Lexinverts

Weird that you don't have any detectable nitrate, but you do have phosphate. What nitrate test kit do you use? You have a few options to raise nitrate that I can think of. 1) Only run your skimmer at night. This will also increase your phosphate, but you could also add a little more GFO to control for this. (Try not to let your phosphate get much lower than .03.) 2) Add more fish and/or feed them more. You'll also need to up your GFO in order to prevent a concomitant increase in phosphate. 3) Dose Acropower, which produces some nitrate. It also has aminos, which your corals will appreciate. You'll also need to up your GFO because it contains phosphate too. 4) Dose potassium nitrate or calcium nitrate (http://www.planetnatural.com/product/cal-mag-plus/ or http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/301084914962?ul_noapp=true&chn=ps&lpid=82) like they do as fertilizer in freshwater planted tanks (no phosphate in these additives). I would only try this if you don't have success trying the other options. Good luck!

You'll probably need to add some flow, Jorge. I have a Gyre on one of mine and two Jebaos on the other. There are too many dead spots with the stock pumps. It also helps to put a spin stream on the output of the main pump, to prevent a sandstorm.

It's between .1 and .05. Right now it is .05 in my office tank and .1 in my home tank. Your phosphate is fine at .08, in my opinion. When your phosphate is higher than your nitrate, you have a recipe for cyanobacteria blooming, since cyanobacteria can fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere (unlike algae and corals, which are limited by nitrate). Many people have cyano problems at the params that you mentioned, and then see improvement when they raise their nitrate a bit.

Yup, you want to have some nitrate in your water. What are you using to control nutrients? Whatever it is, you want to back it off until you have at least 2 ppm of nitrate, but I like to keep mine higher.....around 8-10 ppm.

There are some limitations to them, but you'll be hard pressed to find a cleaner looking system!

Have you backed off the carbon dosing? I would do that too. Turning off the skimmer isn't optimal (especially at night), because it aerates your water as well skimming. Glad to hear things are looking up!

Nice RSM250! I have two of them. They are nice tanks!

Reduce your carbon dosing, and let your nitrates go back up to 8. I have had similar issues when carbon dosing. At 1 ppm nitrates my acros died too.

I like Hanna checkers for alkalinity and phosphate, Salifert kits for Ca, and Alkalinity, Red Sea for Mg and Nitrate. If you are just going to pick one brand of kit and get all of them, go with Salifert. If you have an Iphone, I recommend the "Reef Tank Pro" App to keep track of it all and plot graphs over time. Good luck!

Bartlett's Anthias! I love mine.

Vancouver WA's own Kelly Joe Phelps! Portland's own Tony Furtado! Milwaukee's (WI) own Peter Mulvey

I'm thinking that the mother colony has perished or is in bad shape. I recall a thread in which Tim mentioned that he was having some trouble with his tank and was looking for someone else to hold it for him. I believe that BadXgillen has plans for an acro growout in the near future, however.

Why do SPS corals have tentacles when they are primarily photosynthetic? Natural selection can favor new uses for an organism's structures in new environments. Sure, most species of Parrotfish do use their beaks to eat coral, but there are a handful of species that do not.

Yes, I turn the skimmer and my Gyre off and spot feed with a syringe. I have started feeding 3 times per week (I used to feed once per week), and they have really perked up for me. I have a Reefgen Lemon Lime Goni and a huge ORA Red Goni.

That is a really nice piece! My Gonis seem to really appreciate this stuff, developed by Justin Credabal of Reefgen: http://www.marinedepot.com/Two_Little_Fishies_Goniopower_Advanced_Zooplankton_Diet_Phytoplankton_Fish_Coral_Food-Two_Little_Fishies-TL50053-FIFDDRPP-vi.html Good luck with it.

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Whatever came of the hullabaloo over Bayer being discontinued because of its effects on honeybees? Did they change the formula or is this the same stuff? I need to get some more so I wanted to see if the Bayer Complete from Home Depot is still the stuff to use. As an aside, I've seen Aussies post that their version of Bayer has different ingredients but also works well against flatworms.

Scored some nice frags/mini colonies from Cerk and Garret at The Premium Aquarium. Garret has some nice stuff in his new frag system! Red Planet, Mattv Sailor's Warning, Bali Slimer, TECO slimer, Stags aplenty, etc...

Looks like a good time. I wish I could have made it!

I agree.....that's an awesome slimer colony! I need another one too. Amazing tank.

Go Badgers! Wisconsin Badgers "Bucky" outline logo by NotreDameIrish, on Flickr

Looks great Kim! I thought that you had sworn off dosing.

It's been a while since I updated this thread. I just got back from a month in the midwest, so I am re-stocking and re-booting my tanks. I have Triton dosing dialed in, and it is working quite well for me so far. Here's a picture of my recently re-stocked office tank. Thanks to CuttlefishandCorals, Cerk, and Badxgillen for the frags/colonies for the reboot!

I would drastically reduce the amount of your water changes that you do each time. Drop it down to 10-20% per week. I would test your Alk and Ca every few days and see what patterns that you see (including right after a water change). I find the Salifert test kits to work best for me for alk and ca. If you see your Alk and Ca change too much between water changes, consider doing water changes every 3 days. Alternatively, there are "nano" dosing systems that you can use to replenish Alk and Ca, but I would see what you can do with some small water changes first. I would also pull out your purigen and your GFO and do the same monitoring for Nitrate and Phosphate. Check it every few days and see what you see. If you can keep nitrate in the range of 5-10 ppm and Phosphate between .03 and .1 using only water changes to export nutrients I think that you will be golden. I prefer the Red Sea test kits for Nitrate and Phospate. Good luck!

Just to be clear, when we are referring to "nutrients" we are referring to nitrate and phosphate. By doing those large water changes, you could be controlling for depeletion of important ions like Ca, Carbonate (Alk), and Mg, but who knows? One other possibility is that in such a small system, you might cause the parameters to change substantially with each large water change. A spike in your alkalinity every week right after your water change could be stressing your corals as well. However, I think the most likely culprit is that your nutrients are too low and you are starving your corals.