Hey guys.
Stopping in here to give an update. October 30th was my last.
November 1st I picked up an orange spotted goby and tiger pistol shrimp. Fish is doing great, and I haven’t seen the pistol shrimp since I added it lol. I’ve been adding Seed brand bacteria since the 4th following the instructions on the bottle. Today was my last day.
Caught my emerald crab grab a piece of my green eye cyphastrea. Didn’t do much damage at all. This was his first offense as I watch him like a hawk. Immediately snatched him up and threw him into sump. He’s in jail as my 8 year old says lol. He will be in there until he passes or maybe give him to anyone interested (any takers?). That trust is gone. It’s a shame really. He added character to the tank and the family really liked him. I did too.
Also picked up some frags on the 3rd thanks to @heinbaughb. From what I understand, they aren’t the best beginner species lol, but so far seem to be doin really well.
I’ve been monitoring ammonia daily and so far everything looks good, but I’m not sure how much the bacteria affected the results, if any. I’ll continue to monitor the next few days and periodically after that to make sure it’s all good.
My tank seems as if it’s sterile. I’m feeding as small of an amount as I can so my goby can pick some up. Once every 2 days. I’m feeding what I would call about 1/8th cube of frozen mysis. Even with my pumps off the food doesn’t make its way down to where my goby chills easily. He won’t work too hard for the food so I have to make sure there’s enough that floats by him. He’s lazy lol. I need to get some sinking pellets and try those.
I’ve also been adding some phytoplankton that came with my pods from algaebarn. I’ve been pretty conservative with this stuff as I have read some negative results, but wanted to increase the chances of my new pods surviving. One of the big complaints I have seen is that it adds phosphates. This brings me to what I’ve been wondering about the past few days...
I use API testing as of now (I know, I know). It can’t detect at very low levels for any test. My phosphates are undetectable on the tests, and nitrates are also undetectable. If my memory serves me well, don’t corals need some amount of each to really do well? It’s also concerning because everything I read about dinoflagellates is never let your phosphate or nitrate reach zero. Another common contributing factor for them is simply a new tank/immature rock. I’ve seen too many thread topics on dinos and have read too many horror stories. To be frank, I’m terrified of dinos and I’m sitting with a tank that screams dinos lol.
My skimmer doesn’t seem to be pulling much out and my chaeto is alive but not growing. That, along with zero algae growth and low levels has me wondering if my filtration process is too strong as of now. Is this possible? I’m on a water change schedule of 25 gallons weekly. Roughly 100 gallon system.
I’m going to pick up some new test kits and see if I can measure anything in the low range that my API can’t see. What do you guys recommend as far as testing equipment?
For the sake of.....idk..here’s what API says:
Ammo - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
Salinity - 35ppt
pH (day) - 8.0 (why so low?)
pH (night) - 7.5 (why so low?)
Calcium - 380
Dkh - 7
Magnesium - No test
Mike
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