Redfield Ratio Dosing

[mcarroll]

I tracked some of my progress here too, but I didn't see any photos of this coral on a quick review:
Potassium nitrate (Spectracide stump remover) dosing steps, Sep 5, 2016

 

[mcarroll]

Found another photo from Nov 8 where he was still fine...

 

[Bayinaung]

They've always been low because I've rarely had many fish in the system...sometimes no fish at all. But after so many years, including the last 3-4 with some neglect, a bit of PO4 had accumulated...nothing tremendous (maybe 0.8? I kinda forget.) but still enough to make the situation ripe. In a nutshell, NO3 was persistently low and I ended up with an outbreak of #chrysophytes.

I can't remember the exact date where the polyp blew out (I need to go back through photos) but looking back at my testing diary, the peak readings I had were:
0.63 ppm PO4 along with 2 ppm NO3

Then three weeks later of 10 mL of KNO3 + 5 drips of amino acid per day...
0.05 ppm PO4 along with 25 ppm NO3

I did find the post where that happened in my system thread: post #59

I'm not sure if I posted a pic of this Favia though...I have one from September on there where he was still fine. And that post I just linked is from October. So it'll be interesting if I can dig up the date on the photos with the "emploded polyp".

That's what I was saying about the zoox....they went past brown to nearly-black though!

I failed to mention that this polyp was also the least-lit on the colony (facing away from the lights), and the flow back there probably isn't what it was either.

wow that's crazy. yeah I'm not going to let nitrates get that high and certainly not dosing without measuring. Now that I understand that it is C and N and P involved in balancing, just have to use the levers appropriately to get to the balance.

 

[mcarroll]

It was kind of interesting to read backward from that post as well.