Whew, gotta admit, it's a bit of a roller coaster reading this thread, things were a up and down for a while! Everything certainly looks to be in good shape today with a slew of healthy corals. Dinos and algae seem to be our common links right now. I'm also contemplating removing sand little by little - mine is filthy with GHA everywhere on it (and GHA attached to sand is near impossible to separate.)
It has been a crazy this year for sure. My stomach can't handle too many more dips on this ride
What really caught me off guard with this build is cycling my rock so long in my garage and still running into what I feel is a new tank type syndrome. I also used all the rock form my previous system. Transferring same corals and pretty much same fish I thought I'd be good. I may have been on EZ street had metals not bit me in the ass? Hard to say but I was very confident I'd bypass all that but NOPE here I am.
I usually end up dealing with some type of algae and end up with some kind of dinos at some point with every new system I set up. I've got a decent tang crew and am fairly well stocked on acros at this point. If i can just knock back the dinos I feel like the coral will start to take off and help combat some of the algae issues. As of today there is no bryopsis in sight, just GHA patches now. So that's a small win.
I'm not sure if my UNS tank was easier to combat because of size or being BB.
The look of sand wins hands down for me and has the potential to keep my anemones from finding the main structures, not to mention the added life from CUC and pods, but it's so much easier BB when it comes to flow. The rock work also looks much more drastic and it is fun to grow stuff right off the bottom glass. Hard call, but I'm leaning more towards pulling the sand slowly at this point.