While I'm waiting for things to get my new tank up and running, I've had some ideas based on years experience. They are just my 2 cents, many may have other ideas and good reasons behind their mythology's, I would like to hear about that.
To me it seems that cycling your tanks with dead rock would be the best method. Establish lower bacterial colonies.
Then add a few pieces of live rock to seed the tank with more diverse life forms. Most biological specimens introduced should survive since tank is cycled. I don't think a protein skimmer would be advisable at this point, you want diversity to handle the bio load.
After month(s) add even more live rock, maybe slowly, maybe quickly. But in this hobby slower is usually better. But on the other hand adding a generous amount of living organisms might balance out better in the end, but you may have spikes in parameters that kill off some of the organisms affecting the food chain. Having a protein skimmer handy to handle any dead organism spikes might be advisable, but once again you are taking food out of the water, so you might imbalance the ecosystem. So I wonder if you do use a protein skimmer should you use all the time or just when things are out of balance. Of course the ecosystem will balance out either way.
Some additions, like Mandarin Goby's will eat up most of the copods, disrupting the ecosystem, Those copods my feed other living organisms.
Fish or no fish - Fish are cool, they move around and have personalities. Except for tangs fish will eat up all kinds of living organisms. Fish do add something to the ecosystem through their waste products that are consumed my lower life forms. A wrasse will eat all the worms and terrorize your tank. maybe veggie eaters are better, what do you think of that idea?
Clean up crews - Snails are cool, but they eat and poop, you need somthing to remove that, but I wonder about crabs, they eat anything. At least the ones I've seen. My take on this is to keep them at a low population some are specific eaters. In this area I need to educate my self more, I've forgotten a lot. Watch out for the big snails they seem to get poisoned by certain types of brown algae and pollute your tank. What do you recommend for clean up crews, are they really needed in a really diverse tank? If you have a diverse worm population, they do a good job of cleaning stuff off rocks and sand. In my opinion the introduction of a large clean up crew can disturb the eco-system.
I have other takes on things like ozone introduction, it can kill off living organism's in the water column, but can have other benefits, like adding more energy to the system (but really how does this affect the ecosystem, I know it improves reproduction of some organisms). To me getting nutrients locked up into the living things is more like a natural reef (this naturally increases ORP). Would using ozone on limited scale say 1-5 minutes a day be better? Give the system a little boost at times.
I guess it comes down to just how diverse of a eco-system do we want, is there a middle of the road approach?
To me it seems that cycling your tanks with dead rock would be the best method. Establish lower bacterial colonies.
Then add a few pieces of live rock to seed the tank with more diverse life forms. Most biological specimens introduced should survive since tank is cycled. I don't think a protein skimmer would be advisable at this point, you want diversity to handle the bio load.
After month(s) add even more live rock, maybe slowly, maybe quickly. But in this hobby slower is usually better. But on the other hand adding a generous amount of living organisms might balance out better in the end, but you may have spikes in parameters that kill off some of the organisms affecting the food chain. Having a protein skimmer handy to handle any dead organism spikes might be advisable, but once again you are taking food out of the water, so you might imbalance the ecosystem. So I wonder if you do use a protein skimmer should you use all the time or just when things are out of balance. Of course the ecosystem will balance out either way.
Some additions, like Mandarin Goby's will eat up most of the copods, disrupting the ecosystem, Those copods my feed other living organisms.
Fish or no fish - Fish are cool, they move around and have personalities. Except for tangs fish will eat up all kinds of living organisms. Fish do add something to the ecosystem through their waste products that are consumed my lower life forms. A wrasse will eat all the worms and terrorize your tank. maybe veggie eaters are better, what do you think of that idea?
Clean up crews - Snails are cool, but they eat and poop, you need somthing to remove that, but I wonder about crabs, they eat anything. At least the ones I've seen. My take on this is to keep them at a low population some are specific eaters. In this area I need to educate my self more, I've forgotten a lot. Watch out for the big snails they seem to get poisoned by certain types of brown algae and pollute your tank. What do you recommend for clean up crews, are they really needed in a really diverse tank? If you have a diverse worm population, they do a good job of cleaning stuff off rocks and sand. In my opinion the introduction of a large clean up crew can disturb the eco-system.
I have other takes on things like ozone introduction, it can kill off living organism's in the water column, but can have other benefits, like adding more energy to the system (but really how does this affect the ecosystem, I know it improves reproduction of some organisms). To me getting nutrients locked up into the living things is more like a natural reef (this naturally increases ORP). Would using ozone on limited scale say 1-5 minutes a day be better? Give the system a little boost at times.
I guess it comes down to just how diverse of a eco-system do we want, is there a middle of the road approach?
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