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Message: <blockquote data-quote="McJaeger" data-source="post: 7891285" data-attributes="member: 43962">On to the equipment updates and water chemistry. With the relatively rapid coral addition I was noticing a steady decline in alk so I've incorporated jebao DP-4 to dose Red Sea Foundation alkalinity (3 mL/day), calcium (as needed), and acropower (5 mL/day). The water parameters as of today are below and have been relatively stable over the last few weeks:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Alk - 9.3 ppm</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ca - 470 ppm</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mg - 1750 ppm (super high, think it's this batch of reef crystals)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Nitrates - 2.5 ppm</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Phosphates - 0 ppm</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">pH - 8.1 - 8.3 </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Salinity - 1.026 sg </li> </ul>I also mentioned in my previous post that I got a Seneye. I've seen them get mixed reviews, but it's been super useful for me. When I'm not using it as a par meter I have it sitting at the bottom of my overflow box and hooked up to an old windows tablet I had laying around. Since it's continuously monitoring pH and temp I was both able to determine that the thermostat on my heater is 1 degree off from actual temp, and that my pH was sitting between 7.8 and 8.1 which was a bit too low for my liking. So I built a diy CO2 that's plumbed into the air intake of my skimmer. It's nothing too complex, just an old bottle filled with soda lime pellets and some holes drilled in the bottom of the bottle for air intake. It's been working great, pH gets to 8.35 during the day and falls to 8.1 at night. Only downside is how fast it depletes the lime pellets, which aren't cheap. I've been having to change the pellets at least once a week. At some point in the near future I'll work out a way to recycle the air coming out of my skimmer to extend their life.A quick point on nutrients. After a few weeks of using the refugium on an opposite light schedule to the display I noticed I was bottoming out my nitrates/phosphates and my LPS were staying closed. I tried reducing the time incrementally all the way down to 1 hour per night, but ultimately leaving the fuge light off altogether has yielded the most stable nitrate levels and the happiest corals. The chaeto in my sump is still there and it's still green, so I'll leave it in as an added measure if I get a nitrate spike at some point in the future. One last addition is the UV bulb in the return chamber. I had a brief run in with ich (The wrasse brought it in. Had to treat with copper for two weeks. Luckily I caught it early) and wanted to prevent it from spreading, so I picked up a cheap UV bulb off amazon. It's actually worked pretty well at keeping the water clear and I haven't had any other ich issues so I assume it's doing its job. [ATTACH]1754530[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]1754531[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]1754532[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]1754533[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]1754535[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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