~MD~Reefs~
Active Member
So I’ve had this tank for about a year now. Up until recently I didn’t have any corals, it was just a FOWLR tank. I honestly hated my scape since I was still relatively new to the hobby when I set that tank up so I decided to pull it out and add new dry rock. Sand stayed in along with bio media in rear sump. I also dosed Turbo Start. I got some corals a few weeks ago, about a week after switching rock, which all seem to be doing good. The tank is a Max E 170 and fish wish it is only stocked with 2 clownfish and CUC. Now that I want to get serious with corals, I started testing which I hadn’t really done before and I’m kind of confused on my numbers. Everything looks fine except the Calcium the app gives me an alert that it’s too high. I don’t dose anything so I’m not sure why it’s so high? Could it be the salt I use? I’ve been using IO Reef Crystals as my only salt. Last test, nitrates were a little high at 20.5ppm. Phosphate was definitely high at 0.19, I added Seachem PhosGuard and it seems to be slowly lowering it. I have not done a water change since the test on Feb 15, was planning on doing one tomorrow (Feb 20). So I guess my question is, what do I do about the numbers? Calcium/Alkalinity/Phosphate/Nitrate tests were done with Hanna checkers and Magnesium was done with a Red Sea Test kit.
