Been a minute. Tank has seen better days since last updates. End of April the tank was at its peak. Since then I took the rabbit fish, flameback angel, and fairy Wrasse out. All for various reasons. As a result my nitrates plummeted. They were already low as is and I was dosing nitrates to keep about 2.0-3.0 ppm.
As a countermeasure I added several small fish. Naturally that shot my nitrates way up to the 30-50 ppm range. The swing caused a nasty algae outbreak I’m still fighting.
To throw fuel on the fire, I made a rookie mistake and didn’t notice my Aquaforest dosing containers were empty. Went about two days of zero dosing when previously I was dosing 4.5 mL 24 times a day of all three solutions. To make matters worse the component bundle is out of stock everywhere. Found some BRS alk, and had enough of the +1 and +3 of the AF to last me a bit longer. My alk swung like crazy and the BRS stuff doesn’t match the AF stuff so it’s been a process dialing that in. Calcium and Magnesium got high (450, 1400).
All in all only lost one acro, but my montis are taking a beating. Looks like I’ve lost a Jedi mind trick, ASD Bubble Gum colony, and WWC Grafted Cap. Hopefully they recover but they looked pissed off right now. It doesn’t help that all this happened right before a two week vacation
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I’ve got three fish caught and ready to drop off at the LFS. Hopefully that brings the nitrates down. They were 25-30 ppm today. Also hope I’ve got the dosing at least in the ball park now. Before I left last week alk was at 8.3, which I was fine with. But today when I got back from week 1 of vacation it was 5.7. So the actors must have soaked up a lot last week and I had the doser set to low. Making some adjustments before I have to leave again tomorrow for another week. Boy do I wish I could have gotten my hands on a Trident.
Morale of the story, the tank was rocking and rolling and looking great, and I got lazy and careless. Always lessons to be learned.
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