Quote:
Originally Posted by mr.wilson
How low does your PH drop at night. Your tank is well stocked so there must be significant coral respiration at night that would add a lot of Co2. A reverse photoperiod refugium would keep your nightly dissolved oxygen rates high and balance PH if that in fact is an issue.
I have mixed feelings about cutting back flow at night. On one hand it replicates natural reef conditions and allows plankton to get around better at night, but on the other hand it may lower dissolved oxygen, make it harder to off-gas Co2, and higher flow may be better for feeding extended night feeders.
Whatever you are doing right to keep phosphate and nitrate at zero appears to be great for your SPS, and not so good for LPS. I would guess that it's the low nutrients and not high toxic metal concentrations that are limiting LPS success.
Rather than limit what you are doing right (nutrient reduction & export through protein skimming and water changes), I would increase nutrient import with Phytoplankton, rotifers and whatever you prefer to feed. I've read a few threads on RC about dosing phosphate and nitrate, but I think they should be added via food, not chemically.
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I updated the firmware on my controller the other day which seems to have reset the stored calibration numbers, I need to recalibrate to get a more recent reading but I believe it drops to around 7.8 but will check later.
I know what you mean about the lower flow at night but the power heads only cut back to 30% so they still move a little water and i still have 10X through the return
I mainly cut it back because it makes a little quiet time for the seahorse which takes full opportunity to come out and swim a little each night.
I'm not really into the refugium thing right now, I'm trying to keep things simple and clean with this tank and I think the it will create more complication than benefit. Personally I think running the skimmer at night might be a better option than the day. The skimmer is also the only part of the tank that makes any real noise, if the only time it's on is when I'm sleeping I can see that itself being a significant benefit.
I can always turn the skimmer off while I'm feeding. During feeding of any sort I always activate a feeding pause which shuts off everything for 20min, and the skimmer has an additional delay of 30min.
I'm going to experiment and shut the skimmer off during the day, it's large enough that I don't see the need for it anyway and I can always turn it back on at anytime. I'll cut back water changes, work on the algae, feed more and try dosing some stuff like phyto (live or processed btw??) and some zeo products.