Kmooresf
Supporting Member
Yep, having a little nitrate is better than having no nitrates. I take pics of my corals pretty regularly so that I can track some of the differences.
Wild Aussie A. sarmentosa
Pic on the left was taken on 7/5 and the one on the right just awhile ago. The white balance is slightly off (taken at different times during the day with the different light cycle), but hopefully you can see the darker colors as well as the area where either a branch was cut or had snapped off. That part is basically filled in at the moment. Also, the polyp extension is better than it was two weeks ago and is actually better than in the pic (I had to rotate it to get a similar angle and by moving it the polyps retracted a bit.
Another Aussie piece that I've been tracking - Wild Aussie SSC
Lost the pink on the tips as per usual for wild pieces (SSC seems to be notorious for this even when compared to other sps). Colors are slowly begin to show up again and you can see the better polyp extension to what basically wasn't there a couple of weeks ago. I almost threw this one away when I did a quick glance of it and thought it had RTN, but the polyps saved it.
Both pieces came in the same batch and obviously bleached, but I did have both of them for over 9 days before the 7/5 pics and there was no improvement in the colors or polyp extension. Testing my nitrates at that point brought up a reading of zero. I feed pretty heavily and you would suspect that would be enough, but apparently not. My oversized skimmer, my relatively deep sandbed (2.5" at the shallowest point to just slightly more than 3" at the deepest areas), and my water changes are stripping the water. I've been adding nitrates to bring my levels back up to around the 2 ppm mark and there's noticeable improvements.
Very cool, thanks for the info. You can definitely see the difference in pics. Not sure if I will start dosing nitrates, as I am having good results at the moment, but I might start checking them, to see if I already have them. I'll let you know if I find anything. Thanks.
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