Lets get this dialed in, I have been patient enough

[djkms]

I vinegar dosed on my 125 that this system was upgraded from. I started vinegar dosing since day 1 on this system.

I actually turned off my vinegar dosing pump a couple days ago in hopes to bring back up my No3 levels.

If my No3 levels start to climb again, what would your suggested number be to start dosing again? 1ppm, 5ppm, 20ppm?

I did place a fish order and will be adding a small school of chromis and a small school of dispar anthias in the next couple of weeks (once they get out of Qt). This will probably put me in the heavily stocked category.

 

[jda]

Don't start to dose again, at least not for a while. Let the levels climb and the bacteria should start to colonize and they should go back down to zero pretty quickly. Cut back on the feeding while you go through this... don't starve them or anything.

 

[rc1626]

Tank looks nice and when you get it figured out it's going to be beautiful. I'm dealing with similar looking corals now. Some bleaching a little some browning. I had just gone from radiums to diy led. (Bleaching due to too strong of light) I also stopped carbon dosing about 4 months ago and had not tested my PO4 and NO3 in some time. I always run gfo so phosphates were OK but nitrates were higher than normal. From 0 up to about 3. (Browning issue) I lowered the output of my lights and started carbon dosing. It's been about a week and a half and color is starting to come back slow. NO3 is now down to about .25 and I'm slowly ramping up light intensity.

When your colors were good did you always run your NO3 that high? I'm assuming lighting is not the issue since you switched but it could be. I would just keep all parameters stable and in line and let time get things back. You may lose a few corals but in the long run you'll be OK. Maybe even frag a good piece or two of the corals that aren't looking so good in hopes of still having that coral if the whole colony goes.

I know some have suggested your pale corals may be from lack of nutrients and they may be right. I don't understand how you could have browning corals as well though. I know how all systems run differently but my sps showed best colors when my nitrates were undetectable by my test kit but I was still feeding a decent amount for my bio load. This allowed me to keep my nitrates as low as possible while still allowing enough for beautiful colors. Obviously not an exact science by any means but coral colors can tell you quite a lot.

Just some info from my experience. Hope it helps.

Good luck and be patient!