I've had it set up about 5 mos. In short I was introduced to saltwater tanks the ENTIRELY wrong way and I've learned that well over the last few months!
I wasn't doing water changes until recentally and I added Essential Elements 1 x per week, a Nitrate Reducer 1 x per week (2 x the first week, 4 times total) and a reef supplement 3 times now, once per week in an effort to get coraline algae growth up. I'v been testing for the past month prob. 2 x 3 times per week, seeing what changes may take place from anything I've added. Oddly enough, my last water test my Amm. went from reading .50 to almost .0, I'd say .15. (before my water change yesterday) My Nitrates went down as well. In fact, I didn't do a water change last week, which is about the only reason I can figure out it's happening. It had slowed WAY down. Funny thing is I have more brown algae now than I've ever had in the tank. I've read a little on fish, I don't want to add any new inhabitants until I have this tank down better. And, I read on mangroves, prob. is they really aren't going to be compatible in my sump and the only other vegetation I have in the tank (eelgrass which I suspect may have helped bring down the nitrates, what my conch didn't push over and knock loose). I added the eelgrass a little over a week ago and nightly my cleaning crew knocks more of it over and out of the sand and I have to pull it out each morning. That being said even if I added mangroves I believe the inverts in my tank will prob. just run over it and knock it down. I have a T5HO deep blue light set up over the tank, I got it about three weeks ago. It's left on about 9-10 hrs. a day. Any ideas other than constant water changes and cleaning my rock with a toothbrush are MUCH appreciated!
