Wait what?!!!
I had a montipora frag a while ago in the same nitrate conditions and all it did was just brown out & die...
My tank is a LPS & softies only tank so i don't run my lights full power, i have about 170 PAR where my torches are, the lights are 2x Ai Primes 16hd on the pennywise deadlights 81% schedule.
If I had to guess. That monti browned out due to lack of light (and flow).
I don't know what a "pennywise deadlights 81% schedule" entails. But if it is blue heavy then your are definitely way under-lighting. PAR is an indication, not the full story.
That toadstool leather is used to get up to 900 PAR or even more in the wild.
Leathers are not very deep living low light corals. Neither are torches.
That they can make due with a lot less light, does not mean that you need to give them very little.
The tank in my pictures was ~55 gallons, got 200 PAR at the bottom and 40-100 times the tank volume in flow.
You are telling me to remove the ecotech biospheres in my AIO sump? aren't those benificial to increase nitrification surface? i will rinse them while water changing.
i am slowly increasing the flow lately, although flow is always a struggle...
I have a tunze doc 9004dc skimmer, wich should even be oversized for the tank instead of undersized..
Yes. Nitrification is making nitrate out of ammonia and nitrite. So, increasing nitrification makes nitrate and increases your "problem". But I don't think the nitrate by itself is your problem, its a symptom…
Lowering nitrification prevents nitrate from being formed. Corals rather use ammonia directly in stead of nitrate. So, yes lowering nitrification in a REEF tank is desired.
That skimmer is rather small. I would rate it for tanks up to 100 Liters.
But with your current fish stocking it probably is enough.
I was busy finding and buying a house at the time and tank maintenance suffered. When I discovered nitrate had gone up to 90 I cleaned my skimmer and started doing monthly/bimonthly 25% water changes again. Nothing more.Btw, how did you lower the nitrate to 40?
During a water change I always clean out a bit of the sand bed, just a standard practise of mine.
I don’t use carbon dosing.
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