Puzzled and getting frustrated

[buruskeee]

Thanks for the feedback, I think my situation would be worst if I didn't take the time to clean by brushing and siphoning the gha I have. It almost being done almost every 7 to 10 day at a time. Also I'm dosing fiy coral snow after blowing the rocks weekly. Just trying to keep the junk of the rock to feed gha.

I dose coral snow too. Brushing doesn’t do much for the GHA I have because it’s too dense.

 

[RelaxingWithTheReef]

After running for a year and a half the tank has a somewhat sterile look in my opinion. That and the lack of significant coralline raises a red flag. The tank may be a little out of balance, and may be somewhat “stuck”. A surface coating of bacteria and coralline is important to resist nuisance algae. It sounds counter intuitive but the tank many be too clean, and the water too stripped to support healthy diversity.

Consider inoculating the tank with beneficial bacteria to reinforce healthy biological filtration. Something like MicrōBacter7, or ZeoBak may be helpful. With your current dosing and the use of biopellets, I’m concerned that once the bacteria kicks in, you may see a very rapid decline in N and P that may require additional feeding or dosing to prevent a damaging reduction to zero.

You mentioned your skimmer, foam filter, a pre-filter before sponge, slowly feeding fish so they can consume it all and minimize waste, etc. Not sure if you are also using GAC. I’m concerned all of this may be stripping the water too clean.

 

[Rafaelpadro24]

After running for a year and a half the tank has a somewhat sterile look in my opinion. That and the lack of significant coralline raises a red flag. The tank may be a little out of balance, and may be somewhat “stuck”. A surface coating of bacteria and coralline is important to resist nuisance algae. It sounds counter intuitive but the tank many be too clean, and the water too stripped to support healthy diversity.

Consider inoculating the tank with beneficial bacteria to reinforce healthy biological filtration. Something like MicrōBacter7, or ZeoBak may be helpful. With your current dosing and the use of biopellets, I’m concerned that once the bacteria kicks in, you may see a very rapid decline in N and P that may require additional feeding or dosing to prevent a damaging reduction to zero.

You mentioned your skimmer, foam filter, a pre-filter before sponge, slowly feeding fish so they can consume it all and minimize waste, etc. Not sure if you are also using GAC. I’m concerned all of this may be stripping the water too clean.

I do have some spots in the rockwork and on the weirs where I see coraline growing. I am using GAC and dosing microbacter7 once a week (maybe I need to do more) I was afraid to dose more regularly due to the fact I'm dosing nopox daily.

 

[get-salty]

Is 18 months still considered new?

TBH your tank do not look like 18 mth old. sand and rocks looks extremely fresh. havent that said, i bet all of your high nitrates coming from the "new" rocks.