I've been struggling with LPS in my tank. Softies are exploding with growth (apart from you, stubborn Rasta Zoa.....), but I've lost a few nice LPS specimens and my Acan is showing some recession, plus my Goni's poyp extension can be measured as just a few mm, rather than those beautiful flowing examples we all know and love. My BTA also seems small compared to when I bought it in the shop. I decided to do an ICP test of both my tank water and RO which I purchase from a company called Spotless Water here in the UK, as I'm suspicious their claims of 0 TDS might be false.
For reference, the tank is a Waterbox 20 gallon cube, stocked with a pair of clowns and a Coral Goby. Light is an AI prime with unknown PAR numbers (I've got a PAR meter arriving tomorrow but eyeballed the light "looks good"), extra flow with an AI Nero 3. I've got an external fluidised reactor with carbon and ROWA Phos. Corals include a mixture of soft corals and LPS, with one Montipora as an experiment (which amusingly has wonderful polyp extension). I have been dosing with All4reef and using Red Sea Coral Pro salt to 1.024 sg with a 20% water change every 2 weeks.
ICP of my tank water came back as follows:
My RO water reports as:
The way I read this is my RO isn't exactly very pure, so I will find a new source of RO. I'm not sure how this compares to other peoples RO but it's disappointing to find my levels are out with advertised "0 TDS" water.
I have already started to fix my Magnesium levels by dosing some mag and can happily report they are at 1420ppm this morning measured with a Salifert test kit. KH was also 10.5, NO3 was 5, pH 8.2
Any thoughts if my tanks water is what is causing the polyp issues? If so, where do I start with trying to fix the chemistry to get that lovely dream tank with the flowing gonis and hammers?
It's only a small tank so I really don't want to buy 100 different bottles to dose 0.05ug of boron etc, just get it all close enough to have a good tank.
For reference, the tank is a Waterbox 20 gallon cube, stocked with a pair of clowns and a Coral Goby. Light is an AI prime with unknown PAR numbers (I've got a PAR meter arriving tomorrow but eyeballed the light "looks good"), extra flow with an AI Nero 3. I've got an external fluidised reactor with carbon and ROWA Phos. Corals include a mixture of soft corals and LPS, with one Montipora as an experiment (which amusingly has wonderful polyp extension). I have been dosing with All4reef and using Red Sea Coral Pro salt to 1.024 sg with a 20% water change every 2 weeks.
ICP of my tank water came back as follows:
My RO water reports as:
The way I read this is my RO isn't exactly very pure, so I will find a new source of RO. I'm not sure how this compares to other peoples RO but it's disappointing to find my levels are out with advertised "0 TDS" water.
I have already started to fix my Magnesium levels by dosing some mag and can happily report they are at 1420ppm this morning measured with a Salifert test kit. KH was also 10.5, NO3 was 5, pH 8.2
Any thoughts if my tanks water is what is causing the polyp issues? If so, where do I start with trying to fix the chemistry to get that lovely dream tank with the flowing gonis and hammers?
It's only a small tank so I really don't want to buy 100 different bottles to dose 0.05ug of boron etc, just get it all close enough to have a good tank.