Well quick update. Ended up beating Ostreopsis Dino’s within about a week and a half and now it seems like I’m on the tail end of the Prorocentrum battle. Must be establishing a fairly consistent environment and biome. Alk kinda landed at 10dkh so just going to run with it. Ideally wanted around 9 but now that these larger issues have settled I’d like my remaining corals to not have to go through any unnecessary parameter swings again. If I choose to lower it I’ll do it in a few months over the course of 3-4 weeks, if I decide to. I’ll see how things go. My nutrient levels are stable around 0.1ppm PO4 and 11ppm NO3 and have been dosing NeoPhos and NeoNitro daily to keep them there. My hair algae issue is also almost fully eradicated and it’s nice to see the texture of the rocks finally visible and coralline algae taking hold (even though I’m not a fan of coralline I enjoy the sign that things are stabilizing). Been a long and frustrating 9 months of cycling but to be honest I’ve learned so much I really about the hobby that I wouldn’t have it any other way looking back at it all. There’s a major difference between knowledge from reading about the hobby versus knowledge gained from real experience dealing with issues. Mainly timeframe, I’ve concluded. Never really been a super patient person but I’ve learned to be the past couple months. Anywho, hopefully have some decent updates in the months to come as I’m a bit more confident in adding corals. Last weekend I added a nice encrusting Goni, green Octo, purple/green Hammer, and about 6 heads of Trumpet. Do not think I’m going to venture in SPS with this tank, I’d like to do euphyllia and LPS, with some zoas/palys here and there. My fish are doing well, and are fed multiple times with an autofeeder daily, with a varied frozen dinner. A couple torches are checking out that have been alive through this entire dino process and I’m actually surprised they lasted as long as they did. Never had tremendous luck with torches, and my other tank took about 12+ months before heads would split. All in all, excited to finally be seeming gaining traction. I pulled the plug on BRS 2 part and am back to Triton Core 7 dosing- parameters are doing good, however my mag seemed to drop a bit but that could be user error on the test kit. Alk is 10.1, cal is 420, and mag is 1305 (was 1350 last time I tested so I really think I missed on the test). Worst case I’ll dose some mag separately to bring it up if I find my alk and cal can’t hold their numbers. Here’s to a better next year of reefing in this tank.
