ULNS, Coral Feeding & Amino Acid Dosing

[Jordan Parker]

Before I begin, I should declare that I am a fairly recent successful reefer (as in I finally stopped killing all of my corals) with my 80 gallon display and 55 gallon sump. I will try to include as much information as I can without being too much of a bore, this may be a long one.

I run two Viparspectra 165w LED's mated with a 36" Aquatic Life hybrid T5 fixture for lighting. The Vipars are run at 1% white spectrum and 30% blue spectrum. The blues are on from 1pm to 1am and the whites are on from 5pm to 8pm. The T5's (two ATI blue plus, a purple plus, and a coral plus) are on from 2pm to 11:30pm.

After conquring a frustrating SPS brown out, I have just finally achieved the state of an ULNS about a month ago through the method of carbon dosing with vodka and running a TLF 150 reactor loaded with a cup and half of high capacity GFO. I am currently sitting at .75 ppm NO3 and .01 ppm PO4 testing with Red Sea and have stopped dosing vodka as a result with no up rise in nutrients despite over feeding my fish daily. I also have a ~20 gallon refugium in my sump that doesn't really grow much of any algae, it more or less maintains what is already there.

To maintain my parameters I dose ESV Bionic two part, 16ml of each per day. I have been maintaining 8.6 DKH, 460ppm calcium, and 1370ppm magnesium with very minimal fluctuations over two to three days.

I also maintain temperature to 82° F and no more than .3° F fluctuations +/- through the help of my Apex controller with the temperature probe upsteam of the heater in my sump.

The pH stays relatively stable, though low despite my countermeasures. It is in the range of 8.1 to 7.9 via the Apex controller. I've already routed my skimmer intake to an open window.

ORP, I've yet to conclude an understanding of this parameter aside from the target range. It is generally 400 +/- 30mV

And fianlly, salinity is 35ppt +/- .1ppt.

In my primarily SPS system I am finding, since obtaining these lower levels of nutrients and continuing on with my twice weekly coral feeding and amino dosing, that I am experiencing washed out colors and one coral loss by way of RTN from the base. Though suspected, but not confirmed to be from the lack of nutrients.

My prior feeding was done on Sunday and Wednesday. I feed Seachem phytoplankton and zooplankton, 10ml of each. I also dose 20ml of Aquavitro Fuel. I chose these products to feed solely based on local availability. I also feed, once a week on Sunday, Vitalis SPS food and LPS pellets.


Here is a current full tank shot. Some SPS is doing well, others are fading. My green encrusting acro to the upper left as well as the branching green acro on the upper right. I've also begun to nocie a drastic decline in the depth of the purple skin on my stellata.

Here is a picture of the sump setup.

I have been contemplating the idea of dosing amino acids every day as well as feeding zoo and phytoplanktons daily as well to keep the corals fed. My only problem with this is that it is quite cumbersome for me to manually dose as I have a relatively busy schedule.

I am curious to see what other more experienced ULNS reefers feed, how often, and how much to aleviate pale SPS in their ULN systems.

So, any help and advice would be not only helpful but greatly appreciated!

Thanks.
Jordan.

 

[Da8]

And the question is why do you want to run a ULNS ?

You are doing way too much to keep your nutrients low with a reef that in my opinion needs the opposite.


Sps do great away from ulns. but don't go to the opposite side either. Try to achieve stability.

Guess that your system is maybe not mature enough to reach its own stability, but it will slowly go that direction.


I would leave just the fuge. It's enough for helping maintain good levels.

Feeding. Doze just the recommended dosis of AA. Use a brand that just are AA. If you use a product all in one like fuel is more difficult to doze without increasing phosphate levels.
If you dose too much AA corals tend to darken.
Feed daily to your fish. That's enough with the amount of corals you have.

In the future you will have to add more often phyto and zooplacton at nights. Almost daily. Remember corals eat everyday.