New 73 gallon tank setup

[gregzz4]

Thought I would add my results;
I stopped dosing Nitrogen back in January of this year. My corals slowly recovered with only 4 fish. I added 7 more fish at the end of April. Since then I've been feeding pellets daily for lunch, and either flakes or frozen for dinner. All daily. There's enough food sometimes to make a small snow storm and I'm still getting zero NO3. PO4 is still hovering between zero and 0.03

I'm hesitant right now to start tinkering with dosing Phosphorus and Nitrogen.
I'd like to get my NO3 up some to help my corals.

I'll need to have a slow time in my life to focus on it ...

[Frogger]

I believe my tank has stabilized and the corals that survived have coloured up and are starting to grow.

The following corals did not make it:
Pearlberry
Highlighter
Red Planet
purple bonsai
Blue millipora

Most of the corals that have survived are now much more colourful. then before I started this experiment.

My initial plan to try to get my nitrates to 2ppm is not attainable. In raising up my nitrates I caused my phosphates to crash which almost wiped out all my corals. I started adding phosphates to help balance the nitrates, however I found that the amounts I needed to add of nitrate and phosphate to get desirable numbers was way too labour intensive.

I am now not focusing on my nitrate numbers only my phosphate numbers. I add enough nitrates to maintain phosphates at between .005 to .08ppm phosphorus.

In order to maintain this number I am adding 1.5ml of KNO3 and .5ml of KH2PO4 every day. I am checking my phosphate levels (hanna ULR) every second day and adjusting the amounts accordingly.

I tried feeding heavily for a while to help increase my phosphate and nitrates but ended up stopping that when my vermetid snail populations grew exponentially.

[Frogger]

I am attaching a picture of 1 coral in particular from December (colours pale) to 1 week after I started adding nitrates colour better, After crash and the current colour as of 2 weeks ago.[

ATTACH]15985[/ATTACH]

[Frogger]

My tank seems to have settled down and the colors have started to return to my corals. I have temperature and nutrient problems but everything seems to be OK for now.

I am trying to upload pictures from Flickr this is my first time so let me know if it works.

[Frogger]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/167567...posted-public/

Not sure why I can only post links not images
https://www.flickr.com/photos/167567...n/photostream/