The sides of my tanks are painted black, just like the back and they get cleaned as little as the back. Pretty close to never.
I advocate, now, that no typical home aquarist buy any coral but tank raised corals. If they are not hardy enough to be tank propagated the home aquarist should expect them to be left them where they can reproduce on their own, not encourage there plundering for profit when there are already many, many corals being successfully propagated. I am hoping before the day I die it is standard practice not to keep fish or coral taken from the wild except for maintenance of clean breeding stock gene pools. I do not think the home aquarist is a major threat to the survival of wild reef coral and fish. I do believe it will be easier to change the buying habits of the home aquarists a lot easier than to do a way with the real enemies of the reefs. Storms, dragging boat anchors, increasing water temperatures, decreasing pH, increasing siltation, increasing pollution are all much harder than the aquarists on the reefs and its inhabitants.
