I have a 240 gallon display, 350 gallon system. It's a little over a year old. Up until 3 months ago, I was losing corals like crazy, I lost several thousand $$ worth of coral. The only things that did ok were easy starter corals like zoas or mushrooms. SPS would quickly die within a week or two whenever I tried to introduce it, even monti caps and green slimers. Torches would last a couple months. Hammers were hit or miss, I still have some that survived from back then, but some would seem ok and then suddenly die, one head at a time.
My parameters have always been pretty stable, nitrates between 10 and 20, phosphates from .1 to .2. I keep alk around 9. Salinity is 1.026, temp 78.
I run a skimmer, roller mat, and algae scrubber. I also use carbon. I have a calcium reactor. I dose phyto. I do daily 5 gallon auto water changes.
3 months ago, I decided to violate a cardinal rule in reefing, and introduced several changes all at once. I know this isn't what I should have done "in the interest of science", but I'm impatient and didn't want to take the time to try them one at a time. And there has been a massive improvement! SPS is not only surviving, but growing! My zoas are growing like crazy. Torches are doing well. It's like night and day.
Here's what I did:
Salt: Two of my mentors (an LFS owner and a coral farmer with a PhD in chemistry) both strongly (and independently) recommended that I change salt. So I changed from Brightwell salt to Tropic Marin pro reef. They were adamant that the Brightwell salt was the cause of my problems. I'm still skeptical about this, many people have great success with Brightwell, including two different coral farmers I know. But it was easy enough to change salt, so I did.
Carbon dosing: I started dosing carbon, using Tropic Marin Elimi-NP. I ramped up to 5.5 ml, dosed in the morning.
Kalk: To get more PH stability, I decided to turn down my calcium reactor and start dosing kalk. I dose 10 liters of kalk/day, 80% of it at night.
Trace elements: I started Reef Moonshiners. Here's the issues my initial ICP test (ATI) showed, which I went on to correct with RM Elements:
Potassium at 371, RM wanted me to raise to 410
Bromine, Boron, Molybdenum low.
Fluoride at .39, RM wanted me to raise to 1.5
Iodine 16.6, RM wants 75-95.
Barium elevated at 62, it's since dropped to 33. RM wants 15.
Nickel 0, RM wants 2.5
Zinc 2.33, RM wants 5
So out of all of these things, can anyone guess what turned my tank around? Each of these changes was an improvement (except for perhaps the salt), but would any of them make the difference between corals dying and thriving? Maybe the reef moonshiners? But with nothing really growing in my tank, and since I was doing regular water changes, it's hard to see how my traces could become depleted to the point that everything died. The tank had pretty much what was in the salt mix. If the issues with Brightwell salt were true, that would explain it, but I'm skeptical of that. You might say that the tank just turned a corner because of maturity, but I'm skeptical of that too. It was too much of a dramatic sudden improvement after I implemented the changes above.
My parameters have always been pretty stable, nitrates between 10 and 20, phosphates from .1 to .2. I keep alk around 9. Salinity is 1.026, temp 78.
I run a skimmer, roller mat, and algae scrubber. I also use carbon. I have a calcium reactor. I dose phyto. I do daily 5 gallon auto water changes.
3 months ago, I decided to violate a cardinal rule in reefing, and introduced several changes all at once. I know this isn't what I should have done "in the interest of science", but I'm impatient and didn't want to take the time to try them one at a time. And there has been a massive improvement! SPS is not only surviving, but growing! My zoas are growing like crazy. Torches are doing well. It's like night and day.
Here's what I did:
Salt: Two of my mentors (an LFS owner and a coral farmer with a PhD in chemistry) both strongly (and independently) recommended that I change salt. So I changed from Brightwell salt to Tropic Marin pro reef. They were adamant that the Brightwell salt was the cause of my problems. I'm still skeptical about this, many people have great success with Brightwell, including two different coral farmers I know. But it was easy enough to change salt, so I did.
Carbon dosing: I started dosing carbon, using Tropic Marin Elimi-NP. I ramped up to 5.5 ml, dosed in the morning.
Kalk: To get more PH stability, I decided to turn down my calcium reactor and start dosing kalk. I dose 10 liters of kalk/day, 80% of it at night.
Trace elements: I started Reef Moonshiners. Here's the issues my initial ICP test (ATI) showed, which I went on to correct with RM Elements:
Potassium at 371, RM wanted me to raise to 410
Bromine, Boron, Molybdenum low.
Fluoride at .39, RM wanted me to raise to 1.5
Iodine 16.6, RM wants 75-95.
Barium elevated at 62, it's since dropped to 33. RM wants 15.
Nickel 0, RM wants 2.5
Zinc 2.33, RM wants 5
So out of all of these things, can anyone guess what turned my tank around? Each of these changes was an improvement (except for perhaps the salt), but would any of them make the difference between corals dying and thriving? Maybe the reef moonshiners? But with nothing really growing in my tank, and since I was doing regular water changes, it's hard to see how my traces could become depleted to the point that everything died. The tank had pretty much what was in the salt mix. If the issues with Brightwell salt were true, that would explain it, but I'm skeptical of that. You might say that the tank just turned a corner because of maturity, but I'm skeptical of that too. It was too much of a dramatic sudden improvement after I implemented the changes above.
