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#4
07-30-2012, 01:44 PM
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Hmmm, thanks guys.There certainly food for thought. I'm sure I have been over feeding to some extent. Part of my problem lies in the fact that I have such good flow through my tank it's hard to tell sometimes if the fish are eating all the food or if a good portion is being wasted. I've got tons of hermit crabs, various snails, 4 shrimp, 10 fish (one a twin spot goby who moves a ton of sand) a sand sifting starfish and a tiger brittle star. My tank is also a full mixed reef with SPS, LPS and soft corals with 1 clam.
When I feed I turn off my koralia pumps but I'm still probably flowing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1200-1400 gph through my 77 gal dt tank. The sand looks clean everywhere I can see and I'd imagine my CUC cleans where I'm not seeing fairly well. But I do worry that when I feed some of these creatures don't get enough because it does disappear so quickly. Because I have a basement sump (80 gal) I don't turn off my skimmer during feeding. For a skimmer I am running an SRO2000INT which works awesome although I don't clean the main body of it very often, just the collection cup. I have been feeding only once a day, but over the last week or so I've started feeding less 2X a day. Lighting: this is an area I have definitely neglected. I am running an Odyssea twin 250 W MH/ T5 light with the crappy Odyssea bulbs. I've been wanting to go to a DIY LED fixture and have been reluctant to purchase good bulbs as I would rather that $180 go to the DIY fixture. I had 2 - 20K bulbs in there but one blew on me so I replaced it with a 15K I had on hand. The algae growth is definitely worse on the 15K side. Since I'm not quite to the point where I can afford to drop $1000 on some LED's I may have to buy some better bulbs... My Po4 last check was running 0.06 on my Hanna checker and I haven't actually checked my nitrates in months. I only have a cheap junky Hagen nitrate test. I am running a DSB in my refugium (6" or so) which I am planning on removing when I switch out my sump for a bigger tank that I just bought off Brad (thanks Brad!). I did read in one of Randy's articles that carbon dosing is a bit trickier in those tanks with DSB's. Well, that's all the info I can think of to add. If you need any more or have other comments feel free to do so  Thanks for all the help! 
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