I have been receiving a bunch of questions about my tank. I want to first say that I do not follow the rules when it comes to reefing, I try to think outside the box and a bunch of stuff I do/say may have you wondering what the heck or that makes perfect sense.
Lets first start with water parameters, I have no clue what they are. LOL I do not test my water and have not tested my water for 2 years now. I may have done a salinity check in the past year but can not say for sure. I just look at my coral and make sure everything is opened and doing well. If not I can usually fix the problem with out a water test.
More on my lights, they are T5 HO’s….. 6 of them. I may be putting way to much light into the aquarium and have seen evidence that I am most likely over doing it. As my bulbs have aged I have been seeing growth occur in some corals that I have really never grown very fast, indicating too much light. I can not seem to remember when I last changed my bulbs, from what I have wrote down, my bulbs have been running since 12/27/08. I have only did one bulb change since I have had my light which was a year after I purchased the fixed. So could be that I have only been running them for 2 year. A lot longer then suggested by many people and my LFS seems to think that they only last 7 months.
In the sump, I run carbon in a bag not a filter sock or anything. I also run a PO4 remover from seachem from time to time in the sump. We have well water here so PO4 fluctuate from time to time and I end up with some red slime. Not enough to harm any corals just enough to make it a small burden on the eyes to look at in the tank. I also run polyester in the sump to remove debris from the water. The skimmer is a coralife 125, I always double the size of the skimmer for what tank I am running.