Media beds, minerals, nutrients, supplements dosing and microbe’s functions.

There is no such thing as a useless or to great an amount of calcium-based general media and media beds; you can only have too little!
If all media is kept clean and by that I mean that nothing can get to it by using a barrier with a sufficient micron rating, then you will have thriving reef life!

There are heaps of theories and short-term facts on beds of this nature as with everything else including miracle mud and it’s all good reading.
Try them in varying ways and media for many years and you will see exactly which types and why they work or don’t.

Applying the old plenum style beds was a good eye opener, after the standard beds we were using way back to show how well aerobe, anaerobe, obligate microbes and acidophiles can be made to function in and below these beds of calcium based media. If they are extensive enough and diverse, these will take care of everything with in the nitrogen cycle, all metals and a small proportion of nutrients that pesters our corals which includes orthophosphate and phosphorus, which equates to phosphate.

Miracle mud has some really good mineral content and some say it helps with nitrates and phosphates, for the time I played with it and three other hobbyists I have known that used it quite extensively, we all found it of no use and in no time at all, only a hindrance.
Personally I think we all should try these things to get a personal insight into what they do and can not do and of course results may vary, but ours didn’t.

Minerals, good and bad can come from anything added to the aquarium that was alive.
Predator meats can be high in mercury and this will potentially sicken all stationary inverts through the uptake of this by their symbiotic algae.

All algae grazers and plankton eaters are best as foods because they are high in all minerals that the consuming algae and cyano have extracted from the waters.
All foods applied to your reef life will add minerals and much more from their waste into the waters beyond just nutrients, the consuming creature uses up very few of these trace minerals.
So from this it is clear that when the cells of living tissue are broken down, all that they were are now with in your waters.

Nutrients are usually a bi product of the nitrogen cycle which happens wether you like it or not, as it should.
If you combine as much media at varying levels and types as possible for aerobe microbes-high oxygen environment and anaerobe microbes-low oxygen environments, and put something in place to import nutrients-algae-sponges etc or remove nutrients-reactors-activated media, etc, then from all that, you will have a successful and ultimately thriving reef in your home.
It should also be said that with out dosing of homemade or shop bought supplements, your symbiotic life forms, over the long term, will not thrive!