Your tank is too new for _______ organism. Why?

[TangerineSpeedo]

I’m stumped so definitely following. My 4mos old tank cannot grow SPS — I can grow hammers, torches, other easy corals but no SPS. I’ve used 50% established rocks and half dry rocks. The basic parameters look normal and stable but it’s clear that something is missing. I used to think that once parameters are stable and coralline algae growth as an indicator, SPS should grow. Well, nope — not yet. Guess I’ll wait until a year mark but I’m at a loss on what’s missing.

I think I have some easy SPS coral for you that you can't kill ( If you do let me know how you did it ) Trying not to let it take over my tank. Have you done a ICP on it? Probably just need a bit of NSW... But seriously if you want some easy SPS you got my number.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Here's what I " know" after being in the hobby since 1983. 1) Most rules are really just opinion. 2) The more I know the less I know. 3) The easiest path to success in this hobby is fresh( less than 24 hrs from ocean to tank) live rock, a good skimmer and good lights. I've tried just about every method and with this recipe I can put corals in right away, including acros, and fish by day 5. My guess is it is all about " Biome" whatever that is defined as. In other words if there is enough " good" stuff to balance out the " bad" stuff, enough buffering capacity in rocks and/or sand and enough knowledge/ experience in the reefer to respond when needed. Not overreact and do 9 things trying to fix 1 thing that may not need fixing in the first place. Only " Rule" that I believe in is slow down and think it thru before doing anything. Ok, enough rambling from an old man, lol.

You have me beat with a few years... 24hrs is a weekend dive trip from Chi-town to FLA. which back then was no big deal.

 

[Brad Wilkins]

My tank was up and running in a couple of months. Heavily Stocked with fish and 100 corals including sps. My emphasis was on stocking as much micro fauna as possible from the very start. Live rock, live sand, natural seawater containing mixed pods and a large amount of mixed snails and crustaceans freshly caught that each contribute to their own microbes through defecation. Ive manage to skip the ugly stage completely. Coraline algae was the only thing that took its time to appear but now is starting to grow.
My water changes are 100% monthly NSW and matched with tank Alk and temp. My first sponges appeared within 4 months. Ive lost 9 out of the 100 corals through pore choice in their health from the store and coral warfare mainly due to hermit crabs dislodging corals and dumping them on top of others but every thing els including all the sps, torches and hammers are doing extremely well at 10 months.
Like with many things in reef tanks, it's what you don't see thats going to make the difference.

 

[Imrahilwjz]

Interesting thread. Only thing I have to add is quote which may, or may not, be considered relevant:

"Good judgement comes from experience, a lot of which comes from bad judgement."
Texas "Bix" Bender in "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On."

 

[bakbay]

I think I have some easy SPS coral for you that you can't kill ( If you do let me know how you did it ) Trying not to let it take over my tank. Have you done a ICP on it? Probably just need a bit of NSW... But seriously if you want some easy SPS you got my number.

I got plenty of easy SPS - just no clue why. lol

 

[ajmckay]

I believe the basis for this claim is simply that it's a quicker way to tell an overly ambitious OP to calm down because they're likely not experienced enough to achieve what they're wanting to do right now. Based on ones quick judgement.

Like say a grade schooler tells you with absolute certainty they want to be an influencer and asks you if they could get subs by playing GTA on twitch. Most likely they lack the necessary skills and GTA is really hard since so many people play. Let's say you do have some experience and 1,000 subs. Would you spend the next hour telling them, in detail, how you would do it? Or would you tell them to wait until next year, because "most people are in 8th grade before they can play GTA good enough for twitch". And all this knowing that next week they might decide that GTA is too basic and now what they really want is to day trade Dogecoin.

The reefing forums are loaded with beginner questions over and over - and reefing is a nuanced hobby. If someone is asking what a feather duster worm is, chances are they aren't quite ready for that expensive yasha goby/shrimp pair in the tank they started 3 weeks ago with dry rock and bottled bacteria. Experience would tell you that's a bad idea and to wait until x,y,z conditions are met. But for someone experienced in keeping difficult fish they would have a higher chance of success when introducing such a fish very early on because they know how to work through many of the potential problems with this fish. If you don't have experience with cryptic fish you might think it died if you don't see it for a week.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

I got plenty of easy SPS - just no clue why. lol

So your saying you can grow easy SPS, like birds nest and stylos etc. just the harder stuff is more difficult?

 

[bakbay]

So your saying you can grow easy SPS, like birds nest and stylos etc. just the harder stuff is more difficult?

I haven’t tried those actually. What I meant - I can’t even grow easy stags (Green Slimer) and monti cap, which are supposed to be indestructible! Smooth skins ones die after 2-3 weeks.

 

[goosemans]

I think there are some animals that can be introduced too early… Mandarines, sea stars, clean up crew to name some examples. As long as you’re not putting your whole fish/coral stocking at once. I say send it.

 

[DoktorZhivago]

I can only speak to freshwater planted tanks, my salt water experience is very limited.

I've found that with properly cycled filter media it is possible to immediately introduce fish and plants very successfully to a brand new tank. Even with delicate plants like crypts, I've had very little issues with melting from transplanting in a brand new tank (WITH cycled filter media from an existing tank).

I will say it seems like there is about a 4 week period where the tank bounces around a bit on hardness and alkalinity (tho these are not usually critical parameters in freshwater) which I suspect is the bacterial bloom from the biome introduced with the media pulling bicarbonate out of the water to either munch on or to offset the nitrifying bacteria's hydrogen ion poops.

My cycled media is usually a sponge filter that has been running for at least 4 weeks in an established tank and it carries all my clean up crew hitchhikers on it which are ramshorn and bladder snails, amphipods (aka scuds) and even my cherry shrimp which somehow got into all my tanks despite my best efforts.

It seems like there's always a diatom bloom in a new tank no matter what but it fades within days in a pre-cycled tank rather than weeks in a brand new uncycled tank. Tho this may be due to the efforts of the CUC being introduced early in the process rather than any superior microbial biome introduced from my media

I think if the proper biome is introduced in sufficient quantity to seed the tank relatively quickly (I suspect that within the specifics of this lies the real answer!), then the speed of introduction of livestock doesn't really matter. However I have never attempted this with corals as I am a complete reef noob.

 

[Doctorgori]

Generally IMO “tank maturity” is at best misunderstood and at worst overrated…
with the caveat that coralline, sponges and certain pods take time to establish since IME those variable do seem to
matter