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Jon's S500 Build (The big move)

Short update - sent water away for ICP testing and was a bit surprised by some of the results. Need to do a bit more homework but my initial reaction was a little confusion about some of the low numbers of trace elements specifically 0ppm iodine and manganese. I have All for Reef on a doser putting in 30mL per day which was what I found to be the sweet spot to keep my Calc around 420-450 and my Alk at around 9-11. I can't imagine the corals are sucking down that level of trace elements, and didn't think that I would need to consider dosing other things in addition to AFR. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on there. Any feedback would be most welcome.

My 26-gallon had both at 0 for the last three Triton ICP despite dosing both separately. I have read that others have experienced similar values for these two. There is an interview with reef bum and Claude Schumacher/Fauna Marin CEO who explains that this is due to an imbalance in other traces but do not remember the details exactly, maybe just advertising their ICP.
 
I wouldn't worry about it. For some of the really low concentration metals, it's really hard to measure them because they get washed out by the noise from higher concentration metals. The limit of detection for Mn is also super low and not much under the natural levels in seawater. Mn and Fe will also get consumed by macro algae (mine are usually low from chaetomorpha).

Some people dose both as part of supplements like Chaetogro etc. Others dose a bit of iodine for coral color. Many dose nothing and still have tanks that look great. Focus more on if your animals look healthy.

Sanjay also did a look into different companies as did Fritz in the end of the article and the company you used had quite a bit of variability: https://reefbuilders.com/2023/07/12/the-reef-builders-big-icp-test-review-by-sanjay-joshi/
 
Short update - sent water away for ICP testing and was a bit surprised by some of the results. Need to do a bit more homework but my initial reaction was a little confusion about some of the low numbers of trace elements specifically 0ppm iodine and manganese. I have All for Reef on a doser putting in 30mL per day which was what I found to be the sweet spot to keep my Calc around 420-450 and my Alk at around 9-11. I can't imagine the corals are sucking down that level of trace elements, and didn't think that I would need to consider dosing other things in addition to AFR. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on there. Any feedback would be most welcome.
I really don't like icp-analysis. If you're going to run an icp test go with triton
 
Super helpful thanks guys! Everything looks healthy so I'm not looking to make any big changes at this point, and y'all helped confirm my feeelings. Got the test for $20 so figured why not ‍
 
January update:

So back in September, I picked up this really cool Candy Cane pistol shrimp and orange spotted goby pair. QT'd them and introduced them to the tank in October sometime. pistol shrimp immediately made a home in my rockwork. The goby swam around a bit the first day, and perched around on the rocks, but the second day he started acting really erratically, swimming up the glass from bottom to top of the tank, and at one point seeming to almost get sucked into the overflow (he was real small). I figured if he wasn't better the third day, I was going to try and catch him and drop him in my acclimation box. Third day comes around and he's GONE. Nowhere to be found. I knew the pistol shrimp was there and fine because he always has a nice clean little hole under my rockwork, but that was the last I saw of Gobi-Wan Kenobi.

UNTIL YESTERDAY. I swing by the tank before bed like I always do, and there he is, chilling in front of the pistol shrimp hole. He's huge and healthy looking, but man he hid for close to 4 months. Pretty crazy. Not sure if he's going to start coming out more, or if anyone has tips for encouraging him to be social, but I'm real happy he's still around, he's such a cool fish.

Outside of that tank is doing fine. Having some weird diatom issues that I can't quite get to the bottom of. Maybe phosphates are too low. Doing weekly 10-15% water changes, nutrients are all stable, can't quite figure out what's up, but at this point it's nothing too crazy. Picked up an awesome splatter hammer at the last meetup at High Tide. Shout out to the guy who brought it, I can't for the life of me remember his name/username but he looks a bit like Ike Barinholtz the actor.

pH: 8.2
PO4: 0.03
NO3: 3.1
Alk: 10.1dkh
Ca: 391
Mg: 1520

Dosing/treatment:
All-for-reef - 30mL daily
Nopox - 12mL daily
RS AB+ 25ml once/week if I remember
Activated carbon
 
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I’d check nitrate if you’re gonna be adding nopox. To each their own, but phosphate is right on the edge of too low there. Might want to back off by 1-2 ml and see what happens.
As for diatoms, I think they like silica/silicates. Could be getting in from source water. DI could need changing.
 
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