That side view is awesome! Sounds like we have a really similar approach to reefing. Keeping it simple seems to work for me, but I also use auto water changes, which I think help.Did a side shot today, as it seems some corals are not shown often, like the montis bottom left, check out the Chilli pepper monti and Nauti Spiral totally growing on each other, Chilli pepper winning this war. If you look close enough, that red monti plate is actually purple and red grafted, very cool piece
This week I broke 20ppm for N03, 17.7ppm!!! P04 continues to stay put, at 0.08-.12ppm, so that is actually perfect. This has been a long road from some close calls with smoothies, they didn't like 80ppm n03, nor did they like red bugs. That said, water changes have gotten me there. I did several weeks at 20 gallons a week, last 2 weeks at 15 gallons. I will continue at 15 gallons until I reach 10ppm. There, I will begin 10 gallons weekly to offset any rise.
I have now moved to a more simplistic way of reefing, I feel that I am getting close to a balanced, happy reef, no carbon or bacteria, no zeolites, and no amino acids. I do run passive carbon, but that's it. I feed the same foods daily very heavy, LRS quarter size chunk, and 2 hikari mysis cubes. I disable return pump and skimmer, and let all the food stay in the tank for 30 minutes. Many mouths to feed on the reef, corals need it too