STOP STOP STOP all the dosing this adding that chasing numbers game, and adding another potion when you don't get the test results you want.
Its a never ending downward spiral, you just end up adding new unknown chemical potions in an attempt to undo the damage done by the chemical you were adding before, to undo the damage of the chemical before......I could go on and on but i hope you get the point .
Ask yourself how much you have spent on unrequired chemicals since you began, could have bought a lot of sweet frags instead.
You got sucked in big time (We are all guilty of falling for this to some degree) by all the hype that is geared toward making you spend many bucks on pretty coloured bottles of snake oil.
In a tank with a low level of livestock, regular good quality water changes (by quality i mean RODI and a quality salt) should be sufficient to maintain adequate water parameters.
You don't start by pouring in all sorts of chemicals and chasing numbers, get the right foundation first. Slowly build up livestock and monitor parameters with regular testing. THEN AND ONLY THEN begin to use additives if the results of your testing tells you that your water changes are not maintaining natural sea water parameters. Keep things in balance, adding one chemical could cause another to fall out of line. The old saying "only dose what you can test for" If you haven't tested and determined that you have a chemical deficiency DONT DOSE.
I hope i haven't come across as preaching, i just felt this thread was long overdue a "dose" of straight talking. Judging from the full tank pic you seem to be off to a good start with the hardware, now just allow the chemical/biological part to balance out naturally. I think you have tried to run before you learned to walk.
One final point, have a look at any online marine aquatics dealer and see which of the their dry goods section has the most product lines.
Why do you think that is?
I think it is pretty clear in this post that I made a huge mistake. Let me explain how that mistake happened.
I have been out of the reef hobby for 20 years and my previous time was short lived due to relocating. I have been doing freshwater planted tanks in the meantime quite successfully. When I got the itch to get back into the reef hobby last year, I wanted to simplify things by using a system and a set of products designed to be used together. There are a few of them out there and after reading the information on them I decided to proceed with Aquaforest. As I wanted to keep SPS i followed their guide for "SPS Coral aquarium run by Aquaforest Probiotic Method".
Here is the guide and what I did:
"1. Disolve the salt, add nitrification bacteria and filter media"
9/3/2016 Dissolved the probiotic salt and added BioS per the instrutions. Filter media was protein skimmer, GAC and a marine Pure block and filter socks.
"2. Populate the aquarium no sooner than 14 days from day 1(If NO2 and NH4 are not present).We recommend that every animal or coral is introduced into the aquarium gradually so the biological balance is not disturbed."
10/26/2016 there was no measured values of NH4 or NO2. Added 2 clownfish and seven frags of LPS, SPS and Zoas. Started dosing NP Pro and Pro BioS as shown in the guide. Also during this time I had another 20 frags in QT waiting to be placed in the display tank.
"3. After the settlement of life in aquarium we recommend to use following products: (If the tests show decreases of Ca, KH, Mg)"
My tests clearly showed that Ca and KH were low. I started dosing the Component 123 as per the guide.
"4. Feeding livestock. The dosage of each supplement depends on the number, size of fish and corals as well as quantity of administered food."
I was dosing the AF Energy, AF Build, AF Amino Mix and AF Vitality per the instructions on the bottles.
So I followed the guide. Maybe my interpretation of the guide was bad. Maybe I missed something in the guide, maybe some fine print somewhere. What was my mistake? Following the guide?
Anyhow this is the result of following the guide and what I have done since then:
There were signs that things were not going well. Like tank uglies with brown and red slime appearing for a week and then dissappearing and then coming back even worse. Corals slowly browning and losing color. STN of the SPS. By the end of November I knew things were not right and sought out help from the LFS and local reef club. They advised me to stop AF line of products and go to tried and true products. That is what I did. I used BRS 2 part to try to increase the ever falling values of CA and KH to see if I could stabalize the system. Which obviously failed and noone could explain why they were falling in the first place accept for precipitation. Which I could not find in the tank. I even did a reset of the water (90% at least) with the AF Reef Salt (no probiotic). Ive stopped dosing altogether and let the KH value bottom out in the low 5's. Then tried to bring up the values by 2 part dosing. To make matters worse no matter how much Ive overfed the fish the NO3 and PO4 levels are measuring 0. Anyhow, now I'm here and I think Brew12 has given me solid advice which I am following. For the first time in weeks I feel hope.