I'm just going to withdraw from this conversation. You mentioning how the nudi's could die from power heads and pumps tells me you are just reaching for anything to prove yourself more correct than me on how many people "need". I got 6 because not everyone has the money to throw at 30. I could have gotten more, but I'm trying to show to others that spending $100, which isnt all that much to many, on these little guys who have on averave 1/2 the tank size of us, that these little guys can do the job and how well they can do it.
I'm not a believer in the rule of thumbs for certain things. I dont believe in instant gratification. I DO believe its a balancing act and you have to find the balance. Kind of like my Algae Skrubber, it only grows as much as the water has nutrients. Even though my Algae is on a screen, it still gets eaten by critters. I think that their rule of thumb is for wiping out aiptasia, or just shoing significant results, within a certain time period. Because lets think about this a little further:
What differes from my tank than Brians?
Mine is bigger, has more rocks, contains more water, more fish, more this, more that. Ok, but break it down by sq'. Then does mine contain more? If we were to follow the same rule of thumb of 1lb of LR per gal, 1" of fish per gallon, etc, i guess it would break down to the same statistics. Sure, there are more prey in my total system, but per sq' i bet its close to the same thing. So whats the difference with someone adding 5-6 in a 55g than me adding 6 in my 350 (total volume) other than it would take 6x longer to wipe out my aiptasia provided that we have close to the same ratio. I'm thinking that the odds of death are the same, but i could be wrong, i'm not afraid to admit that.