Veggiemel09
Supporting Member
What stands out here is phosphates at .25. You need to be below .06. At the level yours is, some corals will start to die. Just had a friend go through that recently.
I hear ya on that. I’ve never let my phosphates get that high, and my opinion of that was based on coaching a few people through that situation. One in particular does 2-3% daily water changes as well. This person was losing skin on his colonies after his got that high.Not to disagree with Cody but I think there is more going on than just high phosphates. And this is speaking for my tank only and from my own experience, but I'm happy when my tank reads .25 on phosphates. It normally runs between that and .5 and I have some monster corals that are growing out of the water. I notice a little stress at .6 but I believe that corals thrive at some level of nutrients. It looks to me like you just aren't doing enough water changes. I would start by doing 10-15% water changes every couple of days until you have at least changed 50% of your water. I have come to realize over the years that the absence of things that we don't measure for is more of the problem. I have a large tank and dose everything from trace to strontium to aminos, iodine, iron, etc. I went a couple months recently without doing my weekly 10% water changes, figuring that as long as i kept up with dosing, I could "cheat" a little bit.
Well the tank started looking less than its usual self. A little red slime started creeping in, etc. I sent in an ICP test and everything looked good. It didn't make sense so I started doing some large water changes. Did about 200g over a few days and wow, things started perking back up and looking less stressed. My conclusion....even with all of the dosing and the ICP test looking good, there is no substitute for water changes.
Not dumb but I have not changed anything drasticDumb question, have you made any lighting changes recently? Sometimes that gets overlooked.
Yes, I target feed everyone at least 2, 3 times a week, they're eating still. Feed a mix of reef roids, mysis and rods reef, then throw some red sea a and b in while pumps are still offHave you tried target feeding the Scoly's, preferably at night, so the fish don't pick out the food?