I'm wondering if I should lower my nutrients? Nitrates are between 25-50 on the salifert test kit and .81ppm on the hanna phosphate checker. The tank is a stock 750xxl Deluxe (4 hydra 26's turned up all the way except for whites. Whites peak at 26% than ramp down to 5% on a 7hr period. Color on my acropora seem to be good, no complaints but growth could be better, certainly slower than my T5 and halide tanks from the past. The only corals that seem to be having issues right now are my montipora caps and forest fire digi (I noticed they bleached a couple days later after I replaced my media (carbon and phosguard). All my acros, birdsnest, stylos, LPS, nems, softies seem to be doing well and are all growing. I feed 4-5 whole manilla clams every day, dose 10ml of acropower every night, dose 10ml of fuel by aquavitro every other night, 10% water changes every 2 weeks along with a cup of fresh carbon and a cup of phosguard. I skim wet using a bubble magus hero 77 which is cleaned out 2x a week. I clean the film algae off the glass every 3 days, and if it gets worse I lay off on the aminos for a bit. I never really chased numbers but this is the first time having a tank with such elevated nutrients, I normally like to keep nutrients in my tanks around 5-10ppm on nitrates and .08-1ppm on the phosphates and I've always had good success with the sticks. The tank is a year old with the most amount of nutrients that I've dealt with.
**One option that I thought about to promote sps growth: Just leave everything as is, keeping doing what im doing but slowly raise the alk up to 11dkh, slowly raise the PH to 8.2-8.4 and turn up the whites even more say 35%-40% peak with a ramp down?
**my other option: change phosguard weekly, weekly 10% water changes, start carbon dosing (vinegar+vodka), stop dosing aminos**
Any insight would be appreciated.
Parameters:
Nitrates: 25-50 can't tell, somewhere around there
Phosphates: 0.81
MAG: 1500
Alk:9
Cal:440
Salinity: 1.025
PH: 7.8
Temp: 76 F
**One option that I thought about to promote sps growth: Just leave everything as is, keeping doing what im doing but slowly raise the alk up to 11dkh, slowly raise the PH to 8.2-8.4 and turn up the whites even more say 35%-40% peak with a ramp down?
**my other option: change phosguard weekly, weekly 10% water changes, start carbon dosing (vinegar+vodka), stop dosing aminos**
Any insight would be appreciated.
Parameters:
Nitrates: 25-50 can't tell, somewhere around there
Phosphates: 0.81
MAG: 1500
Alk:9
Cal:440
Salinity: 1.025
PH: 7.8
Temp: 76 F