UNS 90L
- Thread starter ricecry
- Start date
This is the way. Simply add the components you need to raise by having extra 2 parts (actually 3) on hand. What are your current numbers and how much you want to raise? It may turn out that you really don't need to raise anything. Remember, don't get stuck on set numbers, but ranges. If your calcium is between 380-450, good, if mag is 1280-1450, fine. Look up natural sea water parameters and you may be surprised at what you find.
What's your CUC like? Turbos and tuxedo urchins are your best bet against turf algae (tuxedo's being the primary). Algae isn't a nutrient issue, it's a herbivore issue. I'm not sure you need to add a bunch of stuff (AB+) to the tank when it's this young. I think this is where too many people go wrong, by adding too much stuff to a new system without giving the system time to mature and develop (benthic succession), especially when starting from dry rock (don't worry, I'm not going to step on my soapbox about dry rock now).
Tuxedos are fine, but anything that's not glued down will most likely get pushed around. I've never experienced tuxedos eating corals, ever.
With your nutrients being low, how many fish do you have and how often are you feeding them? The other thing you can do is turn off your skimmer during the day and only use it at night when lights are off. If this is a dry rock tank with no live rock, then it may take a year or so before it's mature enough to stabilize. It also depends on the biomass of corals?
With your nutrients being low, how many fish do you have and how often are you feeding them? The other thing you can do is turn off your skimmer during the day and only use it at night when lights are off. If this is a dry rock tank with no live rock, then it may take a year or so before it's mature enough to stabilize. It also depends on the biomass of corals?
The tank is over a year old, around a year and a half, I started it off with one piece of live rock and a bunch of dry rock. I have a couple of fish but I have not been feeding that often, I also haven't been dosing AB+ or any other foods that much the past week. The corals take up the majority of the tank, maybe 60 percent of the footprint is occupied by them.
Adding a few more fish (if you want to?) would help, as they would provide a good portion of nutrition to the corals, but if that's not something you want to do, then I would look into feeding something like TM Phos Feed and ammonium bicarbonate (or possibly urea). Most corals when provided the right nutrition (light and particulate food) will produce their own amino acids, etc. But in a deficient system I can see benefits of adding aminos and carbs, but I would find a long term solution to their replacement, as they can lead to other unwanted issues (like feeding pathogens, etc). So with the amount of biomass in corals, you don't have enough fish to supply them with nitrogen and phosphorus, so you have to be the fish, which is why I like to use organic foods they would find in nature (phyto, zooplankton, Yello Sno and Phos Feed).
