5 Months Old Today
How time flies when you're having fun! 5 months old now and the "uglies" are slowly receding. The GHA I was battling is still slowly dieing away. I can still harvest a handful out of the weir once a week but thats half the amount I was pulling out a month or more ago. The algae on the sand bed has slowed its growth rate significantly and while the sandbed still has a green tinge to it from the age, it is a massive improvement on past times.The sea cucumber, the snails and the crabs have certainly made a difference to the GHA in the tank.
I've decided to cut back on water changes. So instead of doing 15% weekly as I was doing, I'm doing 10% fortnightly just to see if it makes any difference with coral growth, colour etc. I'm due for a fortnightly water change tomorrow so thought I'd check the water parameters and they all checked out as fairly spot on.
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - undetectable on a Salifert test kit
Phosphate - 0 on Hanna test egg
Calcium - 395
Alk - 8
Magnesium - 1300
Temp - 24c
pH - 8
I've been dosing manually for alkalinity twice daily (11mLs x 2 daily) and this has maintained a stable level. There has been no need to dose for calcium or Mg up until now. I am also dosing twice weekly with Sachem ReefTrace and Seachem ReefPlus.
I added a new green torch this morning. My plan is to have the left side of the tank devoted to Euphylias with the very hand hand keyhole bommie being a zoa/paly rock. I have some zoa frags and have glued those onto that right side bommie this morning. I've also reglued a couple of zoas back on that an overly friendly snail must have knocked off.
I rearranged the powerheads last week to try and reduce dead spots and also to get just a fraction more movement on the sandbed to stop algae growth. That seems to have been an improvement.
Coming this week is a new dosing pump so I don't have to manually dose anymore and a lawnmower blenny. I'm hoping he will also help defend the tank against the dreaded GHA.
So far so good, I'm really loving how the tank is progressing so far :)
I've decided to cut back on water changes. So instead of doing 15% weekly as I was doing, I'm doing 10% fortnightly just to see if it makes any difference with coral growth, colour etc. I'm due for a fortnightly water change tomorrow so thought I'd check the water parameters and they all checked out as fairly spot on.
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - undetectable on a Salifert test kit
Phosphate - 0 on Hanna test egg
Calcium - 395
Alk - 8
Magnesium - 1300
Temp - 24c
pH - 8
I've been dosing manually for alkalinity twice daily (11mLs x 2 daily) and this has maintained a stable level. There has been no need to dose for calcium or Mg up until now. I am also dosing twice weekly with Sachem ReefTrace and Seachem ReefPlus.
I added a new green torch this morning. My plan is to have the left side of the tank devoted to Euphylias with the very hand hand keyhole bommie being a zoa/paly rock. I have some zoa frags and have glued those onto that right side bommie this morning. I've also reglued a couple of zoas back on that an overly friendly snail must have knocked off.
I rearranged the powerheads last week to try and reduce dead spots and also to get just a fraction more movement on the sandbed to stop algae growth. That seems to have been an improvement.
Coming this week is a new dosing pump so I don't have to manually dose anymore and a lawnmower blenny. I'm hoping he will also help defend the tank against the dreaded GHA.
So far so good, I'm really loving how the tank is progressing so far :)
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