Originally Posted by
Livinlocal
After reading your post, there are a couple things that come to my mind.
First would be stability. How stable are your parameters? You mentioned your alkalinity drops, but how often does it fluctuate? Is that a daily fluctuation between dosing? What temperature do you keep your tank at? does it hold that temperature throughout 24 hours, or does the temperature fluctuate up and down?
** I test a lot and am pretty on top of it. It's generaly very stable at 8.3. Those drops to 7.5 were dosing pump issues (off) and happened over a 24 to 48 period.
** Temp fluctuates between 77.5 and 78.5 (except summer where it got to 81 (78 to 80 range, 81 on occasion).
Second would be your water source. What are you using for top off water? Do you have a RODI filtration set up, or do you buy your water? Do you know the PPM of your top off water? Sometimes with RODI you can get contaminants going through the filter when the media gets exhausted, most commonly which is chloramines. This is something that could go undetected and cause lots of issues that a lot of people overlook.
** RODI top off, 4 stage, 60 PSI
** Honestly, I thought Triton would test for chloramines. So, lll get those strips.
** Filters were replaced about 3 months ago and 3/4 fresh resin
Third would be your light schedule, and how many hours you are running your lights, along with the sunlight that is hitting your tank. It is recommended that you do not have natural sunlight shining through your windows into your display, But I wouldn’t say that’s the definite culprit, but I would cover your window or whatever it takes to keep the sunlight off your display.
** Sunlight not great, but it's a 30 to 45 minutes a day. Tough to cover as it's a ceiling window.
** Peak is 12 to 6:30, and then it drops off until 10:00 (11 hours total, 6.5 full).
Lastly would be the extreme magnesium. With too high or too low of magnesium, it stunts the corals uptake of cal/mag. After dosing all of that magnesium, have you noticed that you have not had to dose as much calcium and alkalinity?
** not really as I dose Kalk and that mag has been high for a long time (I am sure). Although, I feel like I need to dose more Kalk than my tank should need, but the 1950 ml/day is what keeps it stable. So it's possible. Ill be monitoring that as I bring Mag back into line.
And again, stability is king. I would work on any type of fluctuations, and getting them settled in.
Regarding nutrients, each persons system is going to use the nutrients differently. It has been proven SPS need nutrients in our closed loop system, and the correlation between our closed loop system and the open ocean, do not collaborate together when it comes to nutrient levels. This isn’t 100% understood why, but You can read articles by Randy Holmes about this.
With that being said, I keep my nitrates at about 30-40ppm on purpose, and I dose nitrates to keep it at this level, but I keep the number stable. This is where I find the most vivid colors coming out of my sps.
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