Lol fair enough. I was told by sooo many people I wouldn’t beat them no matter what. It’s the only reason I said bring it and turned the lights on. The fish had plenty of ambient light just so no one thinks I blacked ‘‘em out. There was enough to put a bit of algae on the glass.So I did the same dark start, and copepods/fish..... I had a sand bottom (oolite, highly NOT recommended) and did dry live rock (?) it was in a dry box so well call it dry for intents and purposes.... I waited maybe 2-3 months before adding fish. I was positive I skipped uglies. I turned lights on and waited another couple months. I didn't have anything other than a couple diatoms in the sand. So I started adding more.... another month or so went by, and everything was beautiful and thriving. Give it another month-ish, and boom algae outbreak like crazy. Killed a bunch of things off in my tank and I was ready to throw in the towel. I kept with it (mostly because holy investment, I cant back out now) and now just shy of 1 year, I'm just starting to conquer the battle on algae. I finally have stable parameters (even though I thought I did before). So I would say somewhere between day 1 and 1 year......final answer.
So I did the same dark start, and copepods/fish..... I had a sand bottom (oolite, highly NOT recommended) and did dry live rock (?) it was in a dry box so well call it dry for intents and purposes.... I waited maybe 2-3 months before adding fish. I was positive I skipped uglies. I turned lights on and waited another couple months. I didn't have anything other than a couple diatoms in the sand. So I started adding more.... another month or so went by, and everything was beautiful and thriving. Give it another month-ish, and boom algae outbreak like crazy. Killed a bunch of things off in my tank and I was ready to throw in the towel. I kept with it (mostly because holy investment, I cant back out now) and now just shy of 1 year, I'm just starting to conquer the battle on algae. I finally have stable parameters (even though I thought I did before). So I would say somewhere between day 1 and 1 year......final answer.
Lol you’ll be fine. It really is unavoidable. If you want your rocks to be livable then stuff has to start living on it and that usually doesn’t start off pretty. Adding competing sources of good algae like coralline might help. When you do start adding coral, try not to feed the whole tank. Feed your fish and let your fish feed the coral and that will help you balance your nutrients.
These are the two must important post in this thread for the moment. You can never hinder algae to grow but you can hinder them taking over with help of grazers. Include urchins, hermits, snails an so on in your set up. Bristletooth tang´s are also good if the aquarium is large enough
So far I got some cerith snails and a stomatella. I haven’t seen the stomatella since it went in the tank but the Cerith are “running” around all night.
I see mine(s) maybe once every second month. You need hermits and urchins too. Stay away from the larger hermits - there is rather many small ones that are excellent grazers
I really want to see such an examples of tanks never experienced uglies. Are you talking from your experience? Every tank I started will get the Uglies sooner or latter, sometimes really bad, sometimes barely visible. Cuc can certainly help but they are not magical cure. I found this BRS experiment when they cycled several tanks with different approaches quite interesting even not very scientifically sound. But finally every tank they started went throughout the ugly phase even months after.
You can follow this thread - its one of many aquariums I have started without any uglies at all. Its possible if you have a dissent Clean up Crew and introduce it early - the same time you put on the light. Here is the method I always use
You have food for it already - trust me. The trick is to introduce the CUC before you see any visual algae. When you see algae - its mostly too late or you need a very large clean up crew that can create other problems. Micro algae can double its biomass in half a day or lesser. If you wait until you visually see the algae - the growth rate is probably so high that your CUC do not are able control the growth of micro algae - the daily growth is higher than the daily consumption
Thank you for sharing, you say CuC do it but I think 40+ years of experience and hundreds of aquariums started could contribute to the final result significantly
