- Joined
- May 11, 2019
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Month End Tank Update time:
Man I feel like a lot happened this month... and it's a short month. The sad news is I lost my torch. It was looking bad for about a week and then took a drastic turn south. I tried to do some iodine dips in case it was a bacterial infections but it only seemed to make it worse. It slowly melted away . Thankfully nothing else in the tank seems to be affected so hopefully it was isolate to just the torch.
I have been testing... retesting... incorrectly testing... hopefully now correctly testing all month. My parameters were on the low end and so I decided to start dosing when I noticed my Phosphates were crazy high. I decided to hold off on dosing anything until I got them under control... one thing at a time. While they are still high (0.28) they are no where near what they were and I feel like the yo-yoing has gotten less and less so I'm happy I'm moving in the right direction there. Here are the things I did to drop them down, and the things I will continue to do to hopefully keep them at a good amount;
1. Started by doing several large water changes over a week period- was able to drop it down to .36, hasn't gone above .46 after the water change.
2. Added phosguard into my sump, one bag in a media cup where the filter socks are, one bag in my return chamber
3. Cut feeding back; feeding less frozen food, rinsing frozen food when feeding, taking Nori out and night and not letting it sit in tank, reducing the feeding of reef roids.
4. Tested RODI water and fresh salt mix to see if high phosphates are starting there, didn't see any.
5. Cleaned bubble trap in sump, started changing filter socks every two days, cleaned covers on my power heads.
So now that I felt I had phosphates manageable I went back to testing the rest of the tank parameters and found that now... of course... my low parameters are now high;Facepalm.Seriously??? Seriously!!!! Here are my current numbers
Nitrate 10
Phosphate .26
Calcium 490
Alkalinity 8.4
Magnesium 1440
I'm wondering if it was a bad bag of salt. I just opened a new one after I did all those water changes. I mixed it before I added it to the water. I'll have to make a new batch and test were it's starting at. Other than that I'm not sure why its so high.
Man I feel like a lot happened this month... and it's a short month. The sad news is I lost my torch. It was looking bad for about a week and then took a drastic turn south. I tried to do some iodine dips in case it was a bacterial infections but it only seemed to make it worse. It slowly melted away . Thankfully nothing else in the tank seems to be affected so hopefully it was isolate to just the torch.
I have been testing... retesting... incorrectly testing... hopefully now correctly testing all month. My parameters were on the low end and so I decided to start dosing when I noticed my Phosphates were crazy high. I decided to hold off on dosing anything until I got them under control... one thing at a time. While they are still high (0.28) they are no where near what they were and I feel like the yo-yoing has gotten less and less so I'm happy I'm moving in the right direction there. Here are the things I did to drop them down, and the things I will continue to do to hopefully keep them at a good amount;
1. Started by doing several large water changes over a week period- was able to drop it down to .36, hasn't gone above .46 after the water change.
2. Added phosguard into my sump, one bag in a media cup where the filter socks are, one bag in my return chamber
3. Cut feeding back; feeding less frozen food, rinsing frozen food when feeding, taking Nori out and night and not letting it sit in tank, reducing the feeding of reef roids.
4. Tested RODI water and fresh salt mix to see if high phosphates are starting there, didn't see any.
5. Cleaned bubble trap in sump, started changing filter socks every two days, cleaned covers on my power heads.
So now that I felt I had phosphates manageable I went back to testing the rest of the tank parameters and found that now... of course... my low parameters are now high;Facepalm.Seriously??? Seriously!!!! Here are my current numbers
Nitrate 10
Phosphate .26
Calcium 490
Alkalinity 8.4
Magnesium 1440
I'm wondering if it was a bad bag of salt. I just opened a new one after I did all those water changes. I mixed it before I added it to the water. I'll have to make a new batch and test were it's starting at. Other than that I'm not sure why its so high.
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