Parameters are almost there.

Hello folks,


Please indeed share your thoughts on what follows. Saturday is maintenance day for me (20 L. water change. roughly 5% of total volume, media/filter change where needed, etc) and it’s also the time I usually test. Here are the results:


temp: 27°
Salinity: 1.025
Ph: 8
Kh: 8
Ca: 450
Mg: 1400
Po4: 0.03!
No3:0

the tests are done about 30 mins after the water change. i currently dose nopox at 10ml a day but seeing my phosphate results ill lower it down to its last stage of 5ml/day as of tomorrow. in combination with nopox i used to run phosguard by seachem (couple of weeks), again seeing the p04 results i have now replaced phosguard with activated matrix carbon, is this a good or bad idea?

my rocks are clearing from the nasty algae growth on them but there are still areas of the rocks where algae persist. I don’t want to remove them since they don’t seem to be growing and im guessing are helping in the process of stabilizing my parameters?


I would also like to know what you think of my Ph and Kh since im a little concerned about them too

as always, thank you.
Jeff

 

pH and alk are just fine. The Phos is really not that bad. Some Phosban would probably take care of that.. Carbon/charcoal unfortunately never made that big of difference for me. Personally I would use both.
Do you need to bulk up your cuc?
Is this a coral dominated tank?How do the corals look, are they growing?
I try to keep my alk at 8, higher values have never proven to be significantly better IME.

 

I use carbon because it keeps my water ultra clear, the tank has a few hard corals but no colossal colonies. my cal. and mg. have been constant at those levels after water changes for the past 3 weeks so im assuming my corals aren’t making a huge dent yet. most of the corals look fine at the exception of an acropora that started losing some tips, and has now some algae bloom on them. but this started after i installed a new "deep blue" led ramp so im guessing its a combination of that and the sudden p04 drop? pictures below (an ID on the way would be helpful).

in terms of CUC i have 5 large zebra turbo snails, 1 halloween hermit, 6 nassarius snails and a couple tiger nassarius

otherwise my stylophoras and montiporas are starting to encrust and grow nicely, my other lps arent giving signs of stress either.

you think i should keep using phosgurad in combination with nopox then ?

 

btw that clown goby may have part of the responsibility as well

also the exclamation mark on the phosphate levels was out of joy as im finally getting them in check

 

I was always under the impression that you shouldn't dose nopox while running any gfo or media that reduces phosphates.

 

this is true reef. the reason being, if I myself understood it correctly is, simply put; that you take food from the bacatira that are supposed to eventually regulate phosphates levels. this being said I had readings of .2 ppm po4 and i felt i could not afford letting the bacteria "catch up" to these levels. so my plan was to bring it down to .03 and then allow the bactiria to take it from there. i fear however that now that i have removed the phosguard that ill see a slow climb in po4 again.... :s

 

To be honest, I'm not a fan of dosing anything aside from the three major elements. OTOH, I run carbon and PhosGuard together to help keep nutrients in check.

You are correct, BTW, with the algae- it is keeping your water clean of excess nutrients until you can get your import/export into balance.