Neptune Aquatics

SPS STNing, any ideas?

very possible, I always did have die off at the bases but that's nothing new it's business as usual. It may have been a springboard for something else but what that something else is now is the question haha....

I spent the whole weekend working around the tank, I did get a water change in, another last week, doing more this week. I did manage to re-organize and clean around the tank. Next I will be chasing Phosphate test kits till I figure out how much Phosphates are actually in the tank then go from there.

Too much UV light is still a possibility so rebuilding the fixture is going to be next since I still have no control over my UV channel. New design on the LEDs will incorporate a lot more LEDs/surface area so that coverage is more even, I will probably also split them into smaller groups to add more control over color and intensity. Figured why the hell not, my Storm X controller has 16 chanels and LDD drivers are dirt cheap so it should be fun to wire up o_O
 
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Well, I'm pretty sure I figured it out...

Mike was kind enough to test my water for me yesterday with his Hanna Phosphorus kit and the result was 2.5 ppm so it appears that I have way too much phosphates. 1ppm is probably the highest I'd like my tank to be at and I have some work cut out for me now, I'll keep up the water changes and perhaps start using GFO soon I just need to figure out which option in regards to reactor I'm going to go with.
 
I finally have GFO running, I am using P04x4 a polymer coated GFO. It was pretty awesome to be able to fill the reactor and not worry about rinsing :D

Hopefully this resolves the high P04 granted I only put in half a cup but I will be measuring & observing over the next couple of weeks.
 
HiFidelily,

Was 2.5ppm phosphaes really the cause?

Thought that level was not too bad. I have 2ppm in my tank, and wonder if i should do something.

I had similar STN, but after a few weekly walter changes and adding kalk, things seem to start to recover.
 
Units may be the issue here. His water had a lot of phosphate at 2.5. We usually want .03-.05. Maybe ppm isn't the right unit? I usually start to see trouble between .25-.5.
 
2 ppm for nitrates is usually considered good but there are more things to consider along with that value. The ratio of nitrates to phosphates is something to consider. There is the Redfin ratio (I think that's it's name) where you are looking for a ratio of 16 parts nitrates to every one part phosphate. So if for example you had 2 ppm nitrates then (if you were following the ratio) you would want .125 ppm phosphates. There are many very successful "high" nutrient systems out there too but from what I've seen they keep close to that ratio.

It's definitely good to know your phosphate level regardless to if you're going to go by the ratio or not.
 
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