Nice to see things may be on the upswing. That echi does look much better.
Mark, being completely objective and sitting back in my armchair, it seems to me that you deal with your stress by fussing over the tank.. Now, I think there is good fussing and bad fussing.. I kind of feel like you are doing a bit of both..
You really are in the tank a lot.. I know that you are trying to improve the current situation and I think some of the things you are doing are helping. The skimmer work looks good..
But the gfo ups and downs and the chopping of corals... I'm not sure this is helping so much..
I'm with Kevin when he said 'take a step back'..
Sorry, I don't want to offend with my beer holding armchair comments.. I know I'm not working and looking at your tank every day, you are. But I get this frantic sense from your posts and I KNOW that frantic feeling... It is how I was before crashing my system because I was trying to do this and do that and waiting a day to see improvements instead of waiting the month that it usually takes to see improvements..
I'm glad you got the po4 testing ironed out.. That should help.. Stability, as you know, is key and keeping your hands out of the tank can go a long way towards stability..
I hope I'm not sounding like an a** here..
Hi Matt, no offense taken man, I appreciate all the comments.
From my point of view I'm NOT doing things people suggest. I waited this long to dip corals, I have not yet nuked the tank with interceptor, and I waited on the stags until it was obvious the bases had continued to recede. I think I post more than I actually do.
Oh, and I didn't clip the tips once growth restarted.
I have not switched to 2 part or considered a calcium reactor, sticking with Kalk and dialing in the Alk levels again. When doing water changes I abandoned the AquaForest Reef salt and went back to what has always worked for me, Red Sea Blue Bucket.
I have changed a lot of water after sending in the Triton test, and I've tested PO4 too much to try and understand what the heck it's doing and why. Other than that most of what I've done is a reaction to something happening with equipment, like the darn skimmer overflowing and becoming erratic.
I actually have a lot of dead corals due to me not doing anything IMO and watching them slowly decline until gone.
You could be right, I'll have to go back and review, but for the most part I generally just stare, curse, and do regular maintenance, perhaps more often than normal.
I can certainly understand why many folks stop posting when things go wrong. Everyone wants to help and the suggestions fly but in the end we have to do what we think is right and hope to hell it works.
I still do not understand how I harmed so many corals of all types just by having an Alk rise of 1KH. Maybe I should have been dosing trace elements since I use Kalk, but I wasn't because I can't test for it.
I dunno, but I still want to hear everyone's opinion, it does help.
Oh, and I still haven't cut the Miami Orchid up yet but the base continues to slowly recede. It's as if the coral can't adapt to the dead base and it keeps spreading.
Coraline is strong and fast on everything.
