DiscoStuart
Active Member
Left on holiday for a week last Friday. And of course, things start going crazy. Testing via Alkatronic for Alk and Mastertronic for the rest. Did an ICP about a week ago and was reasonably in line with the Mastertronic results.
Since I left, the below is what happened and I’m trying to avoid over reacting from a far but hoping I don’t come home to dead corals.
Trust the testing, stop dosing Ca/Mg and increase dosing on Nitrate and Phosphate?
Don’t trust the testing and go back to dosing levels before I left?
Something else?
Since I left, the below is what happened and I’m trying to avoid over reacting from a far but hoping I don’t come home to dead corals.
- Calcium spiked from 454 to 561 4 days after a water change, but it was Nyos salt that should be around 400 or so. I've also been dosing 6 ml/day of the calcium/magnesium part of the Reef's Elements Ultimate. I switched right before leaving for hols from Nyos Ca/Mg. Shame on me, but the Nyos ran out the day before and the bottles have the same Ca concentration per ml. But that shouldn’t be enough to explain it. Could be testing issues? Had been stable for ~2 months.
- At the same time, magnesium went from 1350 to 1580 across the same exact timeline. Same dosing, no other changes.
- Nitrate went from a reasonably stable 7 to 10, dropped below 1, and then I've had to start dosing 5 to 8 ppm a day just to keep it reading at 1 to 2. I’m feeding flakes a couple of times a day via an auto feeder but perhaps this is less than the flakes (am) and cube (pm) I’d been feeding. I can’t change frequency or amount while away.
- At the same time, phosphate consumption has increased and levels started dropping. It was pretty stable around 0.1 and then has come down to somewhere between 0.07 and 0.04 even with increased dosing.
- Alkalinity consumption has also increased. Was a couple of days after I left before that started. I've kept it pretty stable around 8.5. But only with significant increased dosing, I'd say double what I'd been dosing before. Only dosing around 25ml of Nyos Ionic B Alk a day still, so this one could be demand increasing after a period of instability.
- Salinity stable at 35 (well, 35 on my apex, which is 34 on my ICP)
- I’m just on the other side of Dinos, from nutrients bottoming out, so am anxious to avoid that again.
- Also fighting GHA (or similar) that was taking over the sandbed and frags. Have been pulling and scrubbing but definitely haven’t won the fight yet.
- 100 gal DT
- 2 clowns, yellow tang, Tomini tank, pink streaked wrasse, couple of urchins. Lots of snails.
- Handful of frags (SPS, LPS, softies) but no big colonies.
- Starting to see some coraline, but limited
Trust the testing, stop dosing Ca/Mg and increase dosing on Nitrate and Phosphate?
Don’t trust the testing and go back to dosing levels before I left?
Something else?
