I will donate observational data which may help us to understand this dirty water thing.
Before I kept SPS, I would push things in this tank quite a bit, like dumping in 1/2lbs of brine shrimp at one time, dumping in an entire smallish container of fish flakes, dumping in table scraps, large dinner prawns, hamburger/hot dogs, useing nitrate rich water from my cichlid tank as top-off water etc. During all this, I could never get nitrates to be dectable for more than a day or so (I dont skim or waterchange). The chaeto would just multiply rapidly in size, and everything always was undectable by the next day or so. The point of it all was basically my wanting to know what the reasonable limits of chaeto export was, and I never really found them.
Anyways, so here is the relivant part. During this time, my Xenia, zoos, leathers, toadstools were just multiplying like wildfire. The growth was unreal, I couldnt have been happier with all the frags I was makeing to supply LFS's with. I mean, we're talking increadibly growth rates, like, I could chop the head off a Xenia stalk, rubber band it to a rock, and within about 2-3days, the head on the stalk would be back, and the frag piece would be well rooted to the rock and allready spreading. I would have to say that softies (and candycanes, frogspawns, and someother LPS) really liked this enviroment.
Now that I am useing this tank for SPS, I have stopped with the radical feeding amounts, and I am topping off with normal tap water in this tank, and basically keeping things like a reasonable person would. The chaeto growth rate dropped big time, grows perhaps less than 1/3rd what it used to (hmm, I'm feeding about 1/3rd what I used to).
Anyways, the SPS all are looking great and growing great. I love the colors, and I am happy with how its going for the SPS. Now, the softies on the other hand, wow, its like they just exist now. I went to make some xenia frags, and snipped the heads off like normal, and it took over a week to mount to the rock, and it looks kinda shrively. The parents colonys still havent re-grown heads. The Zoo's seem to open wider now, but they have pretty much just stopped spreading. This sucks when you are trying to make frags for people...
So, anyways, this is just my experience. I dont know exactly if the softies were bennifiting from the very pleantiful feeding directly. I have a good guess that the nutrient levels, though both were undectable, are much lower now than they were before. I know that the softy growth is now basically too slow to use as a softcoral propagation tank
.
Something more. After I stopped with the frequent wild overfeeding stuff, my zoos have all kinda changed colors. The general trend being towards larger thinner faces, with more translucent tissue appearence. The Xenia also has stopped shooting down little runners to spread. I used to see little runners comming off about every other stalk growing a new one, now I cant find any runners anywere.
BTW, I test/moniter and maintain my Iodine levels at the same place, so I dont belive that the xenia growth is an Iodine related problem.
So, these experiences would lead me to think that softies enjoyed the reckless feeding a lot more than the new reasonable feeding schedual.
