hmmm...a lot being discussed without the input of the owner of the tank in question.
My Biopellets are in effect NOT working...they cant. because I do not have enough PO4, they can not reduce my NO3 any more. which is why my NO3 is still hovering around 20ppm. I do not like nor want this number to be my NO3 level, but for right now it's both stable and low enough that the tank works. I'm 100% sure that if I could get the no3 level down to 5ppm like it should be then I would most likely get the proper colors out of the corals that I want. as it stands my blues are more purple...with a teal tint, and my yellows are more green. Green is a dominant color in my tank, (read, easy to achieve) but reds also pop really bright right now so I'm happy with the contrast. But taking the lights out of this issue...I have seen and read how proper ULNS systems get those extreme colors by living on the edge of starving and healthy to achieve the colors that we desire...it's the coral adapting by throwing out certain colored algae to survive that we are striving for. I have gotten the pellets to work in the past by crashing my system by inducing a Biopellet bacterial cloud through carbon dosing of sugar. LOTS of sugar. There is not nearly enough sugar in the pappone' to induce this even if I dumpped the whole ziplock baggie full in at once. I choose not to do this right now because every time I have induced the Bloom on purpose I have suffered some kind of loss...weather it be actual fish or corals...or just simply health...I do not want to do this right now though because the tank looks so much healthier right now. I do hope to reduce the NO3 though through an upcomming vigorious WC schedule...and maybe then the Bioplellets will activate again...But if they do not I'm not going to fuss with them any more. After all I have a very small fish load right now, and I can't over feed them on accident so I am not adding enough PO4 to be used up. My algae is way low...compaired to what it was...and only my cyano is a problem...and I think that may be FROM the biopellets.
in short I used to utilize the biopellets because I had a high fishload and fed them a lot more...so the pellets had something to EAT so to speak. now I just need to keep heavy feeding my corals...and so far it's been successful.
Lighting is more tricky. I explained it best I think on the last page...I had to raise my light up (lower light to the corals) to keep from bleaching and killing them off. once the lights were about 20"AWL the corals started to compensate for having too little light...thanks I'm sure in part to the higher feeding. so they were now browning out...and in essence, getting a sun tan to help with the next step in the process of adding more light to the tank by lowering the fixture closer to the water. I slowly brought it down and watched for color changes. I eventually got it as low as 7-8" AWL...but have now moved it back up to 10" AWL. Eight inches was just too much light for the corals to handle and they started to bleach again. Si by raising the light physically, I innoculated the coral and got them prepaired for more light in the future...which they happily accepted and are not metabolizing the "brown" algae in their bodies quite well and growing noticably...while still retaining their sun tan lotion "color" of "not brown" algae for protection. (plus bulb type plays a role)
my lighting schedule is:
2:00pm 2x blue+ on (dawn)
3:00pm all bulbs on (5x Blue+, and 1x Purple+)
8:00pm day bulbs off, and 2x Blue+ on (dusk)
9:00pm all bulbs off
(2x 3w RB LEDs on 24/7 for moonlighting all night)
The moonlights do have a slight pop with just 2 bulbs on for dawn dusk, and adds a nice shimmer. But once all 6 blubs are on you can't notice them.
And lastly on the Test kits...I understand that they are likely not accurate...I mainly only use them to test for changes. Do I really have 20ppm of NO3?...maybe not, but I do know that the level that I do have is not raising or lowering. Same with the PO4...it's stable at a certain number and not growing.
