Prodibio Review(Conclusion)

[PoonTang]

Thanks for the words of support Michael. Steady as she go's

[PoonTang]

Well there was no update for week 5 because I was away in the Bahamas for 10 days however my fish sitter did do my weekly dose of strontium for me.
There were a few issues that had to be dealt with while I was away. 1 was a malfunctioning skimmer that would not stop overflowing and another was a Carbon issue.
I have the skimmer issue sorted out but for the time being I am going to be running 2 skimmers in my sump. Christy was kind enough to set up her ER cs6-2 in my sump while my skimmer was out of service and I now have my skimmer fixed and running right along side it. It will be interesting to see how the 2 compare and i am hoping the tank likes it.
The carbon issue is that i had my carbon tumbling too aggressively and as a result it has been pulverizing itself to death. I have since removed it completely from the system for the time being and want to see the effects on both my corals and fish. Some of my corals now are looking in very poor shape and my Coral Beauty has HLLE and my Purple tang may be showing early signs. I am hoping that the carbon was the cause of both issues as I suspect that it had been happening for some time.
So today was WC day and dosing of all of the other elements and all of my weekly tank chores. I also returned my filter socks to service. I had removed them for the ease of the tank sitters.
Parameters this week are CAL 460 ALK 9 MAG 1275 NITRATE 10 PHOS 0.0

[Aqua-Digital]

Good, the PO4 is gone this is the biggest hurdle, however the nitrates are still sligjtly up which after 4 weeks points to a nutrient sink.

I think the list of recent events in the update post has not helped with tank stability, so lets see how things lie in 2 weeks and we may have to push you over the spike with some help.

We are still looking for a BM reviewer so I am happy to bolt that on if you do need another skimmer.

[PoonTang]

Micheal
Which skimmer were you looking for a review on? Running 2 skimmers at the moment is fine with me but if you have something that is slightly oversized for my system (the direction i was leaning anyhow) I am more than willing to give it a try.

[Aqua-Digital]

The BM-150pro review slot is still open

best drop me a pm to discuss

[PoonTang]

Today i did a 32G Water change so that I could totally clean out my sump. There was still some carbon dust stuck to things and a small amount of detritous in the corners etc. I wanted to make sure there were no sources of Nitrates coming from the sump.
Parameters this week: Cal-440 Alk-11 Mag-1260 Nit-5 Phos-0
I dosed 1 ampoule of Strontium this week.
Observations this week: Not much change, Algae is still non existant, coral colours are changing slowly, some Blue tips are starting to show on some. Yellow acro is now green. Blue Milli is a fugly white/brown, and 1 acro seems to have perhaps suffered a case of pollyp bailout on the tips of the branches. Hard to describe but the tips have seemed to quit growing upwards and are now getting thicker as the tissue on the stem seems as if it wants to grow up and over the tips and envelop it. Very wierd.
And for those that are interested in a comparison so far of the ASM Vs. ER skimmers. The ASM is way easyer to clean out and way more stable to changes in water level. When i shut my return pump off the sump fills up about 2 " above normal and the ER floods its cup but the ASM doesnt change at all. I will keep fiddleing with both in an effort to fine tune the skimmate but the ER seems to be very fussy on how wet you can run it without overflowing it and it is too dry for my liking. The ASM currently pulls out about 2X the amount but it is wetter and lighter.
I may step up my dosing/WC schedule now to every 5 days in an effort to get the Nitrates right down. It would appear that the sand and/or rock may be a bit of a sink. Michael, feel free to chime in here on how you think the best course of action to continue on here would be.

[whatcaneyedo]

Don't forget to mention again that you have heavily modified your ASM skimmer and the ER is stock.