Joseph Lee
Supporting Member
Finally the top-down shot. 
More pictures can be seen on the previous page (#9).
More pictures can be seen on the previous page (#9).
Last edited:
Michael's 168 build
- Thread starter H2OPlayar
- Start date
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Thank you so much @Joseph Lee for sharing your photography skills and chatting reefing for so long. It is always a pleasure to hang out with someone who shares the passion. Your photographs are amazing and I look forward to blowing up some and putting them on my wall.
Joseph Lee
Supporting Member
My pleasure Michael. Your place is filled with exciting stuff
Joseph Lee
Supporting Member
A good reminder that I need to feed more.
Boy. Everything grows super fast for you. I’m over here struggling.
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
I run my reactor from 9 am to 5 pm, and usually after a week the PO4 is down at ~.1, where it then takes the next 2-3 weeks to get back to ~.4
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Thank you, and anytime.
Also, I tested my po4 today after running my gfo for a week and got 0.14, right where I expect in between .1 and .4.
Coral reefer
Past President
What do you think would be minimum time for a safe swing of the amount?
My old tank used to swing from Maybe .1 to .25, but I dont remember how long it would take and I do remember thinking changing it too fast might have cause me some issues in the past when it got higher than I wanted
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Let me preface this with everything below is based off my experience and no real science (other than observation).
When I go from .4 to .1, it can happen as fast as I want. Based on suggestions from the group and intuition, I stopped running my gfo all day as I noticed a fast decline in po4. Today, I run it 6 hours a day. With gfo induced phosphate removal, alkalinity gets taken out too so I had to adjust my dosing to keep that in place. Since I am bringing po4 down to .1, which most reefers think of as high, I believe I can do it relatively quickly and not shock the corals as there are still nutrients in the water. My guess is that if people are doing what I do in very fast po4 removal, that it is actually the alkalinity swing that hurts the corals. Having the Trident testing 4x a day for me lets me see in almost real time my alkalinity uptake and adjust accordingly. This is why I think I have never seen any ill effects from removing po4 quickly.
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
These days I preemptively bump my dosing from ~90 mL/day to ~130mL/day and still let TCD do its thing. That is close to a 50% increase in alk dosing, so I would call that a steep drop. I mitigate the steepness of the drop by only running the GFO 6 hours a day, so the absorption happens over more days.
I have seen it go from 8.6 down to 7.8 overnight if I didn't change dosing.
H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
It didn't stay down because I ramped my dosing up appropriately, and the dosing is spread out through the day. Yes, tcd is Trident controlled dosing
Blaise006
Supporting Member
Great job helping everyone.
There are so many intricacies regarding impacts to alkalinity. I think it’s super helpful for people to be able to reference this stuff so they can draw conclusions.
Mastering alkalinity is a steep hill, I believe. It’s one of those things where I feel like ignorance was bliss before I could see hourly changes to DKH.
There are so many intricacies regarding impacts to alkalinity. I think it’s super helpful for people to be able to reference this stuff so they can draw conclusions.
Mastering alkalinity is a steep hill, I believe. It’s one of those things where I feel like ignorance was bliss before I could see hourly changes to DKH.