albertareef

That is pretty wild. Wish I had some knowledge/experience to help you out but that is new to me so hopefully someone else will chime in.

I would start by backing the pH control off to have it shut at 7.0 and keep any eye on Alk and leave the flow alone. Worth looking at some combination of additional feeding and increased bioload as others have suggested. Given you are getting great growth if you got the nutrient balance sorted you would be golden. Sounds like they are just a bit hungry 😋

So this made me go check out an old reef2reef thread on Redfield ratio (having to do with ratio of elements) and i came across this interesting post which, I think, gets to some of the issues brought up above. In general terms, higher alk levels can stimulate faster coral growth but, that faster growth can lead to some problems if there are not enough nutrients to support it fully - e.g. food (organic source) or elements in the water column (inorganic). I may be off base her but this seems to be the crux of the issue. The best solution would likely be a combination of bringing down the alk a bit (reduce your reactor output/raise chamber pH), increase specific coral feeding, and add some bioload. In theory, this would bring the growth rate down a bit so it doesn't outstrip nutrients, add organic food source for the coral and bring up the inorganic levels a bit as an alternate food source. OK - that was my reader's digest version of a really complicated topic - not sure it helps. Do you think (or know) that corals utilize there nutrients from a source other than the water column?Yes, they do utilize nutrients from a source other than the water column, they are animals and they preferably utilize nutrients from their food – zooplankton, bacteria, phytoplankton, organic particles. But in the same time they are capable to utilize non organic nutrients like NH4, NO3 and PO4 from water column using active transport via cell membranes (but if both – organic and inorganic nutrients are present corals will prefer organic nutrients from food).So in an ideal situation coral could survive in water containing zero nitrates and phosphates if there is enough food for corals. But in real world, even in healthy reefs this is not always the case (not even speaking about home reef tank) that’s why corals need some phosphates and nitrogen in form of NO3 (or preferably NH4) to be present in water to survive. In healthy reef this concentration of nutrients is enough to be as low as 0,02 for nitrates and less than .002 for phosphates, because there is plenty of diverse food for corals. We found with practice that in a reef tank we need about 10 times more nitrates and phosphates in water present (more than 0.2 ppm nitrates and about .03 ppm phosphates), because we simply cannot ensure enough quality food for corals.

Sorry to hear Nate - that is definitely a bummer. You definitely aren't the first to have a BTA victimized by getting too close to a pump but that doesn't make it less painful. Should definitely keep an eye on the nitrates but sounds like you are taking a sound proactive approach. Good luck!

Those chalices are pretty sweet!

i'm sure it will find them very tasty! Actually seen quite a few flames in mixed reefs so not sure how bad they actually are about that.

Woo whoo! Nothing says reef party like street tacos and margaritas! This should be another awesome meeting... not sure I've recovered from the last one though. Feels like I still have rock flower anemone foot under my fingernails.

Looking good Brandon! Glad you were there to catch the escapee. Notice you have a chalk basselet - love those little fish.

OK - added that to the list. Cherany @Flashy Fins do you have any updates on the meters? Looks like it's mostly folk waiting for the USB but wantanewtank is open to the hand held.

Haha! I see they are hooked... always looking to upgrade! Nice little tank - love the dimensions on that lagoon. Yeah, I'm not sure I would count a Walt Disney frag as "no cost". BTW - am I imagining things or is Bret's hair green? @MrBret

Ouch! That was fast. Kind of puts a damper on the trash talking - I was looking forward to that. 😕

Good info - I have heard people mentioning having issues when running GFO but hadn’t seen it laid out in this way.

I knew there was a reason I didn't like bristle worms... besides the fact that they creep me out of course.

This is an interesting tidbit I did not know.

Well those acro frags look good anyway!

Ouch! Hate when things like that happen... as if it isn't hard enough already.

I’m thinking you just put too much pressure on them - they heard you were the zoanthid champ and just couldn’t take it.

And here I thought you were a “people person” 😁 Actually sounds awesome... could use a bit of nice quiet isolation right now.

Great information! Really appreciate the thought you are putting into this. Thanks for sharing. 👍

Got you added!

Got you down Greg! Will be curious how different the new lights are.

Got you on there. Let us know if you have a preference for which one.

You know, I was just going to post suggesting a pipe fish! There are some really cool varieties out there right now (have seen quite a few at Seahorse) and they seem like a great option for a small specimen tank.

Haha! Hey Micah - did you have a price in mind on the cube? Maybe I missed it.

I was actually curious about the material as well but you (just) beat me to it! Seems like this could be another advantage to "small batch" manufacturing of this item as you could tweak the composition if you needed/wanted to - within the parameters of a fired ceramic of course