Recently joined this community a week or so ago and it's been wonderful. I thought I would chronicle my journey through restarting my system so others could benefit from what I've gone through.
Posted my introduction a week ago here.
Some background:
Tank has been up for over 2 years, but for almost the past year it's been at my parents for a few months while I moved. Since I moved I sort of neglected it and now that I've been quarantined at home I've been dedicated to getting it back on track.
I previously used NoPox to keep down phosphates and nitrates, but have learned a lot this past couple of months if I'm going to keep LPS and softies I can't run and ULNS-style tank. So I've stopped dosing NoPox and begun dosing reef roids and aminos to help my struggling LPS corals.
One of my biggest struggles is figuring out flow for my tank. I currently have a Tunze 6105 (oversized for an 80g I know) but I run it at about 1000gph and a koralia 850gph. All of my corals are LPS currently and all located in the bottom 3rd of my tank.
I rented a par meter to measure at multiple spectrums, intensities, and light elevations throughout my tank to determine hot spots and where par was best suited for particular corals. Despite all this I still feel like my Kessil AP700 is roating my corals. I turned it down to 30% from 50% even though I don't anticipate any of the corals will be seeing much higher than 100 par at this point.
My plan going forward to fix some things is to:
1. Perform ICP tests as a baseline for any possible ailments
2. Change RODI filters and begin measuring TDS with a new meter
3. Using Phosphate-E instead of NoPox to see if I can get my nitrates to rise from absolute 0.
4. Perhaps add in some more rock to deflect some flow from my powerheads and protect some of my more fragile LPS corals that haven't expanded.
Coral listing is as follows:
1. Australian ultra acan (barely holding on, never fully opened up which is why I suspect flow)
2. Frogspawn coral, possibly octospawn (seems to open and close throughout the day)
3. Purple and Green zoanthid colony - the only coral that seems to be doing well so far
4. Small green favia frag (grave digger) also hasn't opened fully for 4 days
5. Rainbow lobophyllia, came to me in rough shape but hasn't gotten worse. Might do OK
6. War coral (hasn't fed and only a few polyps opened after almost a week)
Posted my introduction a week ago here.
Some background:
Tank has been up for over 2 years, but for almost the past year it's been at my parents for a few months while I moved. Since I moved I sort of neglected it and now that I've been quarantined at home I've been dedicated to getting it back on track.
I previously used NoPox to keep down phosphates and nitrates, but have learned a lot this past couple of months if I'm going to keep LPS and softies I can't run and ULNS-style tank. So I've stopped dosing NoPox and begun dosing reef roids and aminos to help my struggling LPS corals.
One of my biggest struggles is figuring out flow for my tank. I currently have a Tunze 6105 (oversized for an 80g I know) but I run it at about 1000gph and a koralia 850gph. All of my corals are LPS currently and all located in the bottom 3rd of my tank.
I rented a par meter to measure at multiple spectrums, intensities, and light elevations throughout my tank to determine hot spots and where par was best suited for particular corals. Despite all this I still feel like my Kessil AP700 is roating my corals. I turned it down to 30% from 50% even though I don't anticipate any of the corals will be seeing much higher than 100 par at this point.
My plan going forward to fix some things is to:
1. Perform ICP tests as a baseline for any possible ailments
2. Change RODI filters and begin measuring TDS with a new meter
3. Using Phosphate-E instead of NoPox to see if I can get my nitrates to rise from absolute 0.
4. Perhaps add in some more rock to deflect some flow from my powerheads and protect some of my more fragile LPS corals that haven't expanded.
Coral listing is as follows:
1. Australian ultra acan (barely holding on, never fully opened up which is why I suspect flow)
2. Frogspawn coral, possibly octospawn (seems to open and close throughout the day)
3. Purple and Green zoanthid colony - the only coral that seems to be doing well so far
4. Small green favia frag (grave digger) also hasn't opened fully for 4 days
5. Rainbow lobophyllia, came to me in rough shape but hasn't gotten worse. Might do OK
6. War coral (hasn't fed and only a few polyps opened after almost a week)