hey scott sorta chiming in but dont wanna seem like im telling you what to do or telling you what you've done is wrong and you shoulda woulda coulda...
but speaking from experience and @
NiCd will tell you this...i had a tendency to cycle, fish, more fish more fish...but let me me show you what the result was:
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now the mistakes i made were:
Cycled tank and stocked within a day of this
Moved stock over from my other tank a week later
Added more LR the next week
so all this was in 2 months..and i was forever chasing it trying to get it back on track...i then also like yourself went out and bought N0p0X4 from redsea, dosing 2mL a day for 2 weeks, skipped a day or 2 (not really understanding what i was doing) and saw little improvement so i stopped dosing. then things just kept getting worse, i ended up removing half the sand bed and adding a HOB refugium, phos was down but it was being consumed by the hair algae before it could be read but the fact i could physically see the tank was shithouse was confirmation that they were there in serious numbers
i then decided i will shut down that tank and start again (this doesnt help you but the next part might) with this new tank i asked 1000 questions and half the time i hated the answers but it was reality and these are the things i did:
1. Zeo 14 Day cycle
2. used 90% base rock and 10% LR to seed the base rock
3. satisfied my stocking disorder by stocking corals rather than fish then shrimp and snails again rather than fish
im not saying what i have done is perfect the tank is 3 months old starting to get some cyano but may be down to i havent ever done a water change on it and feed a little too much, i have stopped feeding frozen foods and just feed pellets, 3 different styles, tetra color bits, hikari marine s and hikari seaweed extreme
i will be honest i havent started dosing yet or my water changes and im heavily stocked and looking to add more (which will probably see me in your position soon lol) but my back up is that i have a 1000L skimmer that loves to eat fish poop and will strip everything out of the water lol so heavily stocking is a must for me but i kinda took the ball and ran with it
my way of looking after the phosphates and nitrates will be what someone has suggested to me and it will include running RowaPhos and dosing ZeoStart, probably 1mL/2 days to start with then adjusting as i stock more
i wont say i didn't have any issues because i did, but the issue was my skimmer took everything out of the water because i was under stocked and the skimmer was taking all the nutrients and trace elements so corals werent happy except the SPS which were slightly unhappy too because i have read they need a form of detectable phos and that you can tell that they dont if they have bleached tips (Mike Paletta)
but i will say the main things i learnt from moving to this tank is that patience is key and over severe patience is even more key lol advice from @
LEG-IT when he had nothing in his tank for 1 month then corals after that then no fish until 4months....this is severe cases but it worked well because his tank is going really good as a result of this i know that no 2 tanks are the same and what worked for me or @
NiCd or @
LEG-IT or anyone else might not work exactly the same but the key foundations are the same ask @
NiCd how many times i texted him saying im gonna get a fish and he policed it lol i think if you had a stadium full of people you wouldnt be able to count the number of times on all their fingers and toes and their relatives lol
other big important thing i found was the choice of LR i went little and yeah it meant i had a slower cycle ultra low nutrients but it meant i could slowly mature it and i still do believe maybe i stocked a little quickly after each fish but the intitial wait time is key
you can ignore this or you can read it and take at least one point that might assist you but know that im not trying to lecture or tell you how to do it only share my story and how its affected me...i just know i come home and i am proud as before i came home and asked people if they want algae harvested i have an algae scrubber for a tank lol
one last thing this is the tank i stopped using random bottles of stuff such as prime i did all that on previous tanks and had nothing but issues...as someone before me said the most it really should be used for is if you cant get yourself RO and are desperate use it to un-nasty tap water or filtered water as much as possible.
dont use ur DT as an experiment you want it to be your baby its like if you had a mercedes amg c63 would you trial a new Aldi brand wax then find out its sugar soap lol