Hey all, I am pretty much having the worst beginning to a reef tank, especially comparing to my last tank almost a decade ago. It looks like I got myself a nice dino outbreak. I cycled my Waterbox 220.6 with dry rock/sand and bottle bacteria. When it completed the ammonia cycle, I added the two...
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I feel this should be a direct prep for your tank, this is what white base rock maturation looks like. its not a parameter battle, this is coming in any parameter and even worse if you try and lower them. be prepared for physical direct access.
see how UV keeps popping up there
that's what you want, its needed for any reef so large you can't reasonable change all its water. if that's only forty or so gallons and you can do a full water change when things get challenging, owning a UV is less required. You don't have to spend $900 on the good ones
we have saved a thousand reefs from loss with a $150 pond sterilizer off
amazon, meant for a koi pond but still small. something cheap and oversized it doesn't have to run forever. we only turn it one when needing a cheat.
UV and live rock will streamline your system into just what you want, with work still required on the surrounding zones. We simply would not ever let it amass this way above, its what everyone does. the common thing is to wreck your tank by allowing a total takeover. everyone thinks we have to leave it in place and try and coax it out, no. force it out. each time you're changing 2 gallons of water a week be siphoning up new spots, this is the work for dry rock starts.
we should do opposite, and plan for it. we are long past cycling concerns in your tank, and into prepping for that.
we should make resolve right now to not allow the tank to downgrade itself into a challenge, it should be kept manually clean right from the start.
reducing your overall light intensity by 40% is wise and indicated at this stage. once a week directly place feed up under the starfish so it can have a round. agreed it wants to be eating sandbed life forms this is only a supplemental mode, its a creature delicate enough if it dies it doesn't mean you have a param out of whack, he does not have any sandbed life forms to eat yet.
Your tank will show the first initial signs of this above by the end of this month is the prediction. lowering light is a big help for you, that level there is for full packed and fed and aging corals. not for a new tank, big driver of uglies.
working by param control is how everyone gets invaded with these
its about the physical arrangements and the willingness to implement full control as needed.
not any params are of concern given good temps and salinity. nothing in there is affected by any typical range of params we see in a reef. its new enough you have room to wait on that level of concern, its about the invasion preps for sure. you will hate owning a wrecked reef, Im 110% sure.
so any good reef friend would head that off for you.
