Just a quick update since I've been so lax. I took some time off this winter and the tank has been on auto pilot pretty much. I just changed out all 24 t5 bulbs and lo and behold, my tank now looks like utter crap. some corals have gone totally pastel. Some are bleached. Some are brown.
I had bleaching on some of my corals before the change and some browning. I've cut the photo period back to 5 hours for 8 bulbs, 6 hours for 8 bulbs, 9 hours for 8 bulbs.
I was dosing vodka heavily and I think I might have gone overboard and stripped out too much. I have a bropsis outbreak I think from the spectrum shift of the light and a nutrient spike... I lost my LARGE orange diamond goby
I also lost a few firefish. I swear its damn near impossible for me to keep firefish. I only have 2 purples and a red left.
What I've done to remedy the situation:
1) Carbon reactor has gone off line. I'll put it online once a week each month.
2) vodka dosing cut down by 1/3rd. (down to 12 ml a day)
3) Started dosing Iodine every other day.
4) Went back to weekly 50 gallon water changes. I was sloppy and was doing 50 gallons every 2 months or so.
5) Started dosing Iron every other day. My macro algae started turning a really weird light green color and was very, very thin. I think it was iron deficient.
6) Started dosing amino acids every day.
7) Started a bi weekly Oyster egg feeding about 15 minutes after lights off.
8) Turned the skimmer down to pull dry foam. I was pulling very wet skimmate in the past.
Hopefully this will start to help the situation. I scrubbed down the back wall and all algae I can reach. I scrubbed a few rocks in place that I can. The tangs are trying their mighty best to eat ALL the algae. They do pretty well but there are places where the stuff grows in a dense mat that they can't seem to rip off the rocks. There are some tumbleweeds of it on the sand mixed in. They are slowly thinning it out.
Its frustrating because the coral are starting to color back up (some) at their tips. However the micro algae is starting to color up really well also
Hopefully I can get the coral back to how they should be then burn the algae out.
Obviously Phosphate and Nitrate are pretty much undetectable. Po on my hanna meter reads really really close to zero. The nitrate i think is a problem. I think I went over board and started starving the coral. The damn byropisis is driving me insane though... how the hell does that stuff survive?
I burnt it out last time this happened... This outbreak is worse though. Hopefully I can get it this time too
