End of the day follow a method that works for YOU and your tank.
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
If you kept the lights off for a month I assume you had no fish? If that is the case I would not expect that you had any detectable levels of the bad stuff.
On the other hand I had five medium sized fish in the Tank for two years and did zero water changes.
What is your secret? Please share!!Well thats my 2 month old tank with 95% new rock and sand, 5% was established from previous tanks. There’s 10 acros in there. People keep telling me how it’s going to fail though despite it being the 4th tank I started this way.
I had velvet go through my tank.... twice..... I was Fallow first time for over 3 months. Same thing when I repopulated it. I too felt/feel like throwing in the towel, starting over etc. personally I say baby steps. I found my new love of corals and invertebrate. My last crash was end of January. Lost $600.00 in fish. First time lost $800.00 in fish. It’s expensive and heart breaking. But I absolutely love this hobby. Stay strong my friend.Ammonia? Nitrite?
Could you have re - cycled? It sounds like you got out of the gate pretty fast, putting stress on a young biofiltration system.
My advise would be that it is a marathon and not a race. Start slower, check your levels, what is your lighting? Maybe start with some softies before getting back to SPS?
Hang in there... we have all crashed and burned. It's how you rise from the ashes that counts.
I run triton with elevated Alk. It’s fine but you won’t want to run low nutrient at the same time. High alk encourages rapid calcification but it require the coral to consume higher amounts of nutrients. They can’t produce enough tissue to cover the skeleton with high alk and low nutrient.Triton recommends adjusting the dose, equal for all elements, until the dkh is around 8. This assumes their standard method and not `other methods`.
Perhaps your dkh of 9.5 to 10 is altering their intended results.
Is there a need to be above 8?
The bad news is my LPS has nearly completely melted over the past few weeks. Had both my hammers bail out and my torches are looking abysmal.The good news is, you're actually right in the middle of the typical error bars for a new tank.
At about this age you should be able to keep easier lps (torches, frogspawn, candy canes) happy as well as most softies.
Appreciate this phase.
All magnets stay outta tank - all pumps were brand new and have only been wet for about 150 days but I can absolutely check them.You might want to check your magnets and impellers. I think that ICP test is gonna show contamination.
Strat voltage and chloramines have been ruled out?