Just a small update:
I have been noticing a decline in my montipora and birdsnest for some reason. After reading online I had a hunch it was a potassium deficiency. My current vodka dosing is .5ml per day split into two doses, 3 hours prior to feeding and right after feeding. I suspect the additional carbon source is generating more bacteria, therefore slowly up taking the potassium. I guess over the course of 3 months it took its toll and by using a salt low in potassium and I started noticing these affects more and more after 4-5x 10 percent water changes. I decided to give potassium a shot, after dosing and switching to a salt with higher trace elements, the colors have come back significantly.
I have noticed that the majority of my SPS were darkening to the point where it was brown... I have stopped using KZ vitalizer, pohl's xtra, SPS amino acids, LPS amino acids and sponge power all together. The only thing I use is coral snow to allow for water clarity and to possibly bond to small organic waste that the skimmer otherwise isn't able to pull out. I have stopped the KZ for approx. 4 days and the results are considerably better, the dark tissue began to lighten and I can start to see the actually colors again. I suspect that there wasn't any need of the AAs at this time in my tank, I do feed heavily once a day. Once the corals lighten up more, I will begin dosing KZ in small moderate amounts to see if I can tweak everything to how I wanted.
I am able to ramp my lights up to around 5 hours for the 6 bulb channel and 9 hours for the 2 bulb channel at 100 percent, my SPS seem to be getting really use to it and I am seeing significant color changes on the blues, and purples,. Greens are good. Reds and pinks will need more work... I suspect it was too much KZ giving my corals unneeded nutrients causing excessive amounts of zooxanthellae to hide the actual colors. I should see better results in a couple weeks time!
Just wanted to post some tank details and current situation since I have noticed that this thread was more of a photo dump. If you have any suggestions feel free to chime in.
|