I'm just past my second month with my 15 gallon cube and getting through the uglies right now with some bryopsis and gha on my rockwork and diatoms on the sand bed.
To help clean up the uglies, I stocked my tank with 5-6 blue leg hermits (hard to tell what's an empty shell and a tiny hermit lol), 5 trochus snails, a pencil urchin, 3 nassarius snails, and a cleaner shrimp who are doing a decent job cleaning up the detritus and gha/diatoms. Bryopsis will be dealt with using Reef Flux.
I also bought Hanna's Nitrate HR and Phosphate LR to check on those parameters and I was shocked to find that my nitrate was 21 ppm and phosphate 0.92?? I thought the algae was supposed to consume some of these nutrients or the CUC would help eat the leftover food that would fuel these high numbers. It also didn't help that two of my newer nassarius snails died and were eaten by the hermits and shrimp (going to remove the leftover shells in case of remaining decomposing flesh).
I keep up with weekly 10% water changes, vacuum the sandbed once a month, replace my filter sock every four days, and even added a nano skimmer to help with nutrient export (Bubble Magus MiniQ). I have been a little heavy on the dinner feeding recently since I have been getting up early for work and I don't want to feed while my clownfish pair are asleep.
I'm considering some options to help reduce the nutrients but I'm not sure which path to choose. Here are my strategies:
-Reduce feedings to once a day or a smaller amount twice a day
-Do larger 20% water changes per week
-Add more copepods and phytoplankton (considering Reef Nutrition or Algae Barn)
-Adding codium, botryocladia, or some other easy macroalgae to the DT (no refugium)
-Using a chemical solution like NoPox (last resort)
Since my tank is pretty new, would my parameters be normal and eventually stabilize with continued maintenance or is biological/chemical intervention needed? I'm attaching my most recent tests below; magnesium was 1260 ppm a few days ago. Also, this a FOWLR tank for now.
To help clean up the uglies, I stocked my tank with 5-6 blue leg hermits (hard to tell what's an empty shell and a tiny hermit lol), 5 trochus snails, a pencil urchin, 3 nassarius snails, and a cleaner shrimp who are doing a decent job cleaning up the detritus and gha/diatoms. Bryopsis will be dealt with using Reef Flux.
I also bought Hanna's Nitrate HR and Phosphate LR to check on those parameters and I was shocked to find that my nitrate was 21 ppm and phosphate 0.92?? I thought the algae was supposed to consume some of these nutrients or the CUC would help eat the leftover food that would fuel these high numbers. It also didn't help that two of my newer nassarius snails died and were eaten by the hermits and shrimp (going to remove the leftover shells in case of remaining decomposing flesh).
I keep up with weekly 10% water changes, vacuum the sandbed once a month, replace my filter sock every four days, and even added a nano skimmer to help with nutrient export (Bubble Magus MiniQ). I have been a little heavy on the dinner feeding recently since I have been getting up early for work and I don't want to feed while my clownfish pair are asleep.
I'm considering some options to help reduce the nutrients but I'm not sure which path to choose. Here are my strategies:
-Reduce feedings to once a day or a smaller amount twice a day
-Do larger 20% water changes per week
-Add more copepods and phytoplankton (considering Reef Nutrition or Algae Barn)
-Adding codium, botryocladia, or some other easy macroalgae to the DT (no refugium)
-Using a chemical solution like NoPox (last resort)
Since my tank is pretty new, would my parameters be normal and eventually stabilize with continued maintenance or is biological/chemical intervention needed? I'm attaching my most recent tests below; magnesium was 1260 ppm a few days ago. Also, this a FOWLR tank for now.
Last edited: