kevensquint- during your research did you also note how long the TOTM had been setup and the depth of the substrate?
phosphates in food is a whole lot different than water soluble phosphates. we can only test for the latter. in general the more you feed, the more water soluble phosphates that will eventually get in the water column. SPS corals need organically bound phosphates, and not water soluble phosphates. if you feed your fish more, more organically bound phosphates will be taken up by the corals, better color, better growth. those that have problems tend to not feed enough and not export enough. it is easy to starve corals when worrying about phosphates. we all look at our test kits, or see the algae, so we feed less thinking that we are lowering the phosphates. we are just lowering the amount of phosphates going into the coral animal, feeding it. we are still maintaining the phosphates going into the zoax (those that show up on our test kits), which does not help the corals themselves.
G~
I'm going to test this out and see what happens. I always have low PO4 and NO3 and was running my Alk around 9. My coral colors are pretty much all washed out.
I am slowly bringing it down to around 7.8 in order to see if there truly is a correlation. Should be interesting. I guess I should take some before/after pics?
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The key is to feed adequately to supply nutrients to the coral, but also effectively remove the waste products (especially inorganic phosphate) via detritus removal, skimming, GFO, etc.
Well I think that's the toughest piece of the equation. How do you find what those levels are? I have a 150 with ~ 50 SPS frags, most are 1"-2" in size. How much should you feed? My fish load is low:
1 Vlamingi
1 PBT
1 Purple Tang
1 6 line wrasse
1 blue chromis
1 orchid dottyback
How should you approach feeding? How much, what, how frequently etc?
With those fish, I'd keep two clips of nori in the tank pretty much at all times. On top of that, I'd feed about a cube of meaty foods, like mysis, fish eggs, Rod's food............... At least that's where I would start. Then you just have to adjust your water change/maintenance schedule to meet the load you're placing on the system.
I have a skimmer rated for 3x the size of my tank so I'm not worried about getting the waste out.
The key is to feed adequately to supply nutrients to the coral, but also effectively remove the waste products (especially inorganic phosphate) via detritus removal, skimming, GFO, etc.
Well I think that's the toughest piece of the equation. How do you find what those levels are? How should you approach feeding? How much, what, how frequently etc?