Hello reefers!
I have a semi complicated issue. I have a fluval evo 13 gallon tank, that has been set up for about a year and a half now. It all started great and I saw incredible results pretty quickly on coral growth and fish happiness. I had GHA so I made a dire mistake and used some vibrant and Phosgaurd to try and knock it back. This bottomed out my nutrients and took out the GHA but caused an incredibly intense dino bloom. 7 months later after dosing silicate, keeping nutrients up by overfeeding, dosing microbacter7, and some phytoplankton I seem to have turned the tides. I've restarted water changes about a month and a half ago, returned to my old lighting schedule for my AI prime, and while I have a brown dusting on the sand it doesn't seem to be exploding anymore and is even slowly retreating. That being said my nitrates have responded well to returning back to normal tank husbandry (ie they hover around 5-10) from water change to water change. But my phosphates continue to be relatively high (hovering around 0.5). My corals clearly are not the happiest; they are brown, small and not seeming to grow. I'm pretty sure that it's the phosphates. I'll list my other parameters after this paragraph. I want to lower my phosphates but am pretty hesitant as I'm not sure that I'm completely in the clear from dinos. As of now I only have filter floss and marinepure balls in the back sump. I contemplated adding back either phosgaurd or chemipure blue to the filtration chambers; but am a little gun shy that it could cause another dino outbreak. Any thoughts on which direction I should take? I also have an auto feeder with nano pellets that feeds once per day, probably about 10ish pellets, that I'm probably going to remove and do some frozen food feeding in it's place. I use the red sea blue bucket for salt, and make my own RODI water, 20% water change every week.
Sg - 1.025
pH - 8.0
Amm - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10
Phosphate - 0.5
kH - 7.8
Cal - 400
Mg - 1280
Stocking
Ocellaris clown pair
Wheeler Goby
Cleaner shrimp
3 hermits
ceriths
nassarius
Corals
Assorted Zoas
1 acan (probably the only happy and growing coral)
2 ricordea mushrooms
2 branching hammers
Thanks for any help/input!
I have a semi complicated issue. I have a fluval evo 13 gallon tank, that has been set up for about a year and a half now. It all started great and I saw incredible results pretty quickly on coral growth and fish happiness. I had GHA so I made a dire mistake and used some vibrant and Phosgaurd to try and knock it back. This bottomed out my nutrients and took out the GHA but caused an incredibly intense dino bloom. 7 months later after dosing silicate, keeping nutrients up by overfeeding, dosing microbacter7, and some phytoplankton I seem to have turned the tides. I've restarted water changes about a month and a half ago, returned to my old lighting schedule for my AI prime, and while I have a brown dusting on the sand it doesn't seem to be exploding anymore and is even slowly retreating. That being said my nitrates have responded well to returning back to normal tank husbandry (ie they hover around 5-10) from water change to water change. But my phosphates continue to be relatively high (hovering around 0.5). My corals clearly are not the happiest; they are brown, small and not seeming to grow. I'm pretty sure that it's the phosphates. I'll list my other parameters after this paragraph. I want to lower my phosphates but am pretty hesitant as I'm not sure that I'm completely in the clear from dinos. As of now I only have filter floss and marinepure balls in the back sump. I contemplated adding back either phosgaurd or chemipure blue to the filtration chambers; but am a little gun shy that it could cause another dino outbreak. Any thoughts on which direction I should take? I also have an auto feeder with nano pellets that feeds once per day, probably about 10ish pellets, that I'm probably going to remove and do some frozen food feeding in it's place. I use the red sea blue bucket for salt, and make my own RODI water, 20% water change every week.
Sg - 1.025
pH - 8.0
Amm - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10
Phosphate - 0.5
kH - 7.8
Cal - 400
Mg - 1280
Stocking
Ocellaris clown pair
Wheeler Goby
Cleaner shrimp
3 hermits
ceriths
nassarius
Corals
Assorted Zoas
1 acan (probably the only happy and growing coral)
2 ricordea mushrooms
2 branching hammers
Thanks for any help/input!

