[herring_fish]

In the early 90’s I consumed every word, from cover to cover, of Dr. Adey’s book Dynamic Aquaria. I got a private tour of the entire Smithsonian. I have heard all of this before, a million times but I’m not going to go down a spiral rabbit hole over algae and its use or not.

It made since to me at the time and still does but I can see that it is not for everybody. Algae of one type or another is becoming used almost ubiquitously in the marine hobby these days so you can use one of many styles of scrubbers, reactors, refugia or some combination of them …with or without a skimmer, bacteria regiments, chemical nutrient removal …deep sand beds, shallow, bare bottom ...with well-designed equipment …or not. You could go without any filtration at all and I have seen it pulled off. Every one of these methods can be implemented well or badly with widely varying results.

I have spores from the farthest corners of the world and yes, lots of spores from my ATS. The simple principle that I rely on, whether it is right or wrong is that the water in my 3 inch deep dumping tray passes under tuned lights that are 1 inch off of the water. The alga does take up nutrients that I export. Hopefully, any alga that tries to grow in a 31 inch deep tank will be starved for those nutrients, and find a less favorable lighting environment than in the tray. Anyway, it has work well for me …but then that is just me.

There are so many different ways to successfully grow delicate corals and one should use one or more methods that they fully understand and speaks to their hart. Can’t we all just get a long?

All that being said Elegance, I have followed your threads and other posts for many years because I learn a lot and I will continue to do so.