Should I downgrade from 140g?

[camellia]

When I had a 55 it got accidentally overdosed with vodka. Nothing grew for over six months. I upgraded to a 75 and everything took off immediately!

IMHO think it killed the good bacteria in the 55, when deluded, added more rock and for good bacteria to grow on... problem is solved,

When I downgraded from my 75 to my 40 cube it was hard deciding what to keep...

but so much easier and I love it! Water changes are a breeze...

GL

 

[danh]

If water changes were a breeze I doubt I'd be having any of these problems. I understand that lol. Just trying to do it a little different.

 

[danh]

I posted this my update on Monday 9/17 but I  had started my increased dumping and praying of trace about a week before. I can see considerable polyp extension now. I'm also feeding reef chili twice a week now.

 

[danh]

I'm having some trouble with one a couple of acros and my candy canes still at this point.

I'm doing two things now to try to help. 1 - dosing strontium. I had been missing that with the few chems I was dosing. 2 - Using kalkwasser again.

I am not looking at my ph any more so this may be why these guys are doing so poorly. I'm not sure why the candy canes would be unhappy but stylo and montis are fine but we'll see if a higher ph helps through the use of about 3tbsp of kalk in my 5g ato.

 

[danh]

Still having trouble. Kalk doesn't seem to be doing the trick. Went back to a picture I took when I first started dosing with Seachem traces. It looks like my cocktail of Reef Trace AND Marine Trace was the ticket last year. Marine is on the left.

 

[FutureInterest]

It sounds like you ran into an ideal situation where everything was growing very well without water changes and just doing kalk and supplements. Basically your own Triton system. The only issue I see is that for continued stability even Triton requires regular ICP tests to be run successfully.

I feel like you're just going to create additional heartache for yourself by forcing the 140 into a reef tank without ICP testing or without water changes. So I actually think your idea of turning that 140 into a pred tank would be very cool and going for a more manageable size reef tank where you can do regular water changes. I know I've always wanted a pred tank... Otherwise doing what your doing is more akin to just throwing darts in the dark... Something is off and dosing various different products probably won't solve it... It might... but who even knows if its a trace element deficiency? It could very well be that you have too much of some particular trace elements and its reaching toxicity...

I have no idea frankly as I've only been able to run successful systems with water changes. Now that we have ICP tests at our disposal I think its a good thing to do as it can help spot issues before they become real issues where corals start suffering. For example: One of my tanks is always potassium deficient so I've started including potassium nitrate into the sodium nitrate solution and that seems to be helping. The other tank was running high in sulfur so I had to adjust the 2 part mixture to have less mag sulfate. My point is that a simple ICP test can help you figure out what ails your reef tank... and could make your no water change thing successful.

 

[FutureInterest]

One other thought Dan... Have you considered getting a calcium reactor? One of the benefits of the CaRx that isn't mentioned regularly is that as it dissolves the coral skeletons it also releases trace elements that are bound in the skeletons as well as the Ca and Alk.

 

[Adam]

Sounds like you need a couple of large water changes Dan. I know, your favorite thing... lol

But it really sounds like things have gotten way out of balance and two 40-50% water changes back to back are going to be needed to reset it.
Like Jin said, I bet some of the elements are sky high and others may be low.

 

[danh]

That's what I've been putting off. I need to get a container to hold, mix and heat that much water.

I got the Marine Trace and it actually looks to be helping. That doesn't change my mind about needing a wc though. It's crazy that the stylo and some of the lps still look as great as ever.

 

[Adam]

Look up the ATI ICP tests at Marine Depot. They're $40, $10 cheaper than Triton.

There's also a company in Colorado doing them for $30 but the results have been mixed.
https://www.icp-analysis.com/collections/icp-testing

You can't keep adding stuff without knowing what the end result is. Even at the 1/2 dose I recommended you're going to need to check it a few times a year just to know what's going on.
There's a Reefing rule out there that says "Don't add anything you can't test for"

I get 3 to 4 ICP tests done a year...