aristocrat,
Please provide more specs on the tank, parameters, filtration, lighting, and pictures if you will? This would help, maybe something can be figured out this way
Hey thanks for your response.
Total tank volume about 190 liters.
About 15 kilo live rock
Shallow band bed
Skimmer rated for 600L-800L
1 big marine pure block in the refugium with cheato (refugium is the first compartment, I know this is not ideal. It was in the center before but there was lot of detritus as I dont use filter sock so for some active flow I moved the skimmer to the middle chamber.
Return is dark with some marine pure cubes and I normally chuck any dead sps skeleton in there (not sure if its a good idead I thought it was porous and gives extra filtration)
Return is a vectra m1 see the picture for the setting I run in.
One major mistake I did was overfeeding initially because NOPOX was handling it.
I used filter sock initially but got frustrated removed it as NOPOX was handling the load and nitrates was at 1ppm and phos was <0.025.
When everything was going good I tried to dose vodka instead of nopox, because I overdosed apparantly there was stringy cyano outbreak. I siphoned everything and blown the rocks got back to nopox. Things were all good. At this stage I had only LPS and an anemone. When things were stable I bought some sps and they did very well.
When i ran out of nopox I went to lfs and was advised to buy - np pro as it works out to be cheaper. My LFS is great, always gave me great advise. Pro Bio S was not available in australia yet and in fact none of the probiotic range was available. I started slowly introducing NP pro and reduced dosing nopox. This led to cyano but the brown one this time, started covering al my sps corals and killing them. Slowly my lps started to NOT open and thats when I realised this is getting out of control. Tests done all during this time had Nitrates at 0-1ppm and pohos undetectable. I use nyos test kits and all are within expiry.
Aquaforest told me to get hold of pro bio s and start dosing it.cyano was still there.I then siphoned all cyano out, connected a hose to the manifold and gently churned the sand and whilst the water was merky I used aquaforest reef salt and done an 80% water change, I assumed this will get rid of any excessive nutrients trapped in the sand. Sand looked clean all water prameters good. At this stage I was not dosing anymore nopox, this was the complete transition phase.
Still things did not change. After 6 days, my nitrates are between 18-25ppm. Done a 10% water change today and nitrates read the same.
My current parameters
Ph 8-8.3
Ca 390ppm
Mg 1300ppm
Alkalinity 7dkh
Salinity 1.025
Phosphates 0.075
Nitrates 12-25 ppm
Temperature between 26-27, got to 28 in one recent hot days.
I'm not guaging which product is good, I only want to stabilise my system and would like some feedback. I have a hydra 52 HD.
Here are the pics....
Currently all LPS are doing great. The anemone I had initially caught itself in the wave maker and perished. I got another one which travelled a while for a spot and got a bit stressed and since then does not open. Now the anemone eats small pieces of shrimp so I feed twice a week to revive it.
My scrolling monti had a bit cyano on top, no cyano now but looks strange.
My superman monti started to bleach.
The middle coral garden was gift from a friend.
the sps in it now shrunk its polyps guess due to high nitrates.
My hydra schedule. Sorry about the long post had to post the whole story.
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