I dunno that I'd call my setup professional, exactly... 'experimental' and 'agricultural', maybe. Did you see the link to the Reef Central thread I added to my last post? Now, that 800 gallon setup, that's professional.
I have had some decent sized freshwater fish leap from my main tank and go unfound for weeks. A 5 inch red tailed shark. A stick catfish. It's amazing how they can just disappear. They look like beef jerky with fins when you do find them, but I recommend no one try to eat them. Well, cats can, I suppose.
The patience needed with a salt setup is the time needed to cycle it. There seems to be an "algae cycle" as well as the usual bacteria cycle. Algae appears to begin with a 'pest algae' stage and end with a macro- and coralline algae stage. At least if you are using something like the deep sand bed, live rock system, with a minimum of mechanical filtering. The bacteria cycle takes a few weeks, the algae cycle a year or longer. Calfo talks of people he knows who won't add a single fish or filter feeder for a full year, the idea being to let phyto- and zooplankton get fully established in the main tank (you do have to innoculate the system with the planktons). If you do this you end up with a food-rich system that will support a great variety of fish and corals.
Another advantage of letting your system cycle for a long time is that you get a chance to work out any plumbing and electrical kinks before you add the livestock. |
