Hi fellow reefers,
Dear @Lou Ekus and @Hans-Werner , your knowledge input would be so much appreciated on this matter…!
My question is about TM trace elements.
I have a 20g nano cube running for a year with lps only, and import of trace elements comes from the following:
A) automatic water change of 2 liters/day with TM Pro-Reef salt (considering the system likely has around 65 liters of real water volume, this is roughly 20% weekly)
B) All-for-Reef dosed daily, currently 4ml / day to keep kH around 8
The thing is, in the past 3 weeks I have been dealing with no detectable Po4 nor No3, which will not benefit my lps corals. I stopped the water changes immediately and reduced my skimmer timing to 16 hours/day, and after 3 weeks I am still reading zero Po4 and am up 0.4 on the No3… so I think my system reached a point where it is able to thrive without regular water changes, the skimmer and additional filtration seem enough for nutrient export.
That leaves me with a deficit on trace elements, as the pro-reef salt 2 liters/day have stopped, and the all-for-reef trace elements are not enough. I confirmed this with an ICP, that showed around 12 elements between 20% and 50%.
So I am thinking of buying TM A and K Trace Elements, but don’t know how I should approach the dosing. Your instructions of 1ml daily for trace elements is probably not considering my additional trace element dosing via all-for-reef.
Do you think A and K Trace Elements is my best bet? If so, how should I approach dosing? Or should I just go on with the regular water changes and manually dose Po4 and No3?
Kind of lost here… many thanks for your help :)
Filipe from Portugal
Dear @Lou Ekus and @Hans-Werner , your knowledge input would be so much appreciated on this matter…!
My question is about TM trace elements.
I have a 20g nano cube running for a year with lps only, and import of trace elements comes from the following:
A) automatic water change of 2 liters/day with TM Pro-Reef salt (considering the system likely has around 65 liters of real water volume, this is roughly 20% weekly)
B) All-for-Reef dosed daily, currently 4ml / day to keep kH around 8
The thing is, in the past 3 weeks I have been dealing with no detectable Po4 nor No3, which will not benefit my lps corals. I stopped the water changes immediately and reduced my skimmer timing to 16 hours/day, and after 3 weeks I am still reading zero Po4 and am up 0.4 on the No3… so I think my system reached a point where it is able to thrive without regular water changes, the skimmer and additional filtration seem enough for nutrient export.
That leaves me with a deficit on trace elements, as the pro-reef salt 2 liters/day have stopped, and the all-for-reef trace elements are not enough. I confirmed this with an ICP, that showed around 12 elements between 20% and 50%.
So I am thinking of buying TM A and K Trace Elements, but don’t know how I should approach the dosing. Your instructions of 1ml daily for trace elements is probably not considering my additional trace element dosing via all-for-reef.
Do you think A and K Trace Elements is my best bet? If so, how should I approach dosing? Or should I just go on with the regular water changes and manually dose Po4 and No3?
Kind of lost here… many thanks for your help :)
Filipe from Portugal
