Wow. That was a good read. It is apparent by this article that bacteria rates are indeed closer to natural reefs in "passive husbandry." The article also goes into how skimmers only remove certain bacteria and not all. Maybe leaving the skimmer off allows some diversity to be maintained in the bacteria population?
Or with aggressive filtration and carbon dosing. I like aggressive filtration and adding a carbon for a number of reasons. For one, you reduce nutrients in the process and keep bacterial counts reasonably high. Without a carbon source, you can reduce filtration to get counts higher, but to keep nutrients low, feeding would need to be a bit less. I see this as important for a few reasons in itself. Well fed corals have been shown to have faster tissue growth, and under some conditions, faster skeletal growth even. Other studies have found resistance to bleaching, or even increased ability to recover from disease and bleaching in certain corals. We know the food inputs into our systems fall well shy of the food densities found in natural reefs, so, anything we can do to get closer to these numbers seems likely to have at least some benefit. However, inorganic nutrients counter many of these benefits, so, to balance this, it seems that here needs to be aggressive filtration, in addition to increased food input. Bacteria is great, but not all corals consume bacteria, in a mixed system, I think there should be a focus on a broader food supply. So for me, feeding more, combined with aggressive filtration seems more desirable than limiting filtration and feeding less than you could with more aggressive filtration.
Another big reason I see to feed more is metal turnover. We know there are excessive trace metals in our systems, and we know these are shown to cause various negative effects. Feeing more,with more aggressive filtration helps to maintain a nutrient input, to drive bacteria and algae with can tie up these nutrients and then the aggressive filtration helps to remove these organisms from the systems, along with the undesirable substances. So, to me that's another potential plus, rather than just cutting back on filtration.
Also the skimmer does other things, such as help with gas exchange. And I found generally I have better results when I keep things consistent. My tank does better when I change out carbon more often, it does better when I do water changes more frequently etc...
In a underfed tank, I certainly believe that turning off the skimmer for a while will help certain organisms. However, I believe that feeding more often and filtering more aggressively will provide even better results.
That was certainly he case in my tank. I spent years cutting back on feeding trying to keep nutrient levels low and really always struggled. Now I feed a ton, filter a ton and things just thrive, I don't have algae or nutrient issues and I'm enjoying the hobby much more. We all talk about stability, but i think most of us don't get what that means. I've come to the conclusion that what stability means, is a stable ecosystem, with a stable food chain. This is a result of stable food input and stable filtration. Feeding less, less often for example, IME destabilizes the system as the microscopic world, which drives the stability of our systems, needs that stable food input to establish a stable microenviorment. It's what we can't see that provides stability to the system. Reducing filtration may help in some situations, but IMO there are more effective ways to accomplish the same goals.
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