Update:
Wow it's been a year exactly since my last post, totally unintentional as I could swear I posted since then.
The cube has had high nitrates for the past 6 months 80 ppm. We didn't lose any corrals or fish. We did 2 large water changes the past couple of months and added some Brightwell Xport NO3 cubes. I tried manually dosing carbon (Brightwell) the first couple of months and the nitrates rose. Gave that up, as it really made me nervous anyway and soon we will be back to camping twice a month or so and unable to dose daily. The nitrates are now down to 20 ppm, I believe the high nitrates were due to over feeding and not enough regular water changes. I added a powerhead to the skimmer section of the sump to help prevent detritus buildup that had accumulated after the first big water change. Will soon add another in the fuge area as it tends to build up in there too. It's extremely difficult to vacuum the detritus from the sump as it's only about 3 inches above the floor height. I might try a shop vac next go around (read of others doing that on here).
The tank also ended up with hundreds if not thousands of vermitid snails. I put in several bumble bee snails about 3 months ago as they are said to possibly eat them and the vermitid population indeed looks to have decreased quite a bit. I also decreased my feeding quantity and frequency to every other day (only feed frozen) sometimes skipping 2 days. I feed the tang a half a sheet of algae every 3-4 days as it stopped finishing it with my every other day schedule. It picks a lot at the rock and glass and looks healthy on the reduced feeding schedule.
The stocking in the tank consists:
1 smallish yellow tang added 10/12/2018 (bought with knowledge will need to be returned eventually, to tang police: don’t bother)
1 skunk cleaner moved from my nano tank on 9/15/2018
2 phantom clowns (they are paired up)
1 green chromis added 8/29/18 (started with 4 but 1 jumped through small gap the first few days and cooked on top of the mesh lid (poor fish), the remaining killed each other off quickly until the 1 remained).
1 strawberry conk added 9/7/2018 -my favorite member of the cuc, it's constantly busy cleaning up the bottom and moves the sand around as it does.
2 nassarius tiger snails
4- trochas snails
a few certith snails
several bumble bee snails
We lost 1 very large emerald crab a few days ago....possibly to old age? It was just odd because about 2 days later, we lost a smaller one in our nano tank (doesn’t have nitrate or other known issues).
There is some green hair algae on top of the highest rocks, I’ve been manually removing. The 2nd batch of cheato in the sump died a few months ago when nitrates got too high (prior to that I was removing portions often, as it was growing well with this cheap grow light
Amazon product ASIN B01LX1EO3W). This light has been running 24-7 since 9/23/2018, very pleased with it for the $. The other macro-algae, caulerpa prolifera handled the high nitrates much better. Going to add a 2nd light to the fuge soon, to hopefully discourage GHA in the display.
There is very little coral in the tank, mainly frags that I moved from my nano tank. 1 frag of each: acan, grand paly, hammer w/2 heads, torch w/2 heads, gsp and an unknown frag. We've not added any fish or corals in past 6 months.
I've honestly not tested the other parameters other than salinity and PH since the nitrate issue started as I was focusing on that.... I do look at the fish and corals daily to check for any signs of changes, will test this weekend.
I'm not the most proactive reefer as we have too many hobbies and too little $. LOL… it wasn’t a wise move to get involved with reefing but it’s nice to have an indoor hobby as everything else is outdoors. I will try and get some updated pics this evening and update this post (thought I had some but can't find on my phone).
