Jon, I do think it's possible to have
too clean water in a reeftank. Did you get that devil's hand from Deb? If so, it's probably off of mine a couple of years ago. The original was about the size of a person's fist, and all colonies together now are easily 10 times the size of that. That's over about 4 or 5 years, I think. Right now I have 2 separate colonies of that particular coral, one under my 250w MH, and the other under NO florescents. The MH one is growing faster than the one under the florescents. I run no carbon and rarely do water changes.
You'll have to check with Deb as far as how well it grew for her.
Getting back to the water cleanliness thing, maybe there's something there that has to do with the balance of nutrients that the corals need in order to thrive. I haven't finished the MACO course readings yet, but it was starting to address a corals' acquisition of nutrients.
(....maybe if someone has finished the course readings, they could contribute here............?)
Mitch
