Interesting Thing that I noticed...

[RocketBunny]

What are you calibrating your refractometer with?

First of all did I read your post right that her ammonia level is 4.0?! If that is correct every thing in her tank should be dead or dying. Maybe get a different test kit? If it's correct her tank will be dead in a week without intervention.

To me your corals look much more healthy. Her GSP looks like it's dying, colors are not good in other corals. I agree with the above that you need to get your nitrates up a little. High dKh is not good with low nitrates, especially for SPS.

She's had ammonia at this level for the past three weeks, and everything is fine.

Ok, that clears things up. I'll still be restarting my tank, because I am building a big 30 gallon with internal sump... I will get all the levels in that one right and then I will put the corals and etc. in.

Maybe I do have a disbalance?
Does anyone know... do nitrates and other compounds like that provide buffer or acidity? Will an amount of nitrates change your pH or alkalinity?

I calibrate my refractometer with normal water... RO/DI to be exact

 

[RocketBunny]

I didn't see any PO4 readings in the values you posted. Are you testing for those? If not, the explanation could be as simple as hers are in an excellent ratio to her nitrates and yours may be off (they're certainly going to read inaccurately based on the amount of algae you've got soaking some up).

I have lots of screen algae and some spot algae on my back glass and side glass.
I don't test for PO4 yet but before I had diatoms, and I used this one chemical. In a night, diatoms were gone... it sucked out all of the phosphates, or most of them and at that time I didn't have anything that created waste (fish or corals) so phosphate wasn't able to bring itself back up.

 

[RocketBunny]

Your tank looks to clean to me, I.e. your rocks are white with no life on them, no algae (brown, green, hair, corraline, or otherwise), no sponges, nothing. I would remove some nutrient export (like turning off the protein skimmer) to get some life going. Get a rock from your LFS (or your sister ) that has some life on it, like coralline algae or sponges. If algae isn’t growing, neither will corals. Tanks with no nutrients should have lower alkalinity, like 7-8, yours is high at 10 in my opinion. Until you can get some nutrients to grow some life.

All I have as filtration in my tank is a small skimmer... Will the tank be good for a couple days without skimmer?
I think you are right. I am shutting it off right now and will dose in more food for the next couple of days... will get a recycle going on to increase the nutrients...
My sister has only one rock, so if I take that, i take everything with it . I'll try to get some algae going...

But my concern is this. IDK why, but whenever I turn off the skimmer for a long time, ammonia starts spiking. It rapidly increases and I had an anemone die like that once. The fish survived and now she's in my sisters tank... After that I always kept my skimmer on to keep am/nit/nat at bay.

 

[saltyhog]

She's had ammonia at this level for the past three weeks, and everything is fine.


Maybe I do have a disbalance?
Does anyone know... do nitrates and other compounds like that provide buffer or acidity? Will an amount of nitrates change your pH or alkalinity?

I calibrate my refractometer with normal water... RO/DI to be exact

Get a 35ppt calibration fluid for your refractometer. Some of them are off a large amount when using RO/DI water to calibrate.

You need a new ammonia test kit. Trust me, her ammonia is not 4.0 or all of her fish/coral would be dead.

Nitrates don't buffer or change pH. They do sometimes limit coral growth when they are really low. I think your tank looks pretty good. Just get the nitrate up to a detectable level and check your phosphate.