So as I’m breaking in the tank, I’ve gone through what I expect are pretty typical stage with a sterile rock tank…. My phosphate levels have gone up and I’m having a harder time bringing them down than nitrate. I finally used some phosphate E and that worked wonders to help me bring them down. I can see the few corals that I did place in the DT are already looking better with better polyp extension than they’ve had in weeks/months. I’m hoping that once I get them down I can get my refugium to start keeping up better with things, but that remains to be seen. I’ve noticed that the chaeto really doesn’t tumble in the refugium so I’ve got to keep rotating it and it gets so much air in in when photosynthesizing that it really floats and preferentially wants to stay on one side. I took a look around and saw this interesting potential solution using egg crate to create a sandwich around the chaeto. I think this is a great idea since it will allow me to place that plate into my refugium at an angle and maximize the area of chaeto exposed to the GRO light. We’ll see how this setup works…. Here is a shot from above with the GRO light out of the way.
This is a shot of where all the action is:
This is a shot of where all the action is: