Reef nutrition

Ryan's 75G SPS

An overdue update: the good news was that I upgraded to a 120G awhile ago. Bad news: I had a total disaster on acroporas and almost lost all my acroporas. I have had past issue of slow growth and light color on acros though other corals are fine, lately I decided to change method from carbon and bacteria dosing to grow cheato in fuge. But I made a stupid mistake and stopped dosing before I get time to setup a fuge. I have being testing NO3 from time to time since I stopped dosing, acros were not happy and had less PE but I have been pretty busy on work and family and did not pay enough attention. Until RTN started to hit majority of Acros, I tested phosphate (Hanna checker) and the reading was 0.8 ! I did a big WC right away and started to run GFO and these bring PH4 to 0.08 in few days, I exchanged a new batch of GFO yesterday and hope to further bring PH4 down to below 0.03. Anyway majority of Acros died in RTN in matter of days and few remaining ones look beaten down, not sure if they can make it or not. Most of LPS are doing OK even they look stressed by the rapid changes. I was so sad and for few days thought about quitting (at least SPS) but decide to give it another try, I plan to continue to run GFO, cut down the lighting period to reduce the stress, and setup fuge and grow cheato.

Lesson learned:
1) Never stop old method before new method is established.
2) Don't assume nutrient is added/accumulated/and removed in same ratio, I thought I am smart and only test NO3 to gauge the nutrient level and save some effort of testing PH4.
3) SPS is much more sensitive to PH4 concentration than NO3.

Let me know your thought and advice.
 
F@$&#ing acros!
It's all a great big experiment I tell myself sometimes! But if you find the blueprint let us all know.
Want my version of an "unkillable" stag? I'll bring you one at the swap.
 
Thanks Dave for you offering!

But I don't plan to get new coral till my tank is stabilized and new method is in function. I need to get a tank as fuge, it need to be fit into the stand, get it drilled, installed light, re-arrange and connect new fuge tank and sump. It is hard to find free time to do so :-(
 
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