The long and short of the this post will be that I'm trying to step up my reef game and start being the tank that i ooh and awe over again.
I entered the hobby with a 29g aio and over the time i had it, it was glowing with color, growth and personally success. When i moved i upgraded to a larger 110 and havent reached that level of wow or awesome growth like i did with it. With perceived defeat i let my tank become a side focus instead of the focal point that it should be, Now i dont have algae problems, tbh most my rock is covered in thick coraline and every now and then i go through a dino outbreak. to try and help me get back on track im finally using the whiteboard I installed over a year ago when i set this tank up.
But back to point to get there I will need to get my params a bit more inline with the meta. Not tryna chase exact perfect numbers, but get close and keep em consistent. As shown above I'm atleast testing everything and making slow changes to get 1 thing in line at a time. Last few weeks i fought salinity back to norm as i had relied too much on my Hanna probe and pushed my salt up to 1.032. This past week I was trying to figure out a pH swing from 8.05-8.65 daily that turned out I just had calibrated my pH probes with expired fluids, fixed that yesterday, and the new swing is from 7.74 to 8.04 so better but it is low.
My other issues to address start with alk as I'm testing around 6 and want to be around 9, nitrates as they around 30 and want around 25-30 but as long as I'm not going past 35 and burning things we should be good. Final issue is that my calcium seems abnormally high but is likely just due to reef crystals.
With alk i have been testing daily at 5:30 tracking usage, but have not done anything to change it other than some small w/c. Looks to be as it sits im using ~.4dkh daily but expected this will rise as i get it more favorable. The plan is to finally set up a doser i bought years ago and never even opened and make a solution to dose with baking soda or soda ash depending how I should best balance the alk and pH rise. Nitrates being so high is probably from the fact I'm feeding heavy and dosing aminos with quite a few fish that are all starting to get large. Now for a long time i managed this with just some purigen and monthly w/c but this was never a good way of dealing with it. I do not want to run a refugium as they just end up being such a mess and eyesore and tbh i do not have the space for one that would appreciably reduce my nitrates. What i have done is finely tuned my skimmer to be effective and it is pulling massive skimmate out. Thick, gag-inducing fluid that needs emptied every other day, its definitely working, addditionaly transitioned to a 2.5/5g daily waterchange. Not ideal and long term an expensive way of dealing with nitrates. Long term i think i need to research into an external turf scrubber.
Phosphates Ive literally never tested for before yesterday. 0.05 yesterday and today 0.06 seems a good number but tbh i dont know enough about this paramater to go one way or the other.
Calcium I've read is best in the 440-480 range and with me testing a 100 over shouldn't be great, but I'm not sure if there is a great way of slowly lowering this other than my slow water changes. So it sits for now and ill track its movement.
Any recommendations on mag testers? Know hanna came out with one but its supposedly off and inconsistent, Currently using the RedSea Pro but really hate it, always end up having to do it twice or three times cause add drop swirl for 15 repeat and with my adhd i lose count how many drops i have done and other times your squeezing to get one drop and struggling and then all of a sudden it comes out quick as lighting losing my count of drops anyways. I see many people talk salifert but is this because its good or because its cheap?
I also picked up Redsea;s ABCD trace colors kit as LFS had a few too many on the order and cut me a deal and had been asking him about iodide dosing. Think i may have jumped the gun a bit on this as im still trying to get a handle on the main params but my understanding is once i get to dosing Calc itll be a 1/10th dose
Ran a few more tests before coming to bed to write this up and ask for help and heres my current parameters and the testers i use for them
Salinity 1.026 refractometer
pH 7.74 to 8.05 apex double checked with Hanna Ph stick
Orp 270-290 apex
Temp 77.4-78,5 apex and inkbird
Nitrate 33,5 hanna
Phosphate 0,06 hanna
Alkalinity 6,2 hanna
Magnesium 1440 redsea
Calcium 462 hanna
Said and done if youve read this wall of text, i appreciate the thoughts you can offer, and if not well its me just explaining my thoughts and mechanisms to be a better reefer.
I entered the hobby with a 29g aio and over the time i had it, it was glowing with color, growth and personally success. When i moved i upgraded to a larger 110 and havent reached that level of wow or awesome growth like i did with it. With perceived defeat i let my tank become a side focus instead of the focal point that it should be, Now i dont have algae problems, tbh most my rock is covered in thick coraline and every now and then i go through a dino outbreak. to try and help me get back on track im finally using the whiteboard I installed over a year ago when i set this tank up.
But back to point to get there I will need to get my params a bit more inline with the meta. Not tryna chase exact perfect numbers, but get close and keep em consistent. As shown above I'm atleast testing everything and making slow changes to get 1 thing in line at a time. Last few weeks i fought salinity back to norm as i had relied too much on my Hanna probe and pushed my salt up to 1.032. This past week I was trying to figure out a pH swing from 8.05-8.65 daily that turned out I just had calibrated my pH probes with expired fluids, fixed that yesterday, and the new swing is from 7.74 to 8.04 so better but it is low.
My other issues to address start with alk as I'm testing around 6 and want to be around 9, nitrates as they around 30 and want around 25-30 but as long as I'm not going past 35 and burning things we should be good. Final issue is that my calcium seems abnormally high but is likely just due to reef crystals.
With alk i have been testing daily at 5:30 tracking usage, but have not done anything to change it other than some small w/c. Looks to be as it sits im using ~.4dkh daily but expected this will rise as i get it more favorable. The plan is to finally set up a doser i bought years ago and never even opened and make a solution to dose with baking soda or soda ash depending how I should best balance the alk and pH rise. Nitrates being so high is probably from the fact I'm feeding heavy and dosing aminos with quite a few fish that are all starting to get large. Now for a long time i managed this with just some purigen and monthly w/c but this was never a good way of dealing with it. I do not want to run a refugium as they just end up being such a mess and eyesore and tbh i do not have the space for one that would appreciably reduce my nitrates. What i have done is finely tuned my skimmer to be effective and it is pulling massive skimmate out. Thick, gag-inducing fluid that needs emptied every other day, its definitely working, addditionaly transitioned to a 2.5/5g daily waterchange. Not ideal and long term an expensive way of dealing with nitrates. Long term i think i need to research into an external turf scrubber.
Phosphates Ive literally never tested for before yesterday. 0.05 yesterday and today 0.06 seems a good number but tbh i dont know enough about this paramater to go one way or the other.
Calcium I've read is best in the 440-480 range and with me testing a 100 over shouldn't be great, but I'm not sure if there is a great way of slowly lowering this other than my slow water changes. So it sits for now and ill track its movement.
Any recommendations on mag testers? Know hanna came out with one but its supposedly off and inconsistent, Currently using the RedSea Pro but really hate it, always end up having to do it twice or three times cause add drop swirl for 15 repeat and with my adhd i lose count how many drops i have done and other times your squeezing to get one drop and struggling and then all of a sudden it comes out quick as lighting losing my count of drops anyways. I see many people talk salifert but is this because its good or because its cheap?
I also picked up Redsea;s ABCD trace colors kit as LFS had a few too many on the order and cut me a deal and had been asking him about iodide dosing. Think i may have jumped the gun a bit on this as im still trying to get a handle on the main params but my understanding is once i get to dosing Calc itll be a 1/10th dose
Ran a few more tests before coming to bed to write this up and ask for help and heres my current parameters and the testers i use for them
Salinity 1.026 refractometer
pH 7.74 to 8.05 apex double checked with Hanna Ph stick
Orp 270-290 apex
Temp 77.4-78,5 apex and inkbird
Nitrate 33,5 hanna
Phosphate 0,06 hanna
Alkalinity 6,2 hanna
Magnesium 1440 redsea
Calcium 462 hanna
Said and done if youve read this wall of text, i appreciate the thoughts you can offer, and if not well its me just explaining my thoughts and mechanisms to be a better reefer.
