got ethical husbandry?

Thesassyindian's 13.5 gallon m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶p̶i̶t̶ nano mixed reef

Patio said:
If really worried about removing some of the ceramic, you could place some under the chemipure section that appears to be currently open space. But it would interfere with the intank rack sliding all the way down. Maybe a 3D printed little box to contain it cleanly so the intank can still slide all the way down.
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I thought of 3D printing an insert for the first chamber, but that would mess with the flow in that chamber. I think just dropping the bio media lower in the 2nd chamber should work.

My plan is to add a small bottle of Dr Tim’s one and only when I do make the final change, to seed more bacteria.
 
In case y’all were wondering what an EB832 looks like at no load.
The cables plugged in are just extensions, with nothing drawing power.

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Just to make sure it wasn’t my cabinet, I left it open, with a pedestal fan pointing at the EB832 at no load, overnight.

This was today’s thermal image:
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The plan was to add the temperature probe, pH probe and Trident sample line to the second chamber of my AIO.
The chamber has a cross section of 90mm x 73mm.

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That made sourcing a probe holder small enough, difficult.
Also, I wanted a compact solution, so designed and 3D printed a bracket.

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The unique thing here, is that the trident sample tube is threaded through a 1/4" Acrylic tube.
This ensures that the sample tube is in suspended in the water column (circled in orange in the image below).
In V1.0, the Trident sample tube was resting against one of the walls of the sump chamber and I ran the risk of getting sponges/algae getting sucked up and clogging it.

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Next step was to design covers for the sump chambers to block out the light and hence prevent algae growth on the probes.

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TL;DR; Is my water too clean? NO3: undetectable, PO4: 0.04ppm

Details:
For about a year now, I've been doing 5gal water changes every 2 weeks in a 13.5gal tank (12gal total water volume).

1/28/2022: I happened to check my phosphates, and they were at 0.05ppm (Hanna ULR). So added 3tbsp of GFO in a filter bag in Chamber 1.

1/31/2022: Re-tested params. PO4: 0.04ppm, NO3: undetectable.

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I've never been able to get a measurable Nitrate reading for over a year now (Aquaspin results from 1/18/2021).

Is my water too clean?
Could this be the reason why my Garf bonsai is pale? Its grown and encrusted quite a bit though.
Still, not too bad for starting out as an encrusted frag plug from @Corallus !

First picture was from 1/31/2021. Second is from 1/28/2022.

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H2OPlayar said:
My opinion (running a high nutrient system) yes. Maybe don't go for the extremes that I run, but dirtier water helps coral colors.
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So hold off on water changes for a while till i see NO3 readings and control PO4 with GFO in the mean time?
Or is there a better way. I prefer not dosing anything unless absolutely necessary.
 
Dose food! I like the powdered coral foods as their particle size is small enough the corals can eat them, phytoplankton for variety and amino acids because why not.
 
thesassyindian said:
That increases phosphates too, no?
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Yep, phosphates and nitrates are the building blocks of food. Lots of people are afraid of phosphates because it "slows down the skeletonization of corals" but no one has measured by how much. Or, if a well fed coral can skeletonize faster because it has more energy despite the chemical composition in the water.
 
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