My tank won't let me start dosing!! please help!

[dbarter8872]

I have a sumpless 90g that has been running about 8 months with some lps and about a dozen sps frags. I use reef crystals salt mix and haven't added anything else to the system aside from vinegar the last two weeks. Last i checked the numbers were 1.026sg 500cal 10.6dkh 1400mag pH today was 7.4 right after vinegar dose in week two, 7.8 usually.

Nitrates at 40ppm and phosphates at .94. Red sea pro mag test, hanna cal alk and po4, quick strips for trates and pH. These were also first tests two weeks ago aside from another quick strip right after vinegar dose today. I assume that the numbers are because of the increased magnesium recently in reef crystals not allowing calcium to drop. I was waiting all this time expecting low numbers and time to start dosing as sps growth had slowed.

Now that i am aware of the high nutrients i started carbon dosing and replaced gfo and carbon. I may have to switch to vodka now that i see my pH is low. I could add kalk to my ato but I'm not sure if it matters with calcium so high. I also have c-balance which is the route i planned to go for dosing. I also run glass lids with a 3 inch gap so evaporation is much lower than most tanks. May consider getting away from glass lids now that i have an ato.

Other things worth mention... i run a reefoctopus bh90 hob skimmer, two jebao wp25's and two wp10's for flow. Also an elos ato and marineland canister with no filters just gfo carbon and purigen. So all the articles said to wait for numbers to come down naturally before dosing so should i keep waiting. I neglected my biweekly 10g water change for 2 months to get ready to dose and all i did was cause a nutrient spike.

Of course i am completely forgetting the likely cause of the numbers staying so high. I didn't realize i needed to calibrate my refractometer often and it was so far out that my tank was at 1.032 once i corrected the calibration. It took about a week to get the tank down. Aside from a ticked off trumpet the corals seemed to love the high salinity. So maybe the waiting game for calcium to drop has just begun. I am also trying to figure out my best overall plan of action because I have a bunch of new frags coming in two weeks. I had planned to have this all worked out but the swap near me is only once a year.

And for anyone else reading, this is another of many examples that stability is more important than perfect numbers. If i am to start dosing I'll have to start testing more, but if my fish and corals are happy i don't panic when the numbers aren't right. And when i do find something horribly wrong like my salinity was, i correct it as slowly as possible. I ran my skimmer super wet and let my ato take care of it. Only took 15 gallons of fresh water and one water change, oh and about a week. I know things would be better with proper numbers but stable incorrect numbers are something corals adapt to. I'm amazed how well everything handled the salinity. My trumpet eventually would have died and polyp extension on acros was minimal but growth was great for a while. Did also lose most of one acro frag while salinity was high but it's recovering now. Guessing the phosphates, nitrates and or low pH is what slowed things down. So many threads where inexperienced hobbyists are told to dump all kinds of stuff in their tanks because something is a little off turn into please help everything is dying threads. Of course i also understand that by the time people ask for help things are already dying.

I know this is a lot for one thread but i like to talk a lot and I'm ADHD. Thanks and I'll look forward to your reply!

 

[redfishbluefish]

First off RC has high alk, calc and mag levels and if you're light on hard corals there would be no need to dose.


Before I start worrying about dosing, those nitrate and phosphate numbers scare me. Phosphate is way way high. That's going to be a tough nut to lower. I'd like to see that number below 0.1 at a max. Phosphate that high will quickly saturate GFO. Not sure what to tell you short of frequent water changes and running GFO and other phosphate absorbing media.

 

[dbarter8872]

Yeah i didn't expect to see phosphates that high but now don't want to panic trying to bring it down causing chaos. I immediately started vinegar dosing. 12g water change and changed gfo as well as switching from bulk to rowaphos. That was 10 days ago. Water mixing now for another 12g change then another test. I expect that number is already much lower and will find out after water change tomorrow. And a reminder that everything in the tank is pretty happy atm.

I'm more concerned about the low pH and high numbers keeping me from dosing which would raise it. I realized I can't remove lids because my heater is struggling now. The nutrients only got out of hand because i don't test unless i see a reason. This tank stays pristine without my help. I only clean the glass once a month.

This is my fifth tank in less than 4 years and there is one thing I've learned. People talk about stability but that doesn't mean as much to me as balance. I haven't found instructions but accomplished it on all but one of my previous tanks. All still running including the unbalanced 56g. I started that one with only live sand. 3 years later and not much effort I'll admit it still grows nothing but algae.

My first tank was a 30g with ocean live rock. Haven't opened the canister in 9 months or tested anything but salinity. Did a few recent water changes and started ccleaning glass and removing algae and now corals are taking off and it looks great. Maybe i should clean the canister and change the gfo..... nah! My 90g is in the middle with ingredients from previous tanks and a bare bottom. I also just added about 60 pounds of barely wet clean dry rock a week before the test. And btw the deep sand bed on the unbalanced tank should some day start doing it's job.

I try to build simple systems that require little maintenance and testing. At this point i have 2 tanks there, a plan for the unbalanced tank, and my 90g dream tank that is a bit new still but should fall right into balance i hope. As i said it stays pristine so i think it was balanced. Then i dumped a bunch of not as clean as i hoped rock in to make room for new corals. Why am i writing all this? Who knows but sometimes this process turns lights on for me. I'm reminding myself that the only reason the nutrients are an immediate concern is for the new corals coming. So now that i went around in a circle with myself, back to pH and hhow concerned i should be!?