GothFishKeeper
Active Member
Disclaimer: I know this is a very long post with lots of explanation and ranting, but if you’re willing to read through it that would mean the world to me because I’m kinda freaking out.
I use hanna checkers for my alk, ca, and po4, but I’m still using the salifert kit for no3. I work for a reef shop that has an aquaspin which I used yesterday, and my no3 was all the way at 20ppm. I then realized that may have been because I fed my tank pretty heavily just a couple minutes before collecting that sample. Just now I tested with my salifert kit but I’m still unsure about which way I should be reading it. Do I place the vial directly on top of the card, therefore causing the shadow of it to be taken into account, or do I hold the vial just above the card so I’m looking at straight white underneath pink? I still have a bit of a hard time believing that my no3 could be that high when not long ago my ICP test results were showing 8ppm. There have been zero major changes to the tank aside from 6 days go when I traded my BTA for some acro frags. The nem was 14” wide so I would guess it was consuming a lot of nutrients, but only compared to the amount other individual corals do. Not enough to have a 12-17ppm jump. I would consider doing a po4 test and comparing it to the 0.1ppm from yesterday (ICP result was 0.022) but I’m out of reagents for my checker at the moment.
If somehow my nutrients have indeed skyrocketed like this, what is a way that I can reduce nutrients aside from water changes? I ask that because I’ve been doing reef moonshine on my tank so any significant water change would set back a huge amount of progress on correcting all the different levels. I really have noticed a difference in my corals since starting it so I really don’t wanna throw it off.
Would carbon dosing be a viable option? I’ve heard that can be integrated into a kalk reactor which I do have, but I’m really unsure about how it works, and what carbon dosing even is. So if someone could explain the details of that to me as well it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!!
I use hanna checkers for my alk, ca, and po4, but I’m still using the salifert kit for no3. I work for a reef shop that has an aquaspin which I used yesterday, and my no3 was all the way at 20ppm. I then realized that may have been because I fed my tank pretty heavily just a couple minutes before collecting that sample. Just now I tested with my salifert kit but I’m still unsure about which way I should be reading it. Do I place the vial directly on top of the card, therefore causing the shadow of it to be taken into account, or do I hold the vial just above the card so I’m looking at straight white underneath pink? I still have a bit of a hard time believing that my no3 could be that high when not long ago my ICP test results were showing 8ppm. There have been zero major changes to the tank aside from 6 days go when I traded my BTA for some acro frags. The nem was 14” wide so I would guess it was consuming a lot of nutrients, but only compared to the amount other individual corals do. Not enough to have a 12-17ppm jump. I would consider doing a po4 test and comparing it to the 0.1ppm from yesterday (ICP result was 0.022) but I’m out of reagents for my checker at the moment.
If somehow my nutrients have indeed skyrocketed like this, what is a way that I can reduce nutrients aside from water changes? I ask that because I’ve been doing reef moonshine on my tank so any significant water change would set back a huge amount of progress on correcting all the different levels. I really have noticed a difference in my corals since starting it so I really don’t wanna throw it off.
Would carbon dosing be a viable option? I’ve heard that can be integrated into a kalk reactor which I do have, but I’m really unsure about how it works, and what carbon dosing even is. So if someone could explain the details of that to me as well it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!!
