Its show time again people.....
This post will be more of writing and reef philosophy rather than posting images. Over the last couple of months period I realise a lot of things. The tank is rebooted since January after the total crash in December. As I mentioned in my last post the system was having a die off issue and very high nitrate. Few corals died of RTN because of nitrate fluctuation.
Since last two months I was trying a lot of different combination of nutrient control. Tried chaeto, carbon dosing but the nitrate always creeps up a lot. Sometime I increase dosing of carbon which will take down the NO3 and then if I lower the carbon dosing then again NO3 is up. But all these lead to browning of corals and RTN etc etc.
All this time my major parameters were stable. So, I took a break and started thinking practically about the whole process of nutrient control. I was reading some discussions from Adam (battle coral) and other reefing experts here. I was thinking how the sea control its nutrient. Yeah, I know all the possible arguments like the vast water volume and other stuffs etc. But the ocean don't use GFO for PO4 maintenance or biopellet etc.
I was thinking are majority of problems we face in terms of nutrient control are because of our own over protective parent nature? We are so cautious that we don't let our child get out and face its own problem. Similarly, our reef just can not take care of itself because we don't let it to do that. We use tons of different ways to control nutrient but what if we don't???
So, during March I decided to start something different. I ordered some live rock from gulf rock as they sell it in small volume. Now at this point I must remind you all that my system is bare bottom and very minimum rock scape. Also, I ordered 1 litre of siporax. I generally have 2 litre of siporax in the system. I use GFO and carbon with zeolite. I added the siporax in the system and also the live rock but not all of it. I generally dose Pro bio S as a bacterial source. I continued dosing it. After almost 3 weeks the nitrate started coming down. But the moment nitrate slowed the green algae disappeared and the cyano appeared. Possibly because of the imbalance created by dead algae. Then I started using Zeozym and cyano clean with biomate. It helped to clean up the mess. I was thinking all the time what is more easier changing media and thinking about it all the time or just let it be on its own. I finally decided to give my instincts a try. I keep dosing the bacteria but took the GFO off line. So just the zeolite and carbon now. The PO4 went up from 0 to 0.09 within 48 hours but then it again fall back to 0 after a week with similar food and other input. Also, now the system started to use the NO3 more and I need to dose a bit of KNO3 every other day. The rocks became cleaner and the system looks very clean (no algae on glass). Sometime I see a bit of cyano like thing but next day they are gone. Its like the system take care of itself. I introduced a little amount of Life bio fill to introduce more variety of bacterial population.
Now, currently I have no algae and running the system without GFO. I am using the skimmer and zeolite with a bit of carbon. Possibly I will slow down on carbon use too just occasionally one week every month in a bag. But I will run only zeolite.
My SPS are colouring back and I can see they are really enjoying the system as all polyps are out all day. My LPS look better too. Also, I wish to mention that I run my 2 6500K Gieseman T5 and Hydra all chanel at 100% including red and green for 6-7 hour every day but without any algae issues.
I am going to use some new Aquaforest products which are going to launch soon in USA in my tank so stay tuned.....
Also there will post regarding effect of those products and possibly videos so now this thread is on again.;Smuggrin
then I started running Zeovit media, the zeovit did a good job. When the life bio fil was available I switched and my nitrates have not gone over 12 ppm and pretty much have been staying around 8 ppm.
....I was using this earlier as a frozen food but this one is dried and has exactly same effect on fish. They just get mad. I will post a video tomorrow.
