Brandon, if you're going to raise the ALK maybe shoot for the 9 range to start. It's just a slight adjustment from where you are now and if your NO3 and PO4 are at or near zero it won't be another shock to them and cause burnt tips. Don't want them getting hit at both ends.
I dose some Kent and Brightwell products. With the Kent it's Strontium & Molybdenum. Brightwell it's either Replenish or Koralcolor, every other week. So one week it's one or the other. I also dose their Ferrion every other week and a few drops of BoroChrom once a month. All dosing, no matter what it is, is done at half the recommended rate. I back this all up with a Triton test every 3 to 4 months. During the last 2 months I really neglected the system during a big remodel project at the house. Tonight will be 2 weeks since I started to attack cyano and will be my 3rd water change in that time. It's all cleared up now and the tanks look great. Dan was having issues with color and I don't remember if there was tissue loss or not. But after starting to dose micro's everything got better for him. He doesn't do water changes very often though, so it's even more important for him to dose. I have a Triton test ready to go and I'm going to send it off next Monday. The next one I do I'm seriously thinking about trying ATI's new test. They will do you're RO water as well, for less money to boot. Would be nice just to verify that all is good there too.
Leo, I like to keep my NO3 between 3 & 8 and PO4 between .03 and .06. I imagine things were a bit higher than that recently but I haven't tested since February. If your PH is really that low then it's a problem. you should rule that out soon. The other stuff looks inline to slightly high (other than the Alk which is good with the low nutrients), but not a problem. If you see a rise in NO3 & PO4 then a slight rise in Alk will help. My system usually runs 8.5 to 9.2. On the lights, I don't run any full Actinic T5's. I use 3 Blue+ and one Purple+ in the front pair. They're on 4.5hrs a day. But my led's do have 420 & 395 in them.
I'm by no means an expert, most of you have been keeping tanks a lot longer than me. June will be 2yrs. When I first started I couldn't keep a Zoa to same my a$$, they would close up and melt away. After the first year that part got a lot better and now every Zoa I put in the system thrives. With sticks, the only thing I've lost is from fish or snails knocking them over. I don't know if I've been extremely lucky or the sheer amount of water I have has helped avoid massive swings. I do notice things do tend to happen pretty slowly. The 2 biggest problems I've had, other than Cyano, was a Kalk dump about a year ago and Monti Nudi's. Didn't lose anything with those. One Monti is still in the QT tank but the other is well on it's way to rebounding. I will say the micro dosing really does seem to help but without doing some testing you don't know what to add more of. If neither of you are going to go that route then going back to the good ole kiss method is the best bet. Weekly water changes and try to get at least some detectable nutrients.
