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- Thread starter scabbedwings616
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SeaDweller
2500 Club Member
The best thing to do is to find someone local to you and pick their brain. Then find others and pick their brains. See which philosophy lines up with what you envision and want to do and try to implement their experience. But each tank is different and what jda said is somewhat true: You have to be 100% invested into someone’s philosophy if you truly like their results. Or just use some of their methods and see what works best for you, and make tweaks to your tank as no two tanks are ever the same, even running similar set ups. The more you KISS it, the better, IMO.
A lot of it is trial and error too, and recognizing where you went wrong to correct that mistake or mishap.
A lot of it is trial and error too, and recognizing where you went wrong to correct that mistake or mishap.
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
I will be reaching out to a lot of people to help with this and see where I could have gone wrong. Thank you for that idea too.
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
Will do!!
BestMomEver
2500 Club Member
Check into some of the el cheapo refugium lights. I have this...
https://www.google.com/search?q=flu...d=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=_zb2dUGY-JCxSM:
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
Fluval? Freshwater one?
BestMomEver
2500 Club Member
I do 20% every other week. But if I had nutrient issues, I would do about 15% weekly until things got better. But.... water changes are like a bandaid. We need to find the root of the problem so that things don’t revert back to where they are.
Also.... even if nutrients aren’t the issue, water changes never hurt. I can’t recommend an ICP test enough. It costs about $45 but well worth it. You can actually save money in the end. You might not need to add stuff, or get more lights, etc. it might be easier than that.
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
I am gonna do the icp test. It is in my cart saved. It might be simple like that or might be something else. Who knows at this point what it is. I’ll post a pic of it once it come in. I think I’m gonna find the root issue to it. Try to see where it is coming from and adjust accordingly. Keep feeding the sand and see where the issue stems from. Get an accurate assessment to it.
BestMomEver
2500 Club Member
I think they have a refugium light but I can’t find it online. They have them at my LFS. But you can find them anywhere. I will say that if your macroalgae is growing well, you probably don’t need a new light. You might leave it on longer. At some point I left mine on 24 hours a day. I’m sure some plant experts can tell more on that subject but I didn’t see any negative effects.
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
I might leave it in longer! To see what happens.
BestMomEver
2500 Club Member
That’s probably the best idea. The first one I did showed my tank had tons of lead in it. I bought a heavy metal remover then tested all my source water (I bought RO from three different LFSs) and none showed lead. I’ve done ICP tests since and My tank hasn’t had lead since. We checked and dismantled plumbing, power heads, etc and all was ok. Still, to this day, I’ve never figured out where it came from.
I did show deficiencies in other places. My corals had just been sitting there.... not dying but not growing either. They were all green/brown and not the beautiful colors like when I bought them. I started using Red Sea Colors and my tank has never looked better. Coral colors are beautiful and stuff is growing like a weed. I swear by the stuff. But, again, we’ll get there. One thing at a time. Let’s do the ICP test and see where you are. For now I’d focus on nitrates and phosphates. It’s easy to fix for the most part.
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
Light is gonna be on longer for the refugium I think to see if I can lower it more. It is worth a try. Trial and error.
When was the last time you cleaned your sand bed or replaced part of it?
Personally I'm not a big fan of sand as it seqesters nutrients and organic as well as heavy metals, I'd probably suggest reducing the amount of sand to a minimum or at least replacing parts of it.
As others have said, try and check your PAR levels, it's one of those things we all think is fine but you can never eyeball light intensity and is too often the cause of Sps problems.
Check for stray voltage, although your foxface would probably be going nuts if there was stray voltage but worth checking anyway.
Personally I'm not a big fan of sand as it seqesters nutrients and organic as well as heavy metals, I'd probably suggest reducing the amount of sand to a minimum or at least replacing parts of it.
As others have said, try and check your PAR levels, it's one of those things we all think is fine but you can never eyeball light intensity and is too often the cause of Sps problems.
Check for stray voltage, although your foxface would probably be going nuts if there was stray voltage but worth checking anyway.
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Dkh 9.4
Calcium 440
Po4 .12
Apex controlled system as well.
#reefsquad
So I may be jumping the gun, and this could of been said already (unfortunately I didn't have time to read all the pages) but, I would remove your sand bed. It looks pretty deep on the side and it can be releasing all sorts of things into your water stunting / killing your SPS. This is by no means a scientific answer, just an observation - old sand beds can slowly rot a tank.
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scabbedwings616
Well-Known Member
I have a diamond goby in there that stirs it up well. I also learned this weekend I need to do a better job at sifting it when I’m doing water changes. Stirring and sucking that up. It is what world wide coral does and they told me I could be doing that wrong this weekend at RAP. While there I asked a lot of questions to try and figure this out. Next is reaching out to a local reefer to help.
LARedstickreefer
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I’d personally go for a PAR test. ICP doesn’t show as much as one would think.
The tank pictures shows plenty of coralline algae. If you can grow coralline, you can grow sps as far as water chemistry goes.
