Long story short - my Nuvo40 is mostly dry rock - there's probably 5-8 lbs of live, and 30 of dry in it. Barebottom. Lots of flow. I had to upgrade from a 10g on short notice. Its been up for a month or so - the 10g had been up for 6. I was having some issues with my toddler being able to reach the top of the tank, and had a ton of issues with stuff - tip burn, algae, etc. Alk was at 9. Just having all sorts of problems.
So I moved everything to the 40. There's a couple small fish, a bta, some shrimp, and then some zoas. On the SPS side - a couple of monti frags, and 3 acro frags. The tip burn has all healed up, and I'm seeing growth. Things seem good.
However, I went through a full battery of tests last night, and this is what I got:
Salinity - 1.025
N04 - 12ish ppm (NYOS) - It wasn't 12ppm, but I'm not sure which way it was off, but it was closest to 12. I hate these sort of color scale tests.
P04 - .37ppm (Hanna ULR Phosphate)
Ca - 400ppm (red sea)
Mag - 1400ppm (red sea - although this one is really fine gradations - the difference between 1260 and 1400 is like .04ml)
Alk - 5.6 dkh (red sea)
The phosphate is probably just the dry rock - so I changed out my phosguard. But that Alk number scares me - but again - everything looks good, so I'm really leary to start adjusting up considering I was having all sorts of tip burn in the last tank.
Salt is Reef Crystals, which is supposed to be super high? So what gives? I don't have enough corals at this point to think I'm using up all the alkalinity. Bad test kit? Some of the salt is from a box that's a couple years old. Some is from a new bucket.
No dosing yet.
Any ideas? Opinions? Plan of action? Anybody run succesfull tanks at these sort of levels?
So I moved everything to the 40. There's a couple small fish, a bta, some shrimp, and then some zoas. On the SPS side - a couple of monti frags, and 3 acro frags. The tip burn has all healed up, and I'm seeing growth. Things seem good.
However, I went through a full battery of tests last night, and this is what I got:
Salinity - 1.025
N04 - 12ish ppm (NYOS) - It wasn't 12ppm, but I'm not sure which way it was off, but it was closest to 12. I hate these sort of color scale tests.
P04 - .37ppm (Hanna ULR Phosphate)
Ca - 400ppm (red sea)
Mag - 1400ppm (red sea - although this one is really fine gradations - the difference between 1260 and 1400 is like .04ml)
Alk - 5.6 dkh (red sea)
The phosphate is probably just the dry rock - so I changed out my phosguard. But that Alk number scares me - but again - everything looks good, so I'm really leary to start adjusting up considering I was having all sorts of tip burn in the last tank.
Salt is Reef Crystals, which is supposed to be super high? So what gives? I don't have enough corals at this point to think I'm using up all the alkalinity. Bad test kit? Some of the salt is from a box that's a couple years old. Some is from a new bucket.
No dosing yet.
Any ideas? Opinions? Plan of action? Anybody run succesfull tanks at these sort of levels?