[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Tony, where did your pipes end up after this pic? Care to post a new one?
Thanks

Hi Greg, I will take a picture under the stand and post it tonight (will be late tonight though I won't be home for a while). But in the meantime I can try to describe it. It's nothing too complicated, basically both pipes drain down into the sump just underneath. They both have small horizontal jogs to get past the edge of the sump since the sump sits inside the stand which is framed of 2x4's so the edge sits right under the bulkheads. As a Herbie style overflow the shorter drainpipe is the main drain and has a gate valve on its horizontal jog so to allow the water line to be up at the overflow teeth. I keep the waterline basically about 1" lower then the main display (basically hovering at the emergency standpipe height with a small trickle going down the emergency overflow). Anything more than 1" and you hear a waterfall sound.

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Tony, as per our chat yesterday, this is the dosing schedule G. Alexander had suggested for my 200g water volume...

Cool thanks for that. Ironically though my current dosing recommendations are from the same dude over there. But I'm curtailing things back nonetheless just to see if the trend reverses. So far it's been "more zeo = more PO4" so we'll see.

I am very tempted to run GFO in conjunction but it has been recommended not to several times. I remember Dez in his thread complained about tip burn after adding GFO on top of zeo. In general however it is certainly true that a rapid reduction of PO4 is basically deadly, and the irony is that apart from a few pieces in the minority, most of my current SPS are handling 0.18 just fine. The colours could have more pop in some cases but on the list of things to complain about that's pretty minor.

I'm also a huge proponent of new clean rock from the real live ocean! Rock will adsorb nutrients over the years, and using any used rock, dry or otherwise, can and often will lead to algae issues. Yes, you save a few bucks, but I find saving a few bucks in this hobby often has a cost.

For sure. I don't remember the exact makeup of rock, some of it is BRS shelf rock, others formerly dried rock, and a good portion (at least 1/3 - 1/2) was wet rock that had been cooking in a 50g rubbermaid for a while. So while some of it was pretty skanky to begin with, after a while it cleaned up at least visually. But also true that basically none of it was "new" rock. I can see the benefit of going all new and if I ever do this again I might go that road but the flip side is that even newly collected rock will eventually become a few years old and it would be nicer if we could find ways to keep the stuff we have already out of the ocean to be useful for longer rather than planning to replace it all every few years.

Thanks for the advice though! This week is my experimental week of dosing less - come the weekend I want to see if I notice a smaller number or not.