Good eyes! Due to it being knocked off the plug, there isn't much encrustation, but the tip has grown by ~1/2". BTW, where's the Neptune light program at?
@Vhuang168
No real methods really. I've just been really consistent. 3-4x a day feeding with NLS small pellets (I haven't used frozen food in over 2 months), weekly 2.5 gallons water changes, Coral Lab AB+ program, plus the daily KNO3 dosing (~1-2 ppm to get nitrates reading). I haven't worried about phosphates and haven't measured it since the tank has been set up.
I've been dealing with diatoms and cyano in the tank as it's been slowly maturing. It was both on the rocks as well as the sand bed. Been using a small baster to blow it off the rocks, then I remove both structure of rocks and let it sit out in the air during the water changes. I then siphon out as much of the algae and cyano as possible in the meantime. With the pieces on disks and on rubble, I pull those out, invert them over the bucket, and swish them around to remove the cyano. Everything then gets chucked back into the tank. The entire process takes ~30 minutes and the sps on both rock structure doesn't mind it at all. Their polyps pop back out ~10 minutes afterwards.
If you take a look at the RRC Pink Caddy in the picture above from 5/10/21, you'll notice the slime coating on it. That pic was taken ~5 minutes after the water changes. That slime coating gets blasted off the coral within 30 minutes and its back to normal.
The process has helped as the tank matures. The coralline is slowly coming in and battling with the other algaes, with less growing on both the sand bed and the rocks. Also noticed that it takes a lot longer for the brown algae coat to form on the glass. I used to have to clean it every 2 days or so, but it's been 4 days now and there's still barely any algae on it.
