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Michael's 168 build

Finally the top-down shot. :p More pictures can be seen on the previous page (#9).
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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.
 
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.
My pleasure Michael. Your place is filled with exciting stuff :)
 
Awesome reef with tons of life!
Gives all of us with newer tanks something to strive for.

Thanks again for the all Trident/dosing coaching you have given me.
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.
 
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.
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
 
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
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.
 
Any idea a rough order magnitude hit to Alkalinity you are seeing with the Trident? Is it a steep curve or a gradual decline on the graph?
 
Any idea a rough order magnitude hit to Alkalinity you are seeing with the Trident? Is it a steep curve or a gradual decline on the graph?
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.
 
Did it go down and stay down, or start bouncing more than normal? Does TCD stand for Trident Controlled Dosing?
 
Did it go down and stay down, or start bouncing more than normal? Does TCD stand for Trident Controlled Dosing?
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
 
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.
 
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