Echoplex
Community Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2026
- Messages
- 49
- Reaction score
- 22
- Location
- Austin
- What state or country do you live in
- Texas
Hello everyone. This may be a little long winded but I believe context and history may be important here.
I am a newer Reefer about 8 months in. At 6 months I got into acros. I like a challenge. I currently have a walt disney, home wrecker, cherry bomb, ice breaker and voodoo magic all from TG.
About a month ago I finished a 76 day fallow period. Before the fallow ended I was running on ultra low nutrients which is expected. Phos was about .01-.07 and required me to dose phos to keep the levels up. Generally at .03-.06, at times it did bottom out at .00 for a day. My nitrates would sit at 5-7 pretty steadily and required nothing extra. Alk was stable at 9.8 for weeks with no change.
I have a 161 gallon system. 131 display 30 gallon sump. Red sea skimmer 900 reef matt 1200 and I run the red sea 4 part dosing on an automated dosing schedule.
Fast forward to fish reintroduction. I do have a larger bioload. Purple and sailfin tang, one spot fox facce, two chromis, two dispar anthias, 2 clowns, 2 flasher wrasse, 1 lemon wrasse a pajama cardinal and a yellow and demon gobie.
Within two days alk tanked to 8.4, I got it back to where it should be over a period of days. Took about a week and a half to make it back to 9.4, and i continued till it hit 9.8. I did a water change recently and it jumped from 9.8 to 10.1. Alk is officially stable. I assume this happened due to the increased nutrients, I also noticed coraline growing on the wave makers and snail shells. With alk now stable a new issue. My nitrates have jumped to 11 and my phos is at .2!!!
I noticed some very slow STN on my homewrecker from the base. Pics posted, after watching it over the past week I confirmed it was stn and moving up the branch. I don't want to lose it so I fragged it above the line that was receding. Pics of that here as well. The thing is when I did the fragging the darn thing was extremely brittle, the bone cutters made a crunch feel instead of a cut. Almost as if the core was slushy or hollow.
Research tells me the high alk and the high phos cause the calcification to act too quickly and since the high phos it's not calcifying into a solid structure, rather the hollow bones I am describing.
Is this the case? Have I nuked all my sps and just can't tell they are slushy under the skin? They all have polyps extended and I am hoping the homewrecker is just sensitive to the alk swings or something.
Will a gfo reactor work and will they recover if that is the case? I plan to slowly lower phos to not shock the system, I'll use half the recommended GFO and test daily. Hoping to not bring it down by more than .02 a day. I ordered the recatorntoday from brs to be here Friday.
I would really like some advise on this. These corals were not inexpensive by any sense of the word but more importantly I want to be successful. I'll put in the work but without a mentor I find myself running in circles.
Thank you for your assistance.
I am a newer Reefer about 8 months in. At 6 months I got into acros. I like a challenge. I currently have a walt disney, home wrecker, cherry bomb, ice breaker and voodoo magic all from TG.
About a month ago I finished a 76 day fallow period. Before the fallow ended I was running on ultra low nutrients which is expected. Phos was about .01-.07 and required me to dose phos to keep the levels up. Generally at .03-.06, at times it did bottom out at .00 for a day. My nitrates would sit at 5-7 pretty steadily and required nothing extra. Alk was stable at 9.8 for weeks with no change.
I have a 161 gallon system. 131 display 30 gallon sump. Red sea skimmer 900 reef matt 1200 and I run the red sea 4 part dosing on an automated dosing schedule.
Fast forward to fish reintroduction. I do have a larger bioload. Purple and sailfin tang, one spot fox facce, two chromis, two dispar anthias, 2 clowns, 2 flasher wrasse, 1 lemon wrasse a pajama cardinal and a yellow and demon gobie.
Within two days alk tanked to 8.4, I got it back to where it should be over a period of days. Took about a week and a half to make it back to 9.4, and i continued till it hit 9.8. I did a water change recently and it jumped from 9.8 to 10.1. Alk is officially stable. I assume this happened due to the increased nutrients, I also noticed coraline growing on the wave makers and snail shells. With alk now stable a new issue. My nitrates have jumped to 11 and my phos is at .2!!!
I noticed some very slow STN on my homewrecker from the base. Pics posted, after watching it over the past week I confirmed it was stn and moving up the branch. I don't want to lose it so I fragged it above the line that was receding. Pics of that here as well. The thing is when I did the fragging the darn thing was extremely brittle, the bone cutters made a crunch feel instead of a cut. Almost as if the core was slushy or hollow.
Research tells me the high alk and the high phos cause the calcification to act too quickly and since the high phos it's not calcifying into a solid structure, rather the hollow bones I am describing.
Is this the case? Have I nuked all my sps and just can't tell they are slushy under the skin? They all have polyps extended and I am hoping the homewrecker is just sensitive to the alk swings or something.
Will a gfo reactor work and will they recover if that is the case? I plan to slowly lower phos to not shock the system, I'll use half the recommended GFO and test daily. Hoping to not bring it down by more than .02 a day. I ordered the recatorntoday from brs to be here Friday.
I would really like some advise on this. These corals were not inexpensive by any sense of the word but more importantly I want to be successful. I'll put in the work but without a mentor I find myself running in circles.
Thank you for your assistance.
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