ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Cool, thanks for everything!
Bacto Balance, or Elimi-NP?
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ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Lowered to 20ml MB7 the past few days, continuing with 7ml BB, 2ml Elim. Past few days show NO3 slowly rising, whilst PO4 slowly dropping. Interesting trend. Trying to balance the nutrients maybe?
Think I'll move to 2x per week testing, since I'm not too concerned with nutrients moving quickly. Seems like a slow moving ship, which hopefully will sail me to the promise land someday. LOL.
Think I'll move to 2x per week testing, since I'm not too concerned with nutrients moving quickly. Seems like a slow moving ship, which hopefully will sail me to the promise land someday. LOL.
Troylee
all about the diy!!!!!
Slow is always better in this hobby! lol.. if you don’t have corals then yeah we can bring them down today with gfo and a huge water change but corals don’t like that kinda change.Lowered to 20ml MB7 the past few days, continuing with 7ml BB, 2ml Elim. Past few days show NO3 slowly rising, whilst PO4 slowly dropping. Interesting trend. Trying to balance the nutrients maybe?
Think I'll move to 2x per week testing, since I'm not too concerned with nutrients moving quickly. Seems like a slow moving ship, which hopefully will sail me to the promise land someday. LOL.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Did the past week at 10ml MB7, continuing with 7ml BB, 2ml Elim.
Nutrients seemed to have leveled out, very little action.
NO3 37.7 to 36, PO4 0.53 to 0.52.
Options:
1. Go back to 20ml MB7 for another week to confirm MB7 effectiveness.
2. Keep MB7 at 10ml, increase Elim to 3ml, and decrease BB (to 5ml?).
3. Continue with 10ml MB7, 7ml BB, 2ml Elim to see a longer term trend.
Thoughts?
Nutrients seemed to have leveled out, very little action.
NO3 37.7 to 36, PO4 0.53 to 0.52.
Options:
1. Go back to 20ml MB7 for another week to confirm MB7 effectiveness.
2. Keep MB7 at 10ml, increase Elim to 3ml, and decrease BB (to 5ml?).
3. Continue with 10ml MB7, 7ml BB, 2ml Elim to see a longer term trend.
Thoughts?
Troylee
all about the diy!!!!!
How does your tank look? Is it accepting the change and looking better or worse..Did the past week at 10ml MB7, continuing with 7ml BB, 2ml Elim.
Nutrients seemed to have leveled out, very little action.
NO3 37.7 to 36, PO4 0.53 to 0.52.
Options:
1. Go back to 20ml MB7 for another week to confirm MB7 effectiveness.
2. Keep MB7 at 10ml, increase Elim to 3ml, and decrease BB (to 5ml?).
3. Continue with 10ml MB7, 7ml BB, 2ml Elim to see a longer term trend.
Thoughts?
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Definitely better water quality, and corals like this scheme, shown by brightening up, and better colors. There is a little brown algae forming on the glass, which I never had before.
Fish and inverts are fine. Some rock work which was on the browner side is getting less brown and showing whiteness. Coralline algae is also breaking up in some places and being replaced by a light sandlike color.
Overall seems fine though.
Troylee
all about the diy!!!!!
I’d say stay on your path of bringing them down to level you want and then just stick with bacto balance and the mb7 once it’s where your tank looks the best. The numbers you’re at are pretty solid looking at most of the tanks today. Mine personally runs much lower nitrates but my p04 finally stabilized around yours after using reef roids for awhile cause it was bottomed out.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Okay thanks, I'll stay the course.
I've also noticed the skimmer cup fills up with bubbles that do not burst. This morning when I went to clean the skimmer cup (every 4 days), I noticed that the bubbles were packed in so much that they reached the air output in the cover, which pushes oxygen to my moisture collector, the output of which then goes to my co2 scrubber to recirculate to the skimmer.
The moisture collector seems to fill up more lately due to the bubbles reaching that output. I think those bubbles had been impeding the flow of oxygen to some extent, which could have possibly had a negative effect on nutrient reduction by limiting oxygen to the bacteria.
Maybe I'm using too much BB which is causing this bubble excess?
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
From reading around, it seems like this overproduction of bubbles, to the extent where it packs the skimmer cup, could be due to too much carbon dosing. So I am going to reduce the BB to 4ml, increase the Elim to 3ml, and keep the MB7 at 10ml. I started MB7 around the same time as BB, so MB7 could be a contributing factor, but I'd like to keep the MB7 dosage the same so I don't introduce another variable.
I never had this problem when solely dosing Elim for the first month of this year, so I'm comfortable increasing the Elim dosage without affecting the bubble production. It's either too much BB or too much MB7, or a combo.
Troylee
all about the diy!!!!!
It’s not a bad idea since they might be counteracting each other.. you could prolly stop the bactobalance till there down and then switch from elim to straight bacto. If my memory serves me correct bacto has n03 and p04 in it to keep from bottoming out.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
My thought was to try to keep the nutrients in balance whilst lowering them, so was going for the best of both worlds. I never tried just Elimi and MB7 without the BB. I'll see how this goes for a week, and keep that in mind for the next trial.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Decreasing BB from 7ml to 4ml along with increasing Elim from 2ml to 3ml caused an increase in nutrients as shown in the jump in the charts below. After seeing that, I put the BB back to 7ml and kept the Elim at 3ml, and that has brought PO4 back down to where I started before the change, and NO3 even a little lower.
So for my tank, Elim by itself did not work, and this past change shows that removing BB does not work either. It is the combination of both that is working for me. I will stay on the same plan (BB=7ml, Elim=3ml, MB7=10ml) for a while, since this combo has shown to be my only working formula.
So for my tank, Elim by itself did not work, and this past change shows that removing BB does not work either. It is the combination of both that is working for me. I will stay on the same plan (BB=7ml, Elim=3ml, MB7=10ml) for a while, since this combo has shown to be my only working formula.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Steady progress over the past month with BB=7 (around the clock), Elim=3 (1.5 2x per day), and MB7=5 (right after first Elim dose). Believe there is lots of PO4 in the rock work, as a few which were darkish are turning white, and have coralline in places. This is working but just takes a lot of time and patience. Water is very clear, inhabitants are doing well, parameters are steady. Skimming seems more efficient, and skimmate has been getting darker and more flecky over the past couple of weeks. Getting there.
lubeck
Valuable Member
Interesting. I started Bacto Balance last week and have been tracking. Too early to tell. I have PO4 problem with the rocks too. I’ve been using phos-ban once a week but it just shoots back up after a few days.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Looks like I hit an inflection point over the past month. NO3 bottomed at 22.6 and PO4 bottomed at 0.4. I've waited a couple weeks to be sure.
I'm thinking the combination of Elim (3ml) and BB (7ml) reached a balance.
Since this is nowhere near the nutrient levels I want, I have changed this formula to 4ml Elim and 2ml BB for the next month, keeping the MB7 at 5ml. Thinking that the heavy BB dose was preventing further decline.
I don't want to cut out the BB altogether, since my past experience showed that Elim alone did not work for me.
I'm thinking the combination of Elim (3ml) and BB (7ml) reached a balance.
Since this is nowhere near the nutrient levels I want, I have changed this formula to 4ml Elim and 2ml BB for the next month, keeping the MB7 at 5ml. Thinking that the heavy BB dose was preventing further decline.
I don't want to cut out the BB altogether, since my past experience showed that Elim alone did not work for me.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Reducing the BB dose was not a good idea. In just 2 days, NO3 jumped from 23.6 to 25.7, and PO4 jumped from 0.44 to 0.60. Brought the BB dose back to 7ml. Also started a daily 10ml Elimi Phos Rapid dose today. Dosed all at once into the Clarisea fleece roller. It dropped PO4 to 0.55 in about an hour, so that’s encouraging. Fish and inverts don’t seem to mind. I’ll be doing this for a while, testing 2x per week: BB=7ml, Elimi NP=4ml, Elimi Phos=10ml, MB7=5ml.
ReefKeeperElite
Active Member
Elimi Phos Rapid was VERY effective. Just 2 days of 10ml dropped PO4 to 0.16. Removing this for now, but good to have it in the toolbox. NO3 back to 23.3. Fish and inverts still look fine. Continuing with the Elimi NP, BB, MB7 combo.
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