adpuls34
Community Member
Hello!
I have a 30 gallon mixed reef with a 10 gallon sump. When I set up my tank a year ago, the sea lettuce I grew like crazy in both my fuge and my display. That only lasted about 3 months. For the past 9 months I cannot grow macro for the life of me. I have tried sea lettuce, chaeto, and red ogo. They arrive from Algaebarn and then slowly die with no signs of growth whatsoever. Some turn black and others turn clear and dissolve away. I have a kessil h80 13 inches off the water running at the lowest possible intensity on the "grow" spectrum. My current batch of sea lettuce has been in there 2.5 weeks. I slowly acclimated it and started with a 4 hour photoperiod. No growth, but no death. I tried vamping it up to 6 hours and it seemed to decline. I put it back to 4 hours as a result. In the past I usually have ran an 8 hour photo period and this did not work either. All things are well in my tank so this is really just an "icing on the cake" issue. I want to get it growing to reduce my water change schedule (20%/week) and to reduce my need to run GFO occasionally to keep my phosphates down.
SG: 1.025
ALK: 9
MG: 1400
CA: 425
N03: 20 ppm
P04: .05 - 0.1
I recently took an ICP test and have attached results. I attribute the elevated Iron to either the chaeto gro I have been dosing or to running water through my reactor containing GFO too fast. I always mix carbon and GRO but I have not run carbon and GFO since I put in this most recent batch of macro about 2.5 week ago. My understanding is that it can strip the water of nutrients essential for macro.
Thanks for your input, please let me know if any other info would help. I am a new reefer and this is my first reef. I set it up in June of 2021. I have kept freshwater aquariums for 15 years prior.
I have a 30 gallon mixed reef with a 10 gallon sump. When I set up my tank a year ago, the sea lettuce I grew like crazy in both my fuge and my display. That only lasted about 3 months. For the past 9 months I cannot grow macro for the life of me. I have tried sea lettuce, chaeto, and red ogo. They arrive from Algaebarn and then slowly die with no signs of growth whatsoever. Some turn black and others turn clear and dissolve away. I have a kessil h80 13 inches off the water running at the lowest possible intensity on the "grow" spectrum. My current batch of sea lettuce has been in there 2.5 weeks. I slowly acclimated it and started with a 4 hour photoperiod. No growth, but no death. I tried vamping it up to 6 hours and it seemed to decline. I put it back to 4 hours as a result. In the past I usually have ran an 8 hour photo period and this did not work either. All things are well in my tank so this is really just an "icing on the cake" issue. I want to get it growing to reduce my water change schedule (20%/week) and to reduce my need to run GFO occasionally to keep my phosphates down.
SG: 1.025
ALK: 9
MG: 1400
CA: 425
N03: 20 ppm
P04: .05 - 0.1
I recently took an ICP test and have attached results. I attribute the elevated Iron to either the chaeto gro I have been dosing or to running water through my reactor containing GFO too fast. I always mix carbon and GRO but I have not run carbon and GFO since I put in this most recent batch of macro about 2.5 week ago. My understanding is that it can strip the water of nutrients essential for macro.
Thanks for your input, please let me know if any other info would help. I am a new reefer and this is my first reef. I set it up in June of 2021. I have kept freshwater aquariums for 15 years prior.
