Salt Fever 105G mixed reef build - One year later

[pochaxoo]

Last week I rented a Par meter from BRS and took some readings on my DT with my two Kessil AP9X's running a schedule I had setup based on some BRSTV videos. The lights are on for 12 hours and ramp up and ramp down. The following is the schedule:

For whatever reason you can't see the color setting and I have the 13:00 - 17:00 hour color set to 60 which is more white than blue. I have the 30% intensity blocks at 11:00 and 19:00 set at a color of 40 (which is more blue). The lower the intensities of 20 and 10 get progressively more blue. On Kessil the purple, red, and green lights have their own controls as well as you can see above. (Before I show you the picture of my DT with the par values overlaid don't laugh too hard as I was following guidance from the Reef2Reef thread on when to turn my lights on). Here are the readings at the 30% intensity setting (the picture is not from that color/intensity):

At 50% intensity the par scales way up.

I am planning on putting a few SPS on the top of the rockwork on the right. The left staghorn will be 100% for a zoa garden, it is separated from the rest of the aqua scape. Most of the tank other than those two points will be occupied by LPS such as plate coral at the bottom, a scolly or two, an acan lord garden somewhere in there and haven't decided on the rest of the middle part of the rockwork. Let me know if you have suggestions for turning the light down temporarily or permanently based on those plans. I am also thinking of reducing the overall photo period but would appreciate any input there as well. I had been reading elsewhere that turning the lights more blue would help with the Algae control, can anyone confirm that? I have been doing a lot of water changes, manual removal, and filter sock replacement and seem to have the algae in a state where new algae is not growing. However in doing all that activity I have irritated half of the zoas in the frag rack that were previously happy. I am going to slow down the water changes a bit.

I also did a par reading over the Cheato in the refuguium for my Kessil H160 and found I was getting 200 - 230 par at the top of the cheato when I was at max intensity and set to "grow". When I changed to blue only I get 120 - 130 par at the same spot. I have been running this light in grow mode at night opposite the tank lights and the cheato seems to be growing quickly, I think this and the algae is taking up all the Nitrates and Phosphates and I some some concern that this is what is causing the Zoas some distress. Please let me know what you think .

Overall the Par meter was very easy to use, the values fluctuate as you would expect depending on the flow and surface agitation so that is why I have ranges for everything in the pictures.

Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

Happy reefing.

 

[pochaxoo]

Let me know if I should be worried.
I have been running my fuge for a about 2 weeks for 12 hours at night (opposite schedule from my DT) and it does seem to be growing very nicely. So I think this is what has driven the phosphate to zero (Hanna Low Range checker) and the Nitrates to zero (Red Sea test kit). I wouldn't be worried but I have noticed that some of the zoa frags don't like something in the tank. Some have retracted, one had a polyps melt, and others seem to like conditions and are out. I suspected too much light so I moved the frag rack into a shadier spot (see picture). The Purple Monster polyp is the one that melted and the WWC Hot Cats Eye (pink) polyps on the left has been retract for a few days

My Alkalinity is at 7.6
Temperature Ranges from 77.7 to 78.4
Salinity is at 35.4 today (although I target 35.0)
My total water volume is somewhere around 165 gallons
3 Gallons is changed every night over a 9 hour period.

Yesterday I reduced the light intensity at the "mid-day" 4 hour block to 40% to see if that helps......The Cat's Eyes are out so maybe??

Do you think I should cut the refugium light cycle or intensity down to recover some phosphate and nitrate? I have been hesitant as I am trying to starve the hair algae you seen in the back, and that seems to be working. Is it best to reduce time or intensity on the chaeto refugium?

Any help appreciated.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Following along. Great build! I don't have any advice at this stage for you on the algae issues other than I would definitely get some live rock from a fellow hobbyist or LFS that's got some coralline algae on it and some bio diversity with it. It will help speed up the maturing process.

 

[pochaxoo]

It has been a great week and I have been super busy with my aquarium. I have been continuing to fight the algae menace (GHA). I usually physically put out whatever I can between my thumb and index finger while siphoning out 5 gallons of water. The short stuff is impossible to get so I have resorted to scrubbing this with a fairly stiff brush (for dishwashing). This makes a mess of the tank and I change my filter socks a couple hours later and they are full of fresh algae. I was worried this was going to be bad based on a BRS video about doing this but my nitrate and phosphate are at zero and I haven't seen any new algae growth in a couple of weeks. in addition my Yellow Tang, Kole Tang, and lawn mower blenny are going nuts eating GHA. Their stomachs are enormous and there poop is disgusting huge and frequent. Snails doing there thing but hard to notice if they have any interest in the GHA.

I also finally glued down my Zoas to the dead staghorn rockwork. The 14 frag plugs are unsightly now but I am hoping they grow and cover this whole structure. I just need to acquire some WWC AOI and I will feel complete. (apparently this is a temporary zoa feeling)

I also have 2 encrusting montis on the small island on the front left and a blue monti cap that I can't seem to get mounted to the back wall no matter what I do. I may have to re-affix that frag to a magnetic plug and then put it on the back wall. I have been nervous about putting the encrusting monties and the cap anywhere on the main rock structure from other reefers complaining about it taking over everything. Was considering mounting the Monti cap to the back of the staghorn where the zoas are growing. Do you think the monti would grow only out and up or would it come back over the front and try to overgrow the zoas? I wonder who would win that over grow battle? Anyone know?

I also found a local reefer that was selling a rainbow anemone and picked it up this week. It footed down after about 15 minutes in the tank and then crawled into a crevice in my rock work to hide. It stayed there for two days and I was worried, my cleaner shrimps kept going in there messing with him and I was on patrol for that for a few hours. On the third day it came out and is coming our more and more each day.

My clowns have no clue what is is since they firmly believe they are a part of the Chromis school. I am ok with this since the anemone is getting used to his new home, we will see what happens in time.

I also bought some hard corals from Tidal Gardens during their live sale last weekend. They arrived on Wednesday and I couldn't be more pleased with what I got and how nice they look. The pictures below are from when I first put them in. The Monti's have extended polyps since and the Acans have puffed up.

Flame Boy Favia, Reverse War Coral Favites, Rainbow Chalice, Jingle Bells Cyphastrea

Forest Fire & Neon Green Montipora Digitata, 24K Leptoseris, Blue Litho Chalice, Blue Pavona

Voodoo Magic Lord and Candy Cane Lord Howensis Micromussa

I also bought an Inkbird controller to try to take the on off switching load off of my APEX Energy Bar. I was disappointed to see that it can only control within 1 degree. So I am set at 78 and it will possibly swing from 77 to 79. Not sure if I am being too picky but I was keeping this at 78 degrees plus or minus .3 degrees when using my APEX. Is there even a heat controller that has decimal points of control? Any suggestions appreciated.

I have also started dosing a modest amount of All-for-Reef this week to see if I can keep my alkalinity up to 8.5.
I did some water tests tonight.
Alkalinity - 8.3
PH - 8.2
Salinity - 35.2
Nitrates - 0
Phosphates - 0

I am somewhat worried about the nitrates and phosphates being at zero but I am going to keep running the refugium for 12 hours until I get the GHA under control. I have scaled the light intensity from the Kessil H160 back a bit. Let me know if you think I should scale back a lot more.... my only concern is that the water isn't "dirty" enough for the zoas. I will continue to monitor.

This weekend I have a Coral Farmers show I am going to check out (masked up). My local Atlanta Reef club is also going to meet and have a frag swap. I am excited, hoping I don't get covid, hoping I can find a pretty plate coral and perhaps some gonipora.

Have a great weekend and keep on reefin.

 

[pochaxoo]

I wanted to check and see if my water parameters are ok so I sent in a water sample to Triton. I got my ICP results today. no heavy metals and here is the rest of the report.

I am happy that most of my parameters seem to look good and this helps me see I am going to dose some Lugols Solution for Iodine. Now I need to buy a Iodine test kit.

This also tells me I need to the the Ultra low phosphate test kit as my low range kit can't register those kind of numbers on my Hanna low range checker.

 

[pochaxoo]

I finally noticed coraline algae growing on my pumps. It took almost exactly 4 months to see it growing but I consider that a good sign of my tank maturing. In other news I have finally become exhausted with trying to manually remove the green hair algae and all efforts to starve it out have not succeeded. Phosphates and Nitrates were at zero and the Chaeto grew extremely quickly. I am now in my second week of dosing Vibrant to try to knock the GHA back. I removed my macros from the refugium off to their own tank and am adding 16ml per week. I did notice that the ORP in my aquarium drops dramatically and immediately after adding the Vibrant. I was running close to 380 - 400 and now it is down in the 260 area. I wonder if this is the cause of issues with many other Vibrant users?

Other than the algae fight I have lowered the peak intensity of my lights from 50% down to 35%. I was noticing the Zoanthids and quite a few other corals were not happy with that much light. I also moved some of the frags around on the rockwork they are on to get some more shade. I have also been spending quite a bit of time trying to get my flow right. I have moved to a reef crest mode with the second pump in anti-sync to the first one. I have 3 - 4 dead spots that gather detritus and not sure I can turn the intensity up any more without upsetting the corals I have. The higher intensity and flow type (was interval on off every 2 seconds before) has seemingly annoyed my RBTA and it has been moving around to the back side of the rock crevice he/she hides in, not sure if I need to be concerned about that or not.

I am truely on a path of mixed reef as I have lots of different frags of all types. I have 3 Gonipora, 2 Trachyphillia, 1 Lobophylia, 15+ different kinds of zoas, 5 different Montipora, Cyphastrea, Leptoseris, 2 X Chalice, Favia. I am loving the Gonis and Trachyies for movement and size. I have been target feeding one large Trachy with success by turning off the MP40s. I have a couple of cleaner shrimp that are total jerks when I try to feed the Gonis and Trachyies so I am feeding some reef roids and very small fish food to the whole aquarium that I hope the Gonis are getting, the red Gonipora which is oldest is doing well and the other two are still acclimating.

Most recent measurements
Temp @78.2
Salinity 35.3
Alk 8.9
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: .02
PH 8.2

 

[LBReefer]

I finally noticed coraline algae growing on my pumps. It took almost exactly 4 months to see it growing but I consider that a good sign of my tank maturing. In other news I have finally become exhausted with trying to manually remove the green hair algae and all efforts to starve it out have not succeeded. Phosphates and Nitrates were at zero and the Chaeto grew extremely quickly. I am now in my second week of dosing Vibrant to try to knock the GHA back. I removed my macros from the refugium off to their own tank and am adding 16ml per week. I did notice that the ORP in my aquarium drops dramatically and immediately after adding the Vibrant. I was running close to 380 - 400 and now it is down in the 260 area. I wonder if this is the cause of issues with many other Vibrant users?

Other than the algae fight I have lowered the peak intensity of my lights from 50% down to 35%. I was noticing the Zoanthids and quite a few other corals were not happy with that much light. I also moved some of the frags around on the rockwork they are on to get some more shade. I have also been spending quite a bit of time trying to get my flow right. I have moved to a reef crest mode with the second pump in anti-sync to the first one. I have 3 - 4 dead spots that gather detritus and not sure I can turn the intensity up any more without upsetting the corals I have. The higher intensity and flow type (was interval on off every 2 seconds before) has seemingly annoyed my RBTA and it has been moving around to the back side of the rock crevice he/she hides in, not sure if I need to be concerned about that or not.

I am truely on a path of mixed reef as I have lots of different frags of all types. I have 3 Gonipora, 2 Trachyphillia, 1 Lobophylia, 15+ different kinds of zoas, 5 different Montipora, Cyphastrea, Leptoseris, 2 X Chalice, Favia. I am loving the Gonis and Trachyies for movement and size. I have been target feeding one large Trachy with success by turning off the MP40s. I have a couple of cleaner shrimp that are total jerks when I try to feed the Gonis and Trachyies so I am feeding some reef roids and very small fish food to the whole aquarium that I hope the Gonis are getting, the red Gonipora which is oldest is doing well and the other two are still acclimating.

Most recent measurements
Temp @78.2
Salinity 35.3
Alk 8.9
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: .02
PH 8.2

Is that a purple BTA? I have never seen one quite like it.

Great growth in the tank.

Good luck with the vibrant. I had mixed results with it. I found that it was great at tackling the algae, but it led to a lot of other nuisances.

 

[pochaxoo]

Is that a purple BTA? I have never seen one quite like it.

Great growth in the tank.

Good luck with the vibrant. I had mixed results with it. I found that it was great at tackling the algae, but it led to a lot of other nuisances.

Thanks. The anemone is orange with a green bottom i have to use a yellow filter to get the blue out of my pics, so that might be playing with the color a bit.

 

[pochaxoo]

Four Bartlett's Anthias arrived yesterday plus one shark nose goby from LiveAquaria. Everyone appear appears healthy and eating so far. I am going to let them chill for 3 days before starting copper treatment.

Also Chuck the Chaeto ball is in QT and not happy about it. I am treating the DT with Vibrant so he is on a vacation. The Green Hair Algae in the main tank does not appear to be growing but not convinced it is dying off just yet. I will be doing to vac and pull maintenance on it tomorrow and we will see how easy it is to pull.

DT Tank Parameters today Salinity 34.9, PH 8.2, Alk 8.4

I am struggling to determine if I have the right flow and light for various corals in the DT. Thinking I might move the Gonipora to their own island in a shadier area of the tank. I turned down the Left Side MP40 by 5% in hopes the Anemone would return to one of it's original spots, It may have a mind of it's own so I guess it will figure out where it is happiest. Some of the Zoa's are happy some are not, still not sure if it is flow, light, or Nitrate levels that they aren't happy with. I am not willing to dose nitrate until the GHA is gone so working on the other two parameters and placement to see where they want to live.

 

[pochaxoo]

It has been a while, I have been battling the Green Hair Algae Menace and I am declaring victory. I used Vibrant for 4 weeks at the suggested dosage and even after i stopped dosing the effects continued for an additional 4 weeks until all the GHA was consumed. It has been 3 months and I have added back my chaeto to the sump and all is looking great.

In the meanwhile I just got back another ICP test and a few things have me puzzled.

I am not quite sure where the Aluminum is coming from....the only metal I am aware of in the aquarium (that isn't sealed) are the 2 grounding cables. Also not sure if that could account for the iron being high? Do you think this could be it or would you suspect some other source first? The ICP test said to be suspicious of my dosing chemicals first....not sure how to test that other than getting new bottles? It also recommended dosing some iodine, molybdium and vandium...I have't dosed the last to if they aren't in the Tropic Marin all in one because I have no regular way of testing other than ICP...what would you do?

I also had a strange problem about 2 weeks ago where my salinity kept getting lower and lower each day. All in all it dropped from 35.3 to 34.0 I couldn't figure out why so I decided to stop my ATO and let the salinity rise with evaporation. Days later it all became apparent. The water level was going down really fast. So I stayed up late one night to see what my automatic 3 gallon water change was doing. Sure enough it was taking out 3 gallons but not adding 3 new gallons back in. Somehow the line from the mix container was clogged and after the process happened the ATO was doing it's job and adding fresh water. I still have the automatic water changer off and need to unclog them and make a new plan. I don't know this is just expected behaviour for dosing pumps and lines with saltwater involved or if the 12:00 - 9:00 AM schedule allow for too much time in-between for drying and clogging to occur?
As a result of the salinity swing (and maybe some heavy feeding) my RBTA decided to split.

One of them roamed around for a while and then decided to join it's brothers and now I have 3 cool anemones in the perfect place in my aquarium. I ended up moving the favia to differnt part of the rockwork to get him away from those stingers.

I also have a hungry Trachy (Welso) that I feed every 5 or so days.......but do I ever hate my cleaner shimps now! How do people deal with these jerks? All a guy wants to do is eat! Feeeeed MEEEEE!

I love it so much I bought a couple more.

So today many things are looking good in the tank but a few zoas are not happy. I tested parameters and have
Temp 78.2
PH 8.2
Alk: 8.1
Nitrate 0
Prosphate 0
Salinity 35.2

As expected my chaeto seems to stripping out all of the Nitrate and Phosphate. Which explains the Cyano showing up in limited amounts. So I dosed some neo-nitro and will trim or give away some chaeto. May need to reduce light on the chaeto as well soon. I don't buy the whole idea of just feeding more because I already feed really heavy, the fish are not hungry for more and it all ends up blowing around and going to sandbed or overflow. I am not terribly worried about this but a little tinkering to get everything in sync is needed.

My on-going testing with slight increments and decrement of the lighting and flow continue to see who I can make happier.

Overall I am super excited where I am after 6.5 months feeling relieved and not feeling like I have an UGLY tank.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.

 

[mdb_talon]

Looking great. Please keep the updates coming.

 

[pochaxoo]

My tank passed the one year mark in August and the tank looks a lot different from "sterile" looking shots I posted early in the process.

The Creatures

I have had the some drama with fish over the last 8 months. My Kole tang turned out to be a monster. He/she attacked my yellow tang ruthlessly, managed to slash and kill some anthias, terrorized my lawnmower blenny, and was attempting to kill a Fox Face coming out of quarantine when I had to take measures. I evacuated the yellow tang, fox face and an orange spot rabbitfish to a second aquarium for a 3 month period. They all got along well and kept the new tank spotless. It turns out my Kole tang wasn't a very good algae eater either. All the algae issues I struggled with for a really long time were solved when I finally caught and removed my Kole tang and added the Yellow tang and two rabbit fish to the display tank. Munch munch munch, I had to start supplementing with nori. You can never know the exact persona of a fish until time passes, a bunch of people have Koles they are super happy with, but mine was a jerk.

I have acquired a few new coral:

A couple Milles from Copps (24K and Hulk not pictured) and a Copps Bonsai

My new favorite Palythoa Grandis. Started as a single polyp and is quickly multiplying

A new wellsophilia that is still not sure he likes my tank

A couple of feather dusters

Some LPS that continue to be my favorites,

Gonipora

Welso's and Trachy

And of course lots of zoanthids

Current motile inhabitants
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Fire Shrimp
1 Peppermint shrimp
1 Lawnmower blenny
5 Blue Green Chromis
1 Foxface Rabbitfish
1 Yellow Tang
1 Orange spot Rabbitfish
1 Purple Pseudochromis
1 Royal Gramma
2 Percula clown fish (that have no clue what do with an anemone)
1 Midas Blenny
4-5 Rainbow Bubble Tip Anemone
Lots of different kind of snails
Lots of very small white brittle stars
Lots of pods



Flow and Light

I have been spending the last 8 months figuring out where various corals "want to live". The struggle with too much light, too little flow, or too much flow has been a really delicate thing to work through. I have been surprised that many of my zoas don't really want that much light. I have had to relocate the lepto, chalice, favia and cyphastrea to lower light situations and they have now taken off and are encrusting the rock work. I have inadvertently lost more than a few Acropora, but the mille's seem to do well and I like their fuzziness. I have had great growth when fixing the acros horizontally. (as suggested by Abe from Coral Euphoria). My fail for about 4 months was setting my MP40s to work in Master/Slave mode while running Reef Crest mode. It turns out one of my pumps wasn't running very much at all and my overall flow was just too low. I ended the master slave mode and am running short pulse mode for the lights on part of the day and reef crest for the lights off period with an increase to the overall intensity at 69% that seems to have made things much happier.

My Kessil AP9X lights have been on the same setting for the first year and then Neptune and APEX released the integration where you can see and configure them from your APEX dashboard. Since they don't automagically copy over from the phone app you have to do some calculations and set the intensity and schedule back up in the new interface. I burned a couple of corals for 2-3 days before I figured things out. Of course having something you can change makes the urge to fiddle great! I am wanting to see if I can get a bit whiter light during mid day and undoubtably this will cause more stress, but some of the corals that should be purple are a washed out blue. I bought the Apogee 420 to get a better idea of what I was doing and arrived at the schedule below. The color sliders for the white and UV/Purple channel are the ones that cause me the most consternation. I can't get the purple porites to show up as purple under the "blue spectrum" mix I am running and the Pink Pocillopora don't look pink unless I use a filter or tinted glasses.

100% Blue, 100% Violet 100% White at peak and relatively little red and green.

I took a bunch of Par readings at the peak of day and I am glad I don't appear to be blasting anything with too much light, at least according to recommendations. The top of the rockwork gets anywhere from 200 - 267 par. The bottom of tank gets anywhere from 90 - 147 par depending on where you measure.


Water Treatment

From a water treatment perspective I haven't made many changes. I gave up on the automatic daily water change a long while ago when the Neptune DOS line got clogged and caused a salinity drop issue. I am now manually changing 15 gallons weekly. I vacuum sand in the display tank one week while changing water; the next week I am vacuuming the sand in the refugium. I still have a lot of build up of mulmy algae on the sand in the display; I have had some luck with siphoning out the mulmy sand and moving it to the refugium while moving the "un-crapified" sand from the refugium up the display. The secondary benefit seems to be that I have transported a bunch of small white brittle stars and pods into the display and they seem to be thriving. I am hoping that my recent stability with nitrates and phosphates and some of these CUC will reduce the sand algae. Let me know if you have suggestions on other fixes, because it is unsightly.


I have been working on Nitrates and Phosphates for a long time and only recently been able to get my nitrates to 7-10 ppm and my phosphate up to .03 ppm. (today was cause for celebration). I have been dosing neonitro and neophos and adding more reefroids. I have had the nitrates right for a few weeks and finally have the phosphates up above 0. Although the corals love it now, it seems the algae noted above does too. I have quite a bit of Cyano and other algae.

While he is definitely to blame for the low phosphate and nitrate Chuck the chaeto ball has continued to thrive. I added a powerhead to the refugium some time ago and now Chuck is in a perpetual circular swirl. (copied from Jake at Reef Builders) The high flow through the chaeto is key to growth, with good lighting of course. I have cut Chuck's hair a bunch of times and his remnants take up half of my coral quarantine tank and seem happy to keep growing in there. I am currently dosing 20 ml of All for Reef that I mix up from powder once a month. I have arrived at this amount after experimenting with higher amounts. The alkalinity stays around 8.4 . I added a cannister of CO2 absorbing media on the air input side of my skimmer in March and that combined with the Chaeto is keeping the PH between 8.2 to 8.6 depending on when you measure it.

I am using a Hanna PH "pen" as a replacement for my Red Sea test kit and am so happy with it, much quicker than Red Sea test kit. My APEX PH probe is crap and can only be trusted as a "something has gone really wrong" device. It is consistently .4 below the measurements with the Hanna and Red Sea test kits. No amount of calibrating this device gets it to be more accurate

I measure the following parameters at least weekly. Temperature, Salinity, Alkalinity, PH, Nitrate, Phosphate. I have been getting ICP tests done from Triton about every quarter and I am currently awaiting some results.

Temperature: @78.2 F
Salinity @ 35.2

Next up is to work on my water level in the Weir/overflow and perhaps re-plumbing the excess overflow into a smaller diameter pipe to reduce the noise.

 

[pochaxoo]

Forgot to add this. Here is my light mix at peak from 1:00 - 5:00 each day.

Do you have any suggestions which could make the Purple Porites and Pink Pocillipora look more true to color without a filter or tinted glasses?

Also a soothing video of Chuck the chaeto ball doing his thing.

 

[pochaxoo]

I received 8 beautiful Acropora from Abe at Coral Euphoria today. I am very excited. Here they are getting acclimated to my lights

 

[pochaxoo]

Got my Triton ICP test back today. Most everything looking good as I hoped. The Phosphate is low as I have known for a while. I am currently dosing 10ml of Neophos per day. I am interested to see that silicates are a bit on the high end, that would account for some of my diatom issues. I am going change all the stages on my RO/DI unit. I am not sure if silicates show up on the TDS monitor I have, does anyone know? Also the ever present low Iodine, I will add a couple of drops of lugols as well. The ICP test is recommending Potassium....I have never dosed this before and had hoped this was in all-for-reef in sufficient quantities. Anyone have experience or recommendations on Potassium?

Triton Lab Showroom - Explore this water test results and click on the image above.

Someone wants to show you the water test results and shared this link to the evaluation. Click on the image above to explore the water test results.

www.triton-lab.de

 

[pochaxoo]

Most things in my main tank are doing very well. Things seem to be easier to keep stable now at 1 year plus. I have been dosing phosphate in addition to all for reef and have finally got my phosphates up to .06ppm, Nitrates are at 12.3, Salinity at 35.1, PH at 8.3, Alkalinity at 8.2, temp always close to 78.1. I have noticed many things starting to grow very well in this environment including the Zoas, Acros, Montis, Pavona, Favia etc.... However I now have my 3 Wellsophyllia are retracted way back but strangely what was purchased as a Trachy is puffed up and looking great. So now I am trying to solve what might be stressing these corals. Here are the things that have changed lately.


1) The phosphates and nitrates were raised from their virtual zero reading to what they are now over the last 4-5 weeks.

2) I created a daytime 2 second pulsing action on my MP40s with a flow rate of 67% during daytime. At night is goes to reef crest mode. Previously I was on reef crest all the time with master slave that wasn't pushing much water around. The Flow "Looks" better and the zoas, gonipora, and SPS seem to really react well to this rate.

3) Lights schedule changed a bit when I went to controlling them via APEX and intensity modifed up 4% at mid-day.

4) I was inspecting the bottom of my biggest Wellso and noticed a fan worm growing out the side of the bottom

Of all the above what do you think is mostly likely causing the disturbance and what would you recommend?

Any help appreciated.

 

[pochaxoo]

Most things in my main tank are doing very well. Things seem to be easier to keep stable now at 1 year plus. I have been dosing phosphate in addition to all for reef and have finally got my phosphates up to .06ppm, Nitrates are at 12.3, Salinity at 35.1, PH at 8.3, Alkalinity at 8.2, temp always close to 78.1. I have noticed many things starting to grow very well in this environment including the Zoas, Acros, Montis, Pavona, Favia etc.... However I now have my 3 Wellsophyllia are retracted way back but strangely what was purchased as a Trachy is puffed up and looking great. So now I am trying to solve what might be stressing these corals. Here are the things that have changed lately.


1) The phosphates and nitrates were raised from their virtual zero reading to what they are now over the last 4-5 weeks.

2) I created a daytime 2 second pulsing action on my MP40s with a flow rate of 67% during daytime. At night is goes to reef crest mode. Previously I was on reef crest all the time with master slave that wasn't pushing much water around. The Flow "Looks" better and the zoas, gonipora, and SPS seem to really react well to this rate.

3) Lights schedule changed a bit when I went to controlling them via APEX and intensity modifed up 4% at mid-day.

4) I was inspecting the bottom of my biggest Wellso and noticed a fan worm growing out the side of the bottom

Of all the above what do you think is mostly likely causing the disturbance and what would you recommend?

Any help appreciated.

I will add that each of the 3 Wellso are in slightly different level lighting. The one that is in the brightest light was always the largest and puffiest. I am getting worried now

 

[pochaxoo]

I am in the process of upgrading to a larger 210 gallon tank. I took the following video to document the state of the 105 Gallon aquarium at the 3 year mark before taking it down and moving it to the basement. Many of these coral and fish will appear in my next tank build thread.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I am in the process of upgrading to a larger 210 gallon tank. I took the following video to document the state of the 105 Gallon aquarium at the 3 year mark before taking it down and moving it to the basement. Many of these coral and fish will appear in my next tank build thread.

Can't wait to see the larger tank!