got ethical husbandry?

Ryan’s 40G first reef

Made it home and found my ATO empty and my return chamber 2 inches low. Tank sitter got too busy and thought it would be fine without ATO water. Lessons learned. My corals grew a decent amount in two weeks! I'll take any outcome other than a tank crash.
 
Corals decided to color up while I was gone!
Monti skin has color instead of being pale, mushroom had a baby, and gonis grew!
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I've been dosing 18ML per day confirmed since I got home on the 16th and my alk has dropped from 10 to 8.6. Holy hell how much AFR will this tank consume?
 
I've decided that I'm over having 0 N & 0 P and risking dinos. I ordered sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate and I have 2 dosing heads free anyways. I'll go extremely slowly and target the Redfield ratio around 5ppm nitrate and and 0.3ppm phosphate. I'm hoping for better coral growth and coloration.

richiev said:
Did you verify you're getting 18ml out of the tubes?
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Yes, it seems to spit out 18ML. I noticed sometimes it spits out air halfway through so I'll have to figure out why.
 
Hung my light bracket today. Didn’t squash as much shadowing as I would have expected. Maybe I need 6 XR15s :)
Dialed in PAR:
220-320 top of rocks/sps rack
175-225 euphyllia rack
100-175 lps rack
70-110 Back corners and sides
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rdriggett said:
I've decided that I'm over having 0 N & 0 P and risking dinos. I ordered sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate and I have 2 dosing heads free anyways. I'll go extremely slowly and target the Redfield ratio around 5ppm nitrate and and 0.3ppm phosphate. I'm hoping for better coral growth and coloration.


Yes, it seems to spit out 18ML. I noticed sometimes it spits out air halfway through so I'll have to figure out why.
Click to expand...
If you have a kitchen scale, I'd weigh your bottle, and then weight it again after a couple days. You should see it drop 18g'ish daily.

The air bubble is suspicious. In my VOSS bottle setups, air bubble has always meant I'm not getting output like I expect, because if air can get in then backflow is occurring too.
 
Params:
Salinity: 1.026
Ph: I stopped testing because daytime high is 8.2 or better
Alk: 10.5
Calc: 460
Mag: 1450
N: 2
P: 0

Of course I get my first nitrate reading in 3+ months after I order the supplies to dose nitrate....
 
richiev said:
If you have a kitchen scale, I'd weigh your bottle, and then weight it again after a couple days. You should see it drop 18g'ish daily.

The air bubble is suspicious. In my VOSS bottle setups, air bubble has always meant I'm not getting output like I expect, because if air can get in then backflow is occurring too.
Click to expand...
Verified that both dosing output lines spit out bubbles despite the lines being fully primed when running for more than 10 seconds. My dosing container has depleted to nearly empty so I know its getting most of what I ask it to dose.
 
AFR dosing is dialing in at between 16 and 24ML per day of consumption. Alk seems to be much more stable in this zone. Still feeding 20ML of A/B+ per day with zero impact on nutrients. Nitrate dosing is setup and I now have to begin to dial it in. Phosphate dosing will come after.
 
Params:
Salinity: 1.026
Ph: 7.7
Alk: 10.0
Calc: 450
Mag: 1450
N: 6
P: 0.05

I'm excited to have measurable N&P! Turns out I didn't need to dose phosphate, I just needed a Hanna checker to see that I do have a little phosphate.
 
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I usually have my window open with a box fan pulling air out but I've been running my AC non stop becasue of this heat wave. Checked my pH and it's in the mid to high 7s. Yikes.
Maybe it's time for Kalkwasser?
 
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