Now I truly understand what chasing numbers means

[nanjinho]

Well back in Sep 2019 my tank crashed due to auto feeder and lost most of my sticks.
And Thank you @spike and @FutureInterest for getting me back on my feet!!

After getting back on my feet I got the BRS two part and started to get my tank ready for some SPS!!

So all the parameters were just perfect but my corals didn’t color up, they basically all turned little brown..
So I started asking around and found out Acropower will increase the coloration! So I bought it and started dosing, the same week I was told my Nitrate was just too low.

So what do I do? Start to search on Google and hear about feeding more/ turning off the skimmer.
Guess what I did.. thats right, I do them all… guess what happened? 1st week was totally fine, 2nd week started to see some algae bloom, 3rd week RTN……….

Well @FutureInterest told me the hard fact! If you need to increase Nitrate just dose Nitrate! Don’t do anything else when your tank is doing fine. Your chasing numbers Peter!

That when I truly knew I was chasing numbers….
Everything was growing but color was little off…
now they are white…
learned my lesson the hard way.

Do not chase numbers

 

[Adam]

Well back in Sep 2019 my tank crashed due to auto feeder and lost most of my sticks.
And Thank you @spike and @FutureInterest for getting me back on my feet!!

After getting back on my feet I got the BRS two part and started to get my tank ready for some SPS!!

So all the parameters were just perfect but my corals didn’t color up, they basically all turned little brown..
So I started asking around and found out Acropower will increase the coloration! So I bought it and started dosing, the same week I was told my Nitrate was just too low.

So what do I do? Start to search on Google and hear about feeding more/ turning off the skimmer.
Guess what I did.. thats right, I do them all… guess what happened? 1st week was totally fine, 2nd week started to see some algae bloom, 3rd week RTN……….

Well @FutureInterest told me the hard fact! If you need to increase Nitrate just dose Nitrate! Don’t do anything else when your tank is doing fine. Your chasing numbers Peter!

That when I truly knew I was chasing numbers….
Everything was growing but color was little off…
now they are white…
learned my lesson the hard way.

Do not chase numbers

The water chemistry of our aquariums is quite complex and can be quite difficult to get and keep in balance. The problem you encountered "Chasing numbers" was that instead of doing one thing waiting a while and checking the results you did multiple things and you not only didn't know which one worked, you increased your low parameter much further than you wanted to. Which then created a host of other problems.

Just like getting the big three in balance. Just because Alk is low doesn't mean you just dose Alk. If you keep doing that repetitively you will most likely create another problems, like Alk precipitation. You need to check your Mag and see if it's in the correct range, if not that needs to be corrected first. Then you need to see where your Cal is, correct it if necessary and then see how it responds to the Alk addition.
With Nitrate being low there are several things to look at. Just dosing nitrate may or may not be the fix. Beyond a skimmer do you have another form of nutrient export, a fuge growing chaeto, a chaeto reactor or an ATS growing GHA? If so how is it producing? Maybe it's doing too good of a job and the light schedule needs to be reduced. Maybe you could feed a little more, either the fish or the coral. Are you dosing a carbon source to help with NO3 and PO4? If so maybe reducing that dose will help.

There are many ways to skin a cat. In my view, dosing a nutrient should be the last resort and only used on a temporary basis while you try an identify how to better balance that system naturally. You don't want to be stuck dosing nitrate forever, especially when you work so hard to keep it low in the first place. Getting the system in balance with your feeding schedule while keeping everything happy and colorful should be the ultimate goal.

Don't forget, as the coral biomass increases in the system so will the nutrient demand. What you were doing yesterday to keep nutrients in check maybe too much today with larger corals in the tank and no increase to the amount fed.

 

[snowmansnow]

Man I gotta say chasing numbers will get you nowhere fast. The most awesome tank I ever had was 120 sps tank. Honestly.,, I probably tested all 10 times over 7 years it was up. That’s it. Only god knows what my numbers were, but it was clean, stable and efficient. Corals grew so fast I could do frags almost every weekend.
So yea... don’t get hung up on numbers


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[nanjinho]

The water chemistry of our aquariums is quite complex and can be quite difficult to get and keep in balance. The problem you encountered "Chasing numbers" was that instead of doing one thing waiting a while and checking the results you did multiple things and you not only didn't know which one worked, you increased your low parameter much further than you wanted to. Which then created a host of other problems.

Just like getting the big three in balance. Just because Alk is low doesn't mean you just dose Alk. If you keep doing that repetitively you will most likely create another problems, like Alk precipitation. You need to check your Mag and see if it's in the correct range, if not that needs to be corrected first. Then you need to see where your Cal is, correct it if necessary and then see how it responds to the Alk addition.
With Nitrate being low there are several things to look at. Just dosing nitrate may or may not be the fix. Beyond a skimmer do you have another form of nutrient export, a fuge growing chaeto, a chaeto reactor or an ATS growing GHA? If so how is it producing? Maybe it's doing too good of a job and the light schedule needs to be reduced. Maybe you could feed a little more, either the fish or the coral. Are you dosing a carbon source to help with NO3 and PO4? If so maybe reducing that dose will help.

There are many ways to skin a cat. In my view, dosing a nutrient should be the last resort and only used on a temporary basis while you try an identify how to better balance that system naturally. You don't want to be stuck dosing nitrate forever, especially when you work so hard to keep it low in the first place. Getting the system in balance with your feeding schedule while keeping everything happy and colorful should be the ultimate goal.

Don't forget, as the coral biomass increases in the system so will the nutrient demand. What you were doing yesterday to keep nutrients in check maybe too much today with larger corals in the tank and no increase to the amount fed.

So I do have Chaeto reactor that I clean out once every other months I think.
its so full that I have to remove it.

So after I started dosing 2 part I have been checking ALK, Cal, Mag, Ammonia, NO2, NO3, Phos
I did take it slow on Alk Cal Mag to the point Alk 8.5-9 ish, Cal 450, Mag close to 1500 rest all at 0.00

so I guess what I can do now is let the RTN to take its course... and dont change anything!! leave it alone!! and once it settles get some SPS again...

 

[Adam]

So I do have Chaeto reactor that I clean out once every other months I think.
its so full that I have to remove it.

So after I started dosing 2 part I have been checking ALK, Cal, Mag, Ammonia, NO2, NO3, Phos
I did take it slow on Alk Cal Mag to the point Alk 8.5-9 ish, Cal 450, Mag close to 1500 rest all at 0.00

so I guess what I can do now is let the RTN to take its course... and dont change anything!! leave it alone!! and once it settles get some SPS again...

You could take some clippings of the coral to try and save some of it. You can also reduce the light on the tank to see if that helps.

For me, I've always tried to have nutrients in the water to keep the Alk higher, like where you're at. Maybe @ActiveAngel can give you some pointers on running with ultra low nutrient levels.

 

[ActiveAngel]

Firstly, sorry to hear about your troubles.

Regarding low nutrients, I’ve never had issues with running at 0 for everything. The nutrients are there, due to my having fish, they’re just being absorbed and not accumulating substantially in the water column.

Not sure what help I can provide, but regarding RTN and STN; for whatever species is affected, I would remove all afflicted coral, preferably cutting multiple frag that are at least 1-2” away from the infected tissue. The few times I have witnessed it, I’ve seen it come back when the coral was trimmed too close to the infection. and I’ve seen it jump across the tank to other colonies as well

 

[ActiveAngel]

As for specific ULN pointers, feel free to ask questions. But if you’re already at ULN, then my only guess at your question is “why are my corals brown?”

To which I would respond:
What size system?
what fish do you have?
How old is the system?
What lights do you have? And which intensities?
How much flow is your return pump and circulation pumps providing?

 

[ActiveAngel]

@anit77 has some good advice up above. As a pilot, I also apply the same advice from flying to reef keeping. That advice is: “small corrections only.” Doing a dozen solutions to solve a singular problem, especially if any of these solutions is a large fundamental one, is the recipe for every disaster.

 

[nanjinho]

As for specific ULN pointers, feel free to ask questions. But if you’re already at ULN, then my only guess at your question is “why are my corals brown?”

To which I would respond:
What size system?
what fish do you have?
How old is the system?
What lights do you have? And which intensities?
How much flow is your return pump and circulation pumps providing?

To which I would respond:
What size system? 125 gallon display with maybe about 20 gallon sump.
what fish do you have? Yellow, Blue Tang, 2 dwarf angel, sail fin tang, 2 chromis, 2 clowns , royal gamma, six line wrasse
How old is the system? well I had 65 for about 2 years moved it all into 125 little over year ago.
What lights do you have? And which intensities? 3 led black box and 2 60in T-5 Blue intensity at about 50% 10hours, white intensity at about 50% 8hours, T-5 4 hours
How much flow is your return pump and circulation pumps providing? got 2 XF250 max spec gyre and Jebao DCP 8000 running at 80% I believe I got more than enough flow..

the sps frags i had was not bigger than 4 inches so not really got anything to trim back..

I did get Forest fire Digi from @FutureInterest so I will wait and see if it starts growing to add any more SPS...

 

[ActiveAngel]

Awesome; all great info. My only concern is that sometimes those dwarf angels don’t play well with corals... which could contribute to stress. But otherwise, the high level points all seem within reason for a healthy tank!

In the past, with similar tank conditions, and coral that decided to ‘brown out’, it was due to an Alk swing. Some coral species, like Acros, will brown out quickly and take many months to regain color (depending on species). Whereas other species, like Monti Caps ( go figure) can have their color bounce back within days.

Id say, “stick with it” (haha, coral pun). In time, you will likely see color come back. Meanwhile, you have time to investigate and make small changes.

 

[bzb]

Swing by my place sometime and I’ll hook ya up with some deathproof corals.

Some may call em plague corals.

I call them “setting the bar low for success” corals.

 

[NanCrab]

Swing by my place sometime and I’ll hook ya up with some deathproof corals.

Some may call em plague corals.

I call them “setting the bar low for success” corals.

I may need some of those!

 

[nanjinho]

Swing by my place sometime and I’ll hook ya up with some deathproof corals.

Some may call em plague corals.

I call them “setting the bar low for success” corals.

Lol my Starry night coral use to be my dead proof SPS but now i see it taking an STN as well....
My Starry night lived through my Ammonia Spike so im really surprised its dying.

 

[nanjinho]

Awesome; all great info. My only concern is that sometimes those dwarf angels don’t play well with corals... which could contribute to stress. But otherwise, the high level points all seem within reason for a healthy tank!

In the past, with similar tank conditions, and coral that decided to ‘brown out’, it was due to an Alk swing. Some coral species, like Acros, will brown out quickly and take many months to regain color (depending on species). Whereas other species, like Monti Caps ( go figure) can have their color bounce back within days.

Id say, “stick with it” (haha, coral pun). In time, you will likely see color come back. Meanwhile, you have time to investigate and make small changes.

Thank you for the Tips!
I will just take it slow~~~~ and leave everything alone!

 

[bzb]

I had some wild Magnesium swings when I was first dosing. I wouldn't say I was chasing numbers as much as I was attempting to figure out stability. It took about 6 weeks of "small" changes to figure it out. Then I added dosing pumps, and that took another 2-3 weeks to figure out and get those levels stable.

The more I read, the less folks seem to be preaching about numbers, and more about stability. People have success with a wide range of systems, and more specifically, a very wide range of nutrient levels. Think of the successful tanks that are a quarter of your size - small consumptions of Ca/Alk can make for much larger scale of swings in those numbers, and yet their tanks still thrive.

We just have to get over the mindset of "stability means static numbers" (still difficult for me) because so many variables can play into those numbers, including user error on hobby-grade tests. I believe it's wild swings that cause issues, not being a few percentage points off from your last test.

Speaking of which... how are you dosing, and do you run an ATO?

 

[nanjinho]

Well after few days lost all the hard coral..

Should I stop dosing alk ca and mag??

Only Stick in there now is Forest Fire Digi that I got after.

 

[ichthyoid]

I'm so sorry to read this!
My suggestion would be to measure & keep your levels stable. Dialing the 'dosing alk ca and mag' back, as needed.