realypk

No evident rust from what i could tell on those magnets, but I never even thought to check that, seeing as it's so easy to do I'll definitely do it once in a while! Great Tip!

Oye thanks for the tip!!!! Will definitely check!

Here are some pics I took just prior to my cleaning/water change event this weekend. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MhRfasXn0oRTiBIUlpJXvWoqAdlb3KxO I generally dip all my corals in Coral RX for about 15-20 minutes. The last batch actually looked quite good for about a week and half before going on a downward spiral. I got most from sellers at our last meet.

Had same thing happen to me, and went to petco to get an imaginarium breeder net which helped give the victimized fish some time to recover. Once his fins were all good and he was happy eating etc, back into the frey with the female he'd go. Took a few times but they ended up pairing. I have no doubt she would have killed him had i not put him in the breeder net for a while. He would float in the furthest away corner minimizing himself and she'd still terrorize him. The breeder net gave him some time to heal up and a reprieve while still letting her see him and vice versa, she tried to attack him through it a few times at first. They are cheap 10$ range. https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/fish/fish-health-wellness/fish-breeding-supplies/imagitarium-aquarium-net-breeder

Awesome news!! Saves me some cash :-) and if my chromium is high will tell me if its my gear or salt next time!!

Yea some day I may do a controller but I really very much value plug and play. It was a huge deciding factor for me and while I did see reef angel and quite frankly if I were to go with a controller that would have been my choice... I decided against it for a few reasons that ended up with me deciding against going with a controller this go around. Firstly budget, at the time I was not a wamas member didnt even know it existed so really had no one to talk to or get good deals from so was buying everything new. I wanted a PAR meter pretty bad so that money was gonna get sunk into the the seneye anyway. Plus reef angels site really has some a lack of item descriptions or how it worked, or what was needed... when looking at the reefangle plus I still cant figure out if i need to buy the extra modules which are not cheap, whether i need to buy the wifi module or if i can just plug the network cable into a wifi extender, do I need to buy the ph module? All this info was just lacking.... I just couldn't find it on their site. So was it going to be 399 i was going to spend to get PH, Temps, Ammonia, salinity over wifi or would that cost me more? Which led me to the next problem, I am not going to ever program or code so that proposition terrified me, and seeing as finding basic info on their site was so rough I didn't even wan to think about how bad their UI might be (site again very very rough) and how hard it would be to learn to use their system or god forbid learn how to code their product, I really just wanted something that would be easily monitor my reef statistics from any pc or cell phone I'm at. I would be perfectly cool with drop down menus or a drag and drop logic tree type system with for what plug does what, but thats about the extent. My lights were already automated using cheap 20$ chinese wifi outlets and going well, my pumps are manually controlled with just the setting of on. So the only thing it could help with was my ATO, temp control and maybe salinity one thing I still do manually right now, and to this day I dont know how much all that would cost stipulating I want it going over wifi as I cant run network cable to my tank lol. That leads me to second reason. It seems like the neptune apex, gets all the love, so I was concerned they may not stay around for very long and end up being a waste of $$ when they go out of business, no marketing, no mass community support, no minuscule sales on BRS knocking 5% off etc. The writing just seems on the wall for me, I think they'll go out of business and what happens to my wifi available data when they do? Also don't even get me started on neptune I find it to be grossly overpriced and by that i mean disgustingly. Especially for what you get, paying thousands of dollars for a product where you still have to learn to code to meet most desires that people have when buying these units for is a joke, especially when paired with the accuracy levels advertised for their probes. Your basically paying full lab grade prices for unpolished consumer grade mediocre accuracy stuff with a shoddy UI that requires coding for "advanced" functions. I've also seen plenty of posts where their gear breaks not long after warranty expired. The whole neptune apex thing just rubs me the wrong way in every way. Why not just get a more powerful raspberry pie at this point? But I digress, the reef angle seems to be reasonably priced for what it is. So lets say I dedicated to increasing my budget and knew what gizmos to buy and trusting I could get it to do what I wanted it to with little work.....already a lot of ifs, especially without a community backing me at the time. Third problem I saw and final nail in the coffin with any controller was that I hated the idea of putting all my eggs in one basket. Honestly if my clowns ever died i'd be freaking heartbroken, doubly so if they die of something I caused. Everything breaks, it just does, some things last longer than others but eventually they break. What happens if it happens to be the controller that you rely on to do a lot of different things? Right now I have independent lighting, independent temp control, independent ATO, independant pumps, independent skimming, independent airpump and independent reactor, independant flood protection, over temp protection and overskim protection. Most of these were pretty cheap to do aquaforest FTW!!! Some of these will fail and individually I can handle the issue, but god forbid if everything failed at once cause my controller blows a gasket, tank would die. I could not handle all that stuff on my own long enough for a replacement to arrive. Maybe for a few hours but how do you keep everything in your tank afloat without one while you get your waiting on warranty RMA replacement? Without a controller you find that you have closed loops of things that individually may break but it is unlikely that would all happen at once, especially with battery backup/surge protection. I can handle 1-2 breaks in my system at a time, but not a reef controller that went poof. Overall I just didn't see it as a resilient strategy to put that much weight in human made device. And if your spending the kinda money on a reef angle plus you may as well use it to it's fullest, not just as a reporting device. I may use one in the future on a bigger build if my 1st and 2nd level concerns are ever addressed in a sufficient manner and for my piece of mind I'd just buy an extra controller and power strip and test it for functionality put it in a closet for rainy day to avert the eggs in basked conundrum... that would increase price significantly though so 1 and 2 better be sorted lol. Heh, I think I write too much maybe it'll do some good and these controller companies will read my post some day And to neptune if you ever read this post, I hate that you price gouge which is exactly whats going on. If you make products that stand the test of time with durability, if you give high fidelity results from your test probes and I mean better than hannah checker levels, if you make it so its super simple for me to use I'd even be happy to pay what you currently charge. But at this point your just gouging the community because there aren't many better proven options available and that alone is enough to turn me off to a company. Or you could just charge sane prices for the stuff you offer now.

Makes good sense, I'll send my red sea salt in to test and see, in comparison 30$ for a test is not that bad! They do give you an RO vial and saltwater vials. RO seems to test for all the same elements as the regular one.... Could maybe put some fresh mixed salt in that to get a free test of it alongside tank testing. Makes good sense, I'll send my red sea salt in to test and see, in comparison 30$ for a test is not that bad! They do give you an RO vial and saltwater vials. RO seems to test for all the same elements as the regular one.... Could maybe put some fresh mixed salt in that to get a free test of it alongside tank testing in one go? As far as seneye goes, I wish they had a nitrate measuring slide, that would be super nice and make it very valuable as a measuring instrument. The par meter is very nice, however I do find its online connectivity/tracking/notification to be amazingly awesome. It's saved my reef and all my fish multiple times! It's what alerted to me to my salinity issues when I saw some the PH cycle behaving out of norm/really odd, helped me catch my low salinity levels from over skimming within 24ish hrs. It also alerted me when an eheim jaeger failed to on and allowed me to unplug that sucker, drove home and temp was at 85 and still rising at the time. Yanked the sucker out and luckily none of my inhabitants died. For those of us who dont want to spend hundreds to thousands on an apex system the seneye really is a godsend as far as warning against problems goes. Its even better when considering how daunting the whole "programming" aspect of these systems is. They are very expensive and overly complex, I'm already having to learn a lot trying to learn how to keep my reef allive, I dont need to tack on learning to code in addition lol. Seneye is a simple plug and play warning system that does a good job of tracking the basics and warning you of anything major that can nuke your tank.

I'll definitley check out the app for sure, so far i've just been using a basic text editor notepad to track stuff(other than the seneye) and in the past i was not that good at logging things casue it was a pita lol Also when do you guys suggest I do another ATI test?

I'll send in some fresh mixed SW with my next test instead of RO sample seeing as my RO was perfect and don't expect that to change soon as its all new equipment. The pyramid food chain makes good sense! I thought everything needed normal food, hence all the target feeding foods etc that are marketed, didnt realize fish waste would be food for anything other than bacteria and maybe clams... Also that article is definitely being saved as an HTML file on my desktop just incase the site ever gets pulled! Amazing info! I'll keep the crew here updated on how things go, and run a full range of hannah tests more frequently to track progress. Thanks for everyones help thus far. If anyone else comes by and thinks they may have some great advice for my situation. Ah it seems i got nitrates and NH4 a bit confused, two more questions. With such high nitrates and such high PO4 should I not be getting a tonne of macro growth? I have 300w of full spectrum lighting on my macro and I do get growth but not exactly a bunch.... I have about 4 different types of macro to include your regular variety green chaeto Also is there a recommended Hanna nitrate tester by any chance?

Understood, so to check and make sure I understand it correctly nutrients (NH4) lodged within the rocks etc, will export themselves naturally over time into phosphate by bacteria as the supply of nutrients from my feedings dwindles. Those will be converted by bacteria into PHO which will continue to be extracted by my GFO and water changes resulting in an eventual nutrient-less system if I'm not careful meaning I need to find a balance of feeding just enough to keep nutrients high enough for my LPS and just below what Acro can stand? How much NH4 and PHO do I want to have in my tank as a target goal?

The marine pure I don't mind so much as its just porus fake coral with some trace aluminum, in general a big meh in my eyes, dont mind if it stays forever in the sump. But yea eventually getting back to simpler ie no bio pellets and GFO or bi-weekly water changes would be nice :P But seems like a lot of water changes are in my future before that ever becomes a reality :-/ Any good tactic for creating and delivering saltwater in an efficient manner? I can store about 35 gallons of RODI at any given time in in easily movable 5gal containers and have a few 5 gallon buckets that I use to mix up salt with. Quite frankly its a huge pain to change the water and ends up with me splashing small amounts of salt water on the floor and having to mop afterwards to avoid salt stains. My DT is in the living room so cant have it be too messy. I dont have much garage storage space or any of that so cant buy a big Rubbermaid type ting to store saltwater in. But mixing saltwater has proven to be a huge PITA for me lots of mixing stirring getting water to temp, dumping some out when salinity too high, adding rodi, whoops now salinity too low add some more salt... quite frankly just annoying and time consuming doing it 4 gallons at a time, seeing as you cant mix 5 gallons as then you'll get salt spilling when mixing.... lol So looks like i need to figure out a way to make plenty of saltwater in a reasonable un-time consuming way. Whats your favorite way to mix salt water that can be done with something that doesnt take too much space? Is there a calculator that exists for exact cups of salt per gallon for SG you want to reach using specific brands of salt? I just want to make the water change process I have before me less daunting so to speak.

Rgr that I also think that going with option #1 for now is probably the best solution and one that origami would probably advise. So one thing I've noticed is that even with rather decent water changes of 20% i notice a very negligble reductions in nitrate levels.... What is the cause of this? Should I not get a corresponding 20% drop in nitrates or somewhere close? My sand is mostly clean because of a decent sand sifter crew at work, but there are probably some spots I could clean. The sump on the other hand has a lot of stuff probably at the bottom of that might contribute..... cleaning it means removing probably 70 bioblocks, some live rock, my cheato and macro, guarding against water spills, ensuring I dont accidentally kill my dungeon crab and a host of other things and then putting it all back would turn it into at very least a 4 hour affair, that may get the resident wife unit upset at the "waste of time". Is that worth it or just stick to plenty of normal water changes and less feeding?

@Sharkey18 thanks for the info on how to run that GFO in a reactor. Why do you prefer vodka/vinegar dosing over biopellets, I was under the impression that biopellets offer a more steady release over time and have the same results, or is vodka dosing capable of handling higher level nutrient environments than standard biopellet reactors. I will try to stay within the 8-9dkh range as that seems to be the norm that most people go with and also seems to be close to natural water. Do you think a slight reduction of feeding paired with vodka dosing and biopellet reactor + water changes would help fix my current over nutrient problems? If so how would you go about doing something like that and in what order/timeframe? @bues0022 First some background on my situation. I understand that many do have the luxury of having well established tanks that are years old. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury to ever get what most would consider an "old" tank. I work for the military and as a result I relocate quite frequently the most I can ever hope for is really a 3 years before I have to move at least within a few hours driving distance. The next 2-3 year stint in August is taking me to Stafford,VA so luckily that's a close move! Usually they tend to be across country or abroad though. I understand that general old school wisdom says just let your tank take as much time as it needs, but I don't exactly have that luxury if I ever want to reach any of my goals before I retire, which will be a very long time from now (25 years min). I did however take what I consider to be a reasonably normal level of time as well as invested in good gear to help things along for a young tank. Technology has gotten way better and I want use whatever will help me achieve my goal as quickly as possible. What I would consider timeline of major events since start: I built my aquarium, routed it for good plumbing installed a good fuge. Got salinity right, added lights, macro etc. Started dosing pure ammonia, added dr tims as recommended in the ammonia cycle guide. I spent 1 month with just rocks, water and sand dosing recommended levels of ammonia to let my tank "acclimate" before adding fish. I also then spent another two months with just 2 clowns and a few hermits. Once I saw corraline specs growing I took it as a sign and slowly added zoa and LPS, most all of which still are alive (if not thriving, my bounce mushroom has grown 6 fold in size over the last 2 months, dont even get me started on my leather, pipe organs and zoas...), I added multiple batches of 2-4 fish/shrimp every few weeks and lost almost none excluding, to include BTA's with exception of 1 chromi and a darned starfish which died within like 24hrs. Sandsifter is still very happy. Overall tank is a success for majority of LPS and soft corals, minus some waterflow mishaps that had an head acan bailout of its frag from me with a few other heads still attached and nicely blown up once relocated. I add acros, monti, chypastrea they all die within days, I re mediate by keeping salinity stable via adding not overskimming and bringing my DKH up to good levels with kalwasser. I try with cheap acros, monti they lasted for more than a week and I was excited, but within week 2 they they started to recede. No huge loss, because they were not pricey, but drove me to find the problem. Bought hanna testers found my PHO was through the roof.... nitrates were at similar levels to what i have now, those have remained steady along with my overfeeding. I found that my insane PHO levels likely caused this and that high nitrates contributed. I added GFO until PHO decreased to around 30ppb with my hanna tester and added a biopellet reactor to help keep nitrates down. I saw no measurable impact from the biopellet reactor in terms of nitrates for the last 3 weeks but also saw no harm. With GFO doing its work and kalk supplementing what GFO sucked up to maintain decent levels At this point with everything stable I decided to get some more sacrificial acros/montis. Cheap sub 10$ frags. For the first time ever I saw polyp extension, and it lasted for over a week i was super happy! I bought some more expensive version, some fungia, and again for about a week all was amazing. I was thrilled, then boom my initial batch of sacrificial lambs was dying again, no more polyp extension and my fungia deflated and looked unhappy. Lost multiple specimens measured my PHO it was through the roof again, with nitrates remaining stable at current levels. All throughout this the majority of my LPS are all doing fine. I quickly did some water changes every other day to get PHO levels down and added new GFO bags and the 1 surviving acro, 2 surviving monti and 2 surviving fungia all stopped receding. In fact 1 Monti has gotten some of its color back in areas I previous thought dead, and acro has just stood still, no recession. 1 Fungia is currently fighting for it's life i'd say, trying to regrow flesh that was lost in some parts, while the other is super bubbly and happy, healing its wounds daily from what I can see. The last crash also peeled the skin off some of my duncan and dendros skeleton but it did not fully fall off and I can see new growth coming back in areas that were affected. Concern for usage of material ie GFO, Carbon etc is not a big one because i buy everything I use in the largest bulk packs I can so I've got plenty... I do however see value in using the assistance of someone with excellent stable water quality to rehabilitate corals I actually care about such as my fungia and would probably very much appreciate it if someone could help me in taking the more ravaged of my two fungia so it can have a stable environment to recover. Fungia are my favorite corals and I strangely got attached to them when they were bubbly and beautiful for 2.5+ weeks. However after having read stuff about why that BTA died, I'm wondering if perhaps I gave them too large chunks of food that may have contributed to their ill health i used to give them chunk of silverfish the size of their mouths, which is pretty big on mine.... I also dont find it necessary to relocate happy corals or give up on corals entirely. I'm not a fan of FOWLR tanks as i find them to be unattractive, I'd honestly rather break down and get out of the hobby then go FOWLR, just not what i'm looking for. I find one can get fresh water tanks with similar results for far cheaper. I get enjoyment out of seeing both the corals and fish/inverts in the same environment and the odd interactions/beauty and diversity. Watching coral slowly grow as i've seen in many of my LPS and softies is also super rewarding I traded some frags of stuff already which is super exciting! Ultimately my goal is to be able to move my tank from where it is now as a successful fish/invert/softy/easy LPS tank to a successful fully mixed tank capable of sustaining moderately hard to keep SPS and hard to keep LPS. I'd like to do that without taking years to get there. So any advice to get me toward that goal is super appreciated, as all of your insights thus far have been. While keeping it simple may work eventually, it does seem super slow. Considering what my trade is at work, i'm definitely not one of those that subscribes to tech and chems are bad, they can be great and help speed things up if used in the right situation for the right purpose! Also if anyone knows someone that would be willing to rehab my fungia back to nice health for eventual re-introduction into my tank I'd very much appreciate it! So far I only see the following courses of action to get to where I want to be. #1 feed significantly less, target feed sporadically, find source of chromium, do water changes till nitrates and phosphates lowered, consider removing gfo if nitrates dont go up. Also in this case how do i keep fish from pulling food out of dendro tenatacles? They do that when not full. #2 Start vodka dosing, find source of chromium, do some water changes to reduce nitrates and chromium, feed moderately less, remove biopellet reactor (does it hurt to do both?), ensure nutrients dont get too low With my goals in mind do either of those sound about right? Also which is more likely to succeed and how long will it take approx? Also any other ideas that may help?

@Origami, yes thank you for making that abundantly clear 100% received and going to work on the primary concern. Chromium is also a big concern of mine, I currently use red sea coral pro salt for my tank. I'm going to check all my probes and pumps as soon as I can. Do you think removing a glass cleaner magnet is necessary? How can I be certain it's integrity has not been compromised if it visually looks ok? I would hate for it to be festering under the felt scrubby pad.... I'll definitely read more about how the swing cycle works, although I must say it's nice to see that my swing cycle seems to be fairly normal and that at least something is going right in my tank!!! Hrmm as far as low nutrient problems, if I ever do run into that issue, will sporadic target feeding of nutrients such as what I do with my feather dusters help those guys out? Turning pumps off for a bit and just letting a cloud hang over them? I do this using phytoalgea that I grow, but could easily also mix some coral food powder in if it's ever necessary. On that note how much does phyto hurt me in terms of controlling my nutrient levels? The phyto I add to my system periodically is alive as its growing in my cultures and feeding my pod cultures. For a 106 gallon tank what is the max amount of phyto you would add on a weekly basis? Edit: accidentally hit reply instead of editing and adding to my last post sorry! Can't seem to find a way to delete so I can merge it either.

Everyone, just wanted to say thank you very much I very much appreciate all the excellent advice and insight. Fully understood on the feeding and it's cut back significantly, we'll see how it goes on that front going forward. Also will definitely try to locate the rust. @madweazl my reactor that I have has holes that I thought would be far too big, the granularity of the GFO is only a little bigger than sand so it would probably escape the reactor, plus I was always under impression that reactor is best but filter bags in high flow areas work too just maybe not as well. Either way I've seen good reductions in PHO using it @Sharkey18 As far as not thinking products cause ill effects, definitely not the case. I tried to start with minimal products but it just didnt work. I added stuff such as gfo and kalkwasser because there was a need, not only were my SPS getting killed within a day or two and virtually all of my LPS which previously were doing well were starting to go down as well, minus BTAs and mushroom types, even certain zoas were having trouble. My alk was quite low at 7.5 and this was rectified by kalkwasser over time slowly. I only add as much as needed to keep my parameters within acceptable ranges. Fixing my alk helped perk up virtually all my LPS, even the duncans which were shedding skin on its skeleton. I managed to save 2 fungia with that move, sadly 2 died. After my alk was fixed I figured I'd give some "easy" sps a shot to see if I had resolved all my issues. Most died within a week with some showing polyp extension for a few days, marked improvement, previously id never seen polyps at all on SPS. However, still not the result i wanted. A few have managed to cling on, with some spots of life left so I decided to try and lower my nitrates and phosphates. Now as far as GFO that was added as a measure to combat the exceedingly high nitrate and phosphate levels, my nitrates were through the roof and phosphates immeasurable. So far I've been using GFO for 1 month and the downward spiral for the SPS and monti's actually stopped from what i can tell, in fact one monti seems to be doing a bit better, with my sole surviving SPS having just not changed since I added GFO. It's the longest survival time I've had yet. So my fear is that if I remove GFO, it would cause a regression as I could see recession progress every day prior to adding GFO. I know GFO is not a magic bullet, but until my nutrients manage to export out of my system over time with water changes and less feeding I think it may be a bad idea to cut GFO completely. What do the rest of you guys think? Once my nutrients are in control I'd have zero problem with removing GFO. I just want to give the survivors a fighting chance while the problem corrects. It is very clear that one of my main problems was over feeding. I realize the whole your tank is not old thing. But I have seen tanks much younger than mine with "easy" sps that are not only surviving but also growing. So i don't think time is a valid excuse for all my problems. I think that I should be able to get some easy ones to survive once my water keeping skills have improved and water has stabilized. On another note, last nights sparse feeding was quite the reality check for my tank inhabitants, fish seemed quite underwhelmed.... lol Also I do have some algea eaters, how much negative affect on nitrates and PHO will keeping a sheet of algea in the tank have if any? At what point should one remove uneaten algea sheets?

@madweazl I keep my GFO inside of filter bags that are in a very high flow area forcing water through it. The grain of the GFO I use is meant for it as its too small and heavy to tumble in a reactor, its the high capacity stuff, you use it kind alike you would high capacity carbon. Nitrate levels prior to biopellet reactor were probably 10ppm higher so it has had an effect but not as much as expected. That biopellet reactor is half full and has only been running for about 1 month now.

I give the mandarin 1 frozen copepod cube per day + have 2 tanks of pods currently producing and i add pods from there directly into the tank. I also have a really cool brine shrimp hatching contraption that slowly releases the brine shrimp napulai but not the eggs into the tank for time released live feed throughout the day. Both scooter blenny and mandarin love hanging around it as do some of the wrasses and other fish for snacking. https://reefingart.com/products/brine-shrimp-auto-hatchery?variant=7259809284147

Wow, I as not aware that they can comne in such pretty coloration, looks like a giant ricordia. All I've ever seen are ugly maxi minis.

Wow that is very very nice! What is the first coral that the hermit is crawling on?

Also as far as GFO goes @madweazl I am using the recommended amount of GFO in a high flow area, using BRS brand high capacity GFO. I used half recommended and ULR hanna was still reading 200+ after 2 days. Changed out the bag, added full recommended amount and within 24hrs it reached 174. Within next 24hrs it reached 124ppb, 24 hours later it reached 70ppb and then it settled at the levels I sent it off to ATI for testing. Last check was at 30ppb which was a few days after ATI tested water was drawn using old bags and old feeding habits. Considering my high starting PHO content and even elevated levels in ATI test would you guys suggest I #1 keep running GFO? #2 If so do you believe the bags I have inside the unit right now are exhausted? #3 And should I add another half dose bag or full dose?

@YHSublime I actually used dr tims as well as ammonia powder to cylce the tank and kept feeding it ammonia for about 1 month before adding lots of livestock. Since then I've not been able to detect any ammonia. Overall I will go forward with #1 Finding the corroding item #2 Reduce feeding significantly. How much would you say is right frozen food wise for a tank my tank stock? Also how much pelletized? #3 Water 20% weekly water changes #4 Dose kalk as needed to keep ph/dkh stable. How long with following those steps before I should retest using ATI? Any measurements that would be helpful for me to do on a freqeunt basis, for future diagnosis? I have automated PH, Temp Nh4 NH3. I can manually test DKH PH SG and PHO and CAL with hanna and MG with red sea pro. How often should I test for each? I would really like to be able to eventually grow acros, montis and fungia. Fungia are actually my favorite coral and if all else fails I at least want to be able to grow those.

I have a significant amount of marine pure in my tank as well as a biopellet reactor and cheato going. What other biological filter would you recommend? More marine pure blocks?

Overall it looks like i need to tone down my feeding significantly, so thats what I'll do going forward. Do you suggest that I do so slowley or can I just go cold turkey starting today? I know slow changes generally seem to be better but not sure if thats the case in overfeeding scenarios. @Origami do my dinural swings seem healthy or are they too large? I try to offset by keeping my cheato light in the fuge on overnight, but it does not seem to compensate for the T5 up top. I've never had any ammonia issues to date, would you recommend slowly upping my PH levels over time in order to help with the NH4 seeing as I dont have NH3 issues? How high would you go max in the PH regard? Also whats the max DHK I should aim for as PH generally rises with that... I was thinking of installing an co2 scrubber on my airlines from outside in order to help expel more co2 and increase my PH. Is there any other safe way to do it other than that and very slow additions of Kalkwasser? What are considered more or less sensitive SPS, I was told montipora caps, and pocilipora were easy/bulletproof, also told the same about chypastrea but all those died slowly from bottom up or edges in when it comes to montis. @bues0022 Currently I have stocked: 2x maroon clowns fully grown 1 male 1 female 1x Mandarin Goby fully grown 2x small flame angels pair 1x scooter blenny 1x rainbow blenny 1x pistol srhimp watchman goby pair watchman aprox 3.5" 3x blue green chromis 2x female lyritail anthias 2.75" 1x male lyritail anthias 4.5" 3x anemone crabs 3x Pom Pom crabs 4x anomone 2x rbta 2x green bubbletip 1x dolbella sea hare 1x mcorskers flasher wrasse 1x blue line cleaner wrasse 1x blue yellow damsel 4x blood red fire shrimp swarm, they behave very cool almost zerg like beahvior 2x peppermint shrimp 1x scarlet skunk cleaner shirmp 5x Halloween hermits 5x electric hermits 10x snails assorted 3x Lettuce nudibranch

Understood, will make an effort to tone down feeding. Hrmm the magnesium tester I use is red sea pro. Has me wondering if I'm doing the test wrong or if the regent in the test is bad... I try to be pretty accurate with it!

Hey Origami thanks for taking a look, I really value your experience and the detail you provide!!! So first yes, I use only RODI when mixing salt and ATI confirmed it was perfect with 0 contaminants. (nice that they test your RODI for free!!!) As far as rust I'm going to look through the sump this weekend and inspect my scrubber magnets! (leave my flipper in the tank is that an bad idea... it does have a blade but i do not see rust on it) A few weeks back i noticed that the front intake screws on my main return pump were rusting a bit. It's an eheim compacton 5000+ pricey pump so I was a bit surprized.... Could 4 small screws on the front be the contributing factor in this? If so how the heck are those marine aquarium rated and what screw metal should I replace them with? Or should I not be concerned with small bits of rust on the screws and be looking for a bigger fish so to speak? As far as the Po4 yes I think its high mainly due to having been overfeeding for a while.... I have a fully stocked tank with quite a few shrimp and critters and always liked seeing each creature get some food during each feed.... In the morning about 2x shrimp pellets 1/4th large hikari algea wafer, 6x 1mm and 4x 3mm pellets and a pinch of premium flake food for the first feeding and for dinner I do frozen food with about 2 squares of mysis, 1 small square of rods and 1 square of copepod. I also have been doing a coral feast type turkey baste of about 2 shot glasses worth twice a week targeting feather dusters and corals. My guess is that yes I'm overfeeding, problem is if the shrimp don't get their fill they pluck food out of anemones and LPS which is not desirable.... so perhaps I should tone it down significantly and do a heavy feed only once a week and then target feed my anemones and LPS at that time? Is there any kind of food that you would suggest that can be fed with higher rates and not cause as much nutrients? As far as NH4 and NH3 readings I wrote, those are taken directly from my seneye device, I seem to never really have ammonia at all just NH4. (the temp is actually at 78.5 but i accidentally uncalibrated my seneye through settings when I calibrated its PH and havnt gotten round to fixing it yet. Also showing just a 72h worth