Well, as you know I was out of town for a little over 4 months and when I returned my tank had seen better days but was not really in full crash mode. One of the concerns was the amount of algae that had grown, not cheato or caulerpa but the bad ones...
Anyway, being the kind of guy that does not go to the doctor until it really hurts I chose not to test anything and continue on performing maintenance for awhile hoping this would bring things into order without my going off the deep end and trying to repair it all too quickly causing more damage. I did a few small water changes, ran the phosban reactors changing the media closer together as time went on (first time ran it a month, then a month, then 3 weeks, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, and a week), added Mag/two part as normal when home before...fast forward about 4 months and this morning I decided to test.
I became 'brave' simply due to the lack of algae growth over the past week or so, I assumed that meant things were getting at least close to being good.
Nitrates register 0, Phosphates register 0, KH at 8 DKH or 143.2ppm, Calcium at 360ppm
I was more than happy with the Nitrates and Phosphates, and want to get the KH/Calcium levels up. Decided to test the magnesium as well and it came in a bit low at 1260ppm.
Performed a 35g water change with some Reef Crystals I mixed a few hours earlier and tested that after a recent thread here. I only tested the reef crystals for KH and Calcium which registered 460ppm calcium and a DKH of 11 or 196.9ppm
I then added a cup each of two part solution, plan on adding another cup each in a few hours. Will test the KH and Calcium again tonight.
I did not have any iodine, so did not bother testing. Need to pick up both iodine and some Mag.
If I had tested when returning home and found the Nitrates and Phosphates to be high along with any other parameters out of whack, it would have caused me to try and fix it too fast. I think this worked well in preventing me from causing anything worse from happening.