Sorry I'm late to this thread, been travelling for work for the past 2 weeks and couldnt get on-line where I was. Lots of interesting topics going on here and just wanted to add a couple of cents.
We have 2 tanks running right now: 55 and 10. The 55 has a Prizm skimmer (not the "best" by far), no fuge but some macro in the display, Penguin 330 and Fluval 304 filters and 60-65 lbs of LR. Thats about all the filtration we have and all seems well on the reef. Bioload: 2 Clarkiis, Coral Beauty, Y-tail damsel and neon dotty; cleaner and CBS; various snails/hermits; toadstool, H. shrooms, GSP, blue shrooms, button polyps, some zoos, bubble and FL rics; 2 BTAs (split about 2-3 weeks ago). We add nothing to the system except new water and cal/buffer if necessary. No dripping, reactors or anything. Oh yeah, CC base vacuumed during water changes.
The 10 has no skimmer, Penguin mini and old Tetra (I think) filter, some macro, and say 7 lbs of LR with CC base. Bioload: Blue damsel, snails/hermits, CBS and H. duster; button polyps, green shrooms and some frags of GSP.
The 55 has been running for a year and 4 mos.(with ups and downs in the beginning) and the 10 for about a year or less. The 10 used to be the Q tank,but since I think we reached our limit in the 55 it became our own little experiment to see what we could grow. Both tanks seem to be doing fine, no losses for a long time. Granted, the corals aren't spreading like "wild fire" as has been described for GSP, shrooms and zoos, that may be because we dont supplement, but they are spreading and the bubble is bigger than it was when we got it and the BTA split tells me everything is fine.
Just re-enforcing the fact that there are many ways to have a successful reef.
The only question I have for dru is: Why not have a skimmer? After putting all of the other equipment on the system, money couldnt have been a factor. And with all that stuff I'm sure you'll have a success, but with all the supplemental equip. how could a skimmer strip that much out? Not trying to knock your "experiment", but not running a skimmer with all the other stuff doesnt really show me anything. I've been toying with the idea of not running our skimmer for a month or so to see what happens, but I'm not sure if that would prove anything either only the fact that I spent money on something I dont need. What does eveyone think? Join the experiment with a lot less equipment than many people or leave everything as is...since its not broke?
