Let's try to illustrate sixty's point here in a chart....
The below chart shows my subjective 1-10 "uglies score" at 15 weeks for each tanks, but split them into two groups.
The blue ones (first 7 listed) are ones that had photosynthetic material from lighted system that was placed directly into the test tanks.
The red bars (last 5) are the ones that either had no photosynthetic material, or who had a very extended dark cure time, or were never added to the lighted part of the tank (dark rubble).
I share Ryan's conclusion here that I just wouldn't take lighted material from one system (or the ocean) and put it in a new system in a lighted portion. Not if I wanted to make life as easy as possible, anyway. In the absence of dedicated herbivores from the first week - it's sort of a foregone conclusion, like sixty said.
(I might point out here the similarities between the dark rubble treatment and the aquabiomics article here Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock. Interesting to see what results do get replicated.)
If we evaluate all 12 methods in phase 1, the ones that failed at week 15 were kinda set to fail from day one.
...
I believe all tanks would of done well if rocks, sand, block that have a possibility to contain photosynthetic organisms were added to a dark sump like in tank 6 (dark cured rubble)
The below chart shows my subjective 1-10 "uglies score" at 15 weeks for each tanks, but split them into two groups.
The blue ones (first 7 listed) are ones that had photosynthetic material from lighted system that was placed directly into the test tanks.
The red bars (last 5) are the ones that either had no photosynthetic material, or who had a very extended dark cure time, or were never added to the lighted part of the tank (dark rubble).
I share Ryan's conclusion here that I just wouldn't take lighted material from one system (or the ocean) and put it in a new system in a lighted portion. Not if I wanted to make life as easy as possible, anyway. In the absence of dedicated herbivores from the first week - it's sort of a foregone conclusion, like sixty said.
(I might point out here the similarities between the dark rubble treatment and the aquabiomics article here Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock. Interesting to see what results do get replicated.)