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No Sand No Live Rock

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I vaguely remember seeing bookfish's tank with no sand and no live rock. How do you set something up like that? Does the tank take longer to cycle?
 
A lot of the "Japanese style" tanks go the very minimalistic route. You don't really need live rock nor sand, and will it take long to cycle? Not really since there's nothing that needs to cycle, cycling comes from the break down of nutrients, so if you remove the nutrients aspect, you really remove the need to cycle. Also Jim religiously did weekly water changes and had a skimmer that was much more powerful than what was needed for a tank that size, the other side of the coin is that Jim also fed (feeds?) his corals religiously as well.
 
If there's no time needed to cycle, does that mean QT tanks don't need to cycle either? From what I've read it seems like QT tanks need to cycle.

Would the tank require the same amount of water changes if it was feed less?
 
QTing corals? Then for the most part no, they don't need to cycle unless they are on rocks that are schloffing a ton of dead matter, since there's no real need to feed corals in a QT

QT Fish? Then you can grab a sponge or something that's been sitting in your sump for a while, and that'll be plenty in a trickle filter.
 
Most people use water from their currect for QT tank. Kinda like doing water change for your current tank at the same time. If you use "old" water and have no uncured live rock, there is no need to cycle it. My new tank 99.8% of the rock are base rock. 100% dead sand. :D
 
The keys to this type of setup are to balance water changes with feeding/ bioload. Even a bare bottom, rockless tank (which is what I ran) can be subject to minicycles as the bacteria on the walls, plumbing etc... catches up with any ammonia produced. I'd recommend this type of setup either for those who like the look or specifically for farmers. The average beginner won't want to wait for the slow buildup of bacteria before stocking high bioloads of fish etc...
Live coral itself, btw, constitutes a small or even negative net bioload (depending on photosynthesis of coral) and really the only worry is the effect of feeding those corals. I did come up with a regimen of feeding that worked really well and if requested, I'll write a bit about that as well.
Cheers-Jim
 
Until I get a full write-up together, I can answer any questions anyone has. I think the fundamental difference in approach for this type of system is the reliance on removal of anything that can break down before it can break down in the tank.
 
How would you start something like this up? Is there a waiting period?

How quickly do you have to remove waste before it breaks down in the tank? Would 2-3 days be too late?
 
The waste must be removed pretty much immediately. Since there's no substrate, there's less bacterial attachment sites. But there's also less bioload. Just as in a fully loaded reef it's a question of balancing an unnaturally small environment with an unnaturally high population of coral.
I would feed around 1/4 million live, gut packed rotifers into a 60 gallon tank just before lights out and kill the air intake to the skimmer. When I got up in the morning I'd turn the simmer back on and since the whole tank circulated through the sump quickly, and there was no other physical filter in line, the waste was removed quickly. Also, that tank was based on acrylic racks designed to allow waste to move freely along the tank bottom.
Btw, on the occasions I didn't turn the skimmer back on in the morning, the tank was cloudy by early afternoon.
I was also doing 25% weekly water changes and siphoning out ALL debris on a weekly basis.
I achieved some truly staggering chalice growth with that system and montis loved it too. -Jim
 
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