Coral feeding advice

i was wondering what amount of supplements i should be using in my tank. i have a biocube 29. 25-30lbs live rock. leather, mushrooms, star polyps, kenya tree (i think), zoos and button polyps.

do water changes every 10-14 days 2-3 galons. feed 1-2x daily (fish. they include bengai, 2 clowns, blue damsel) other tank mates include 2 cleaner shrimp, snails, crabs, blue star.

currently i use

phytoplex 2-3x a wk (capful each dose)
chromaplex 2x/wk (cap each dose)
microvert 1x/wk (half cap)

i have never once cleaned the gravel or filter media. tank has been running for a little under a year. i work on cars and i get oil on my skin all the time. i dont want to contaminate the tank.

water conditions

tap water used i live in vancouver, canada, if that matter

alk 180
nitrite 0
nirtate 20
ph 8.3
amn 0
ca 580 i was using purple up in the begining but stopped a long time ago.
salt was 1.028 for the longest time but i am now bringing it down.

any advice would be great! thanks

pics of my tank are in my profile under albums. let me know what you think.

 

I think that your over dosing for the size of tank that you have. JMO Luna

 

BTW, you should clean out the substrate at least once a month. I clean my sand every WC and thats every week or so. Luna

 

I thought you were not suppose to clean the sand due to the sulfar build up!?

 

Maybe it wasn't sulfur but something in the sand you don't want to release to the fish

 

I've never heard of that, if you dont clean it out, you'll have all kinds of build ups. Luna

 

I had and have again a 29biocube as one of my MANY tanks...the first thing I did was actually toss the filter cartridge that came with it. I am totally surprised that you have any type of flow going on if you have not changed the media.

I removed that and got some phosban, hydrocarbon and filter pads that I cut and simply placed it in the slot where cartridge went. Worked much better and cheaper in the long run. I change the filter pads every week and half or so.

I also added a small powerhead to the system to increase flow..I just found there were some dead spots in the system. I bought a small wavemaker powerhead and everything seems to be working well.

Have you changed your bulbs yet..your corals will grow best if you change them every 6 months or so.

IMHO I think you are feeding too much...I did the exact same thing feeding wise. Finally cut down to one time a day and then I even go every other day occasionally. The coral foods you are using I cant really help you with that because I always used the concentrated forms so dosing is different.

You should avoid tap water..heavy metals, phosphates and other stuff that will harm your corals. You can go to LFS and get RO/DI water or even to grocery store and get it. I would add Prime to the tank just to make sure all that is removed...

The other thing I use is Reef Essentials by Seachem not sure how anybody else feels but I have used that since day 1 and love it. It is amino acids and vitamins for corals that I dose a couple times a week and the coral growth has really taken off with it. Unfortunatly I am out right now and have not gone to get any for a couple weeks....

You might want to find some fish food that also feeds corals also as an added plus...RODS food contains coral food. I dont rely simply on RODS to feed my corals but it helps.

Your calcium is high but nothing in there coral wise relies heavily on ca...so just monitor that. Could be left over from purple up but more then anything is from your salt...are you using Oceanic salt by chance? I would not overly worry about the calcium, as you bring your salinity down your calcium should start coming down also

If you are afraid of contaimenating the tank, by some gloves. My mother has to wear gloves everytime she goes in the tank. If she goes into the tank she has to wear gloves to cover all skin exposed because she is on so much medicine she was actually killing fish.....soon as she stopped going in tank, fish stopped dying

 

If you go deep into the sand bed you will release a bacteria storm or something like that, but you do need to scrape the top layer occasionally. I heard do a small section at a time to prevent too much release into the system in case you go to deep. I have a cleaner that has a sand shovel on the end of it that I use

 

my star polyps are growing rapidly, my mushrooms have split 2x. plants have grow out of rock had had no signs of this plant being on it. fish are healthy. if the stuff in the sand has already decayed to the point where in cant ne more whats left? i am not running the cardrige filter, just the bio balls. and the sponge filter in the 3rd section. as for water flow you can tell when the water flow is low. bulbs are less than 6 months. should i run a skimmer?

 

Oops, I have never cleaned mine.