thegasman2000
New member
So I have a 275 litre cube. It has been running for over a year as a fish only tank and now I have decided to make it a reef.
I worked in the hobby and lost interest in maintaining my own tank after working all hours in the day cleaning tanks... Needless to say it went over 6 months without a WC :sad2: It had algae and generally didn't look too bad but I never managed to grow any coralline algae at all. This caused me to buy some Kent Coralline grow additive and dose it. I still have no coralline and now my water chemistry is all out of wack. I should add this is after 4 5 gallon water changes over 2 weeks.
SG: 1.024
PH: 8.3
NH3: 0.3ppm
NO2: 0.1ppm
NO3: 20ppm
PO4: 0 - 0.25ppm
KH: 7.8
Ca: 700ppm
Mag: 7200ppm
RO TDS: 0.04
I have just started the Aquaforest regime to sort the nitrates and phosphates out. I have also added some Siporax as I worried my minimalist scape isn't filtering enough. So the nitrates, phosphates and ammonia should all be heading south soon. Alk has been pretty steady and then WHAM my Calcium is so far out of range I had to multiply the scale on the test kit (red sea) and the same with the ridiculous Magnesium result (red sea). All kits in date and pretty confident in them as double checked with my old works kits.
I have recently added a couple new fish and my first frags. I imagine they are loving the excess calcium and magnesium but i think it would take 100 years to reduce it with these 3 little hard corals.:hmm3: I have never seen the issue of too high calcium and magnesium so a little stumped. It is going to be an issue at all? Do I just carry on adding corals until it starts to reduce naturally?
I worked in the hobby and lost interest in maintaining my own tank after working all hours in the day cleaning tanks... Needless to say it went over 6 months without a WC :sad2: It had algae and generally didn't look too bad but I never managed to grow any coralline algae at all. This caused me to buy some Kent Coralline grow additive and dose it. I still have no coralline and now my water chemistry is all out of wack. I should add this is after 4 5 gallon water changes over 2 weeks.
SG: 1.024
PH: 8.3
NH3: 0.3ppm
NO2: 0.1ppm
NO3: 20ppm
PO4: 0 - 0.25ppm
KH: 7.8
Ca: 700ppm
Mag: 7200ppm
RO TDS: 0.04
I have just started the Aquaforest regime to sort the nitrates and phosphates out. I have also added some Siporax as I worried my minimalist scape isn't filtering enough. So the nitrates, phosphates and ammonia should all be heading south soon. Alk has been pretty steady and then WHAM my Calcium is so far out of range I had to multiply the scale on the test kit (red sea) and the same with the ridiculous Magnesium result (red sea). All kits in date and pretty confident in them as double checked with my old works kits.
I have recently added a couple new fish and my first frags. I imagine they are loving the excess calcium and magnesium but i think it would take 100 years to reduce it with these 3 little hard corals.:hmm3: I have never seen the issue of too high calcium and magnesium so a little stumped. It is going to be an issue at all? Do I just carry on adding corals until it starts to reduce naturally?
