have quite a bit of light, and when I first set up the tank I ran more than twice as much wattage as I do now - when aglae should take hold, and it never did. I don't really have much of a clean up crew, although I do have a sailfin tang that likes to pluck away at algae when I introduce new frags with algae on them. I do run carbon and a little bit of ROWAphos - 4T, changed every 6-8 weeks, but not nearly enough to absorb my input.
By all accounts - I should have tons of nuiscance algae - yet I have none. My rock looks exactly the same as it did when I put it in - perfectly smoothe. No slime, no bryopis. Actually I introduced bryopsis and it started to take hold, yet mysteriously died off. I did add lettuce nudis, but I don't think it was really them, they died months ago. My SPS color fantastically, and almost immediately. I can't remember the last SPS I lost.
Honestly, the only thing I can attribute my success to is the long "cooking" process. So bash or laugh "cooking" all you want - I just wanted to post my experiences and thank our long gone friends - I would never start another tank without a 3-4 month cooking process.
EDIT - I run a super shallow sand bed also.
I fully expected the fuzzy algae that always seems to form - but it didn't come after one, two, three months. I switched out skimmers several times and have not been running a skimmer now for the last 3-4 months. To my amazement - still absolutely zero algae other than coraline. I feed a ton, I feed my fish and my LPS, I add quite a bit of Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast and Roti Feast after the lights go out - still no algae.
I don't run zeo, I rarely do water changes. I have quite a bit of light, and when I first set up the tank I ran more than twice as much wattage as I do now - when aglae should take hold, and it never did. I don't really have much of a clean up crew, although I do have a sailfin tang that likes to pluck away at algae when I introduce new frags with algae on them. I do run carbon and a little bit of ROWAphos - 4T, changed every 6-8 weeks, but not nearly enough to absorb my input.
By all accounts - I should have tons of nuiscance algae - yet I have none. My rock looks exactly the same as it did when I put it in - perfectly smoothe. No slime, no bryopis. Actually I introduced bryopsis and it started to take hold, yet mysteriously died off. I did add lettuce nudis, but I don't think it was really them, they died months ago. My SPS color fantastically, and almost immediately. I can't remember the last SPS I lost.
Honestly, the only thing I can attribute my success to is the long "cooking" process. So bash or laugh "cooking" all you want - I just wanted to post my experiences and thank our long gone friends - I would never start another tank without a 3-4 month cooking process.
EDIT - I run a super shallow sand bed also.
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