Hello Everyone,
Recently, I have been putting some more thought into consistency or "stability" recently as I dive deeper into the reefing hobby.
As I enter into my first year of coral growing, I've encountered many issues and continue to learn more as I progress.
I have two tanks, my "Main Display" being a 32g fluval flex, and a fishless "Coral QT" tank in my office, a 10g waterbox.
The tanks were stood up in July and August of last year (2021) and while I have seen some growth on my corals, growth has been quite slow and minimal.
I've been keeping a consistency of roughly 30-40% water changes on a monthly basis.
From my understanding, water changes are primarily for nutrient export and replenishment of major and minor trace elements.
While both tanks have macro algae (Dragonsbreath) inside, I assume my issue isnt with a lack of nitrate/phosphate.
My weekly testing consists of Alk, Calc, Nitrate, Phosphate (Hanna) and Magnesium (Aquaforest).
I aim for the parameters outlined by WWC's tanks: Guarantee
A weird thing about both my tanks have always been the RISE of Alk in my tank despite not even dosing.
In some instances, I've noticed the alk rising to 11dkh while a fresh batch is ~8dkh.
While this is still a mystery to me, my leading theory is that the rockwork or my substrate (special grade aragonite) may be dissolving.
One would think it's due to my alk/calc/mag being off-balanced, but my calc and mag has always remained quite stable with only Alk rising.
The salt I use is Redsea blue bucket, and I've tested the parameters for a fresh batch which closely matches the MyBatch results from Redsea.
Given the need for stability in the tank, and apparent slow growth of my corals, my plan is to step up my husbandry and increase my water change cadence to 20-30% on a weekly basis.
I think this will greatly help stabilize the alk situation, but also help to address a major component which may have been missed, trace elements.
I haven't put too much thought into the importance of trace elements, but I have been thinking diving into the reef moonshiners method.
Unfortunately, it's not a cheap method, so perhaps a single ICP test to start just to show what I'm missing.
One issue I am seeing with this approach, is my fishless office tank. I feed it quite heavily, with a consistent schedule of feeding a mix of reef roids, coral aminos, benepets benereef, and redsea AB+. I struggle to keep my nitrate/phosphate up.
My schedule for feeding is:
Daily Coral Aminos (once a week, I'll replace coral aminos with Redsea AB+)
Tue/Thurs/Sun: benepets with a bit of reef roids
Perhaps I'll just have to accept the fact that I need to dose nitrates in the office nano.
I've also greatly reduced the amount of dragons breath in the office tank to only a small frag size but my nitrates struggle to get above 10ppm.
Sorry for the rant, thank you for reading, I would love to know your thoughts
TLDR; be a better reefer by increasing water change schedule, and hope that this approach brings stability/consistency to my reef tank
Recently, I have been putting some more thought into consistency or "stability" recently as I dive deeper into the reefing hobby.
As I enter into my first year of coral growing, I've encountered many issues and continue to learn more as I progress.
I have two tanks, my "Main Display" being a 32g fluval flex, and a fishless "Coral QT" tank in my office, a 10g waterbox.
The tanks were stood up in July and August of last year (2021) and while I have seen some growth on my corals, growth has been quite slow and minimal.
I've been keeping a consistency of roughly 30-40% water changes on a monthly basis.
From my understanding, water changes are primarily for nutrient export and replenishment of major and minor trace elements.
While both tanks have macro algae (Dragonsbreath) inside, I assume my issue isnt with a lack of nitrate/phosphate.
My weekly testing consists of Alk, Calc, Nitrate, Phosphate (Hanna) and Magnesium (Aquaforest).
I aim for the parameters outlined by WWC's tanks: Guarantee
A weird thing about both my tanks have always been the RISE of Alk in my tank despite not even dosing.
In some instances, I've noticed the alk rising to 11dkh while a fresh batch is ~8dkh.
While this is still a mystery to me, my leading theory is that the rockwork or my substrate (special grade aragonite) may be dissolving.
One would think it's due to my alk/calc/mag being off-balanced, but my calc and mag has always remained quite stable with only Alk rising.
The salt I use is Redsea blue bucket, and I've tested the parameters for a fresh batch which closely matches the MyBatch results from Redsea.
Given the need for stability in the tank, and apparent slow growth of my corals, my plan is to step up my husbandry and increase my water change cadence to 20-30% on a weekly basis.
I think this will greatly help stabilize the alk situation, but also help to address a major component which may have been missed, trace elements.
I haven't put too much thought into the importance of trace elements, but I have been thinking diving into the reef moonshiners method.
Unfortunately, it's not a cheap method, so perhaps a single ICP test to start just to show what I'm missing.
One issue I am seeing with this approach, is my fishless office tank. I feed it quite heavily, with a consistent schedule of feeding a mix of reef roids, coral aminos, benepets benereef, and redsea AB+. I struggle to keep my nitrate/phosphate up.
My schedule for feeding is:
Daily Coral Aminos (once a week, I'll replace coral aminos with Redsea AB+)
Tue/Thurs/Sun: benepets with a bit of reef roids
Perhaps I'll just have to accept the fact that I need to dose nitrates in the office nano.
I've also greatly reduced the amount of dragons breath in the office tank to only a small frag size but my nitrates struggle to get above 10ppm.
Sorry for the rant, thank you for reading, I would love to know your thoughts
TLDR; be a better reefer by increasing water change schedule, and hope that this approach brings stability/consistency to my reef tank
