My water change schedule has changed recently to around every 4-8 weeks, and I change around 18% of the water.
I think the result of this is that nitrates have increased to around 20ppm, maybe a bit less, but a bit higher than I want and one of my nitrate indicating corals is telling me to reduce it.
So I’ve done another water change, will do another in the next few days but I don’t want to get back into regular water changes (like weekly) as I find it upsets the water chemistry, in particular foundation element levels.
So, I’ve increased the Nopox dose to 22ml per day, and added another 2L of Seachem Matrix. In addition, 2L of Seachem De Nitrate with another 2L about to be added in the next few days.
The De Nitrate needs to be in a slow flow area, so I’ve buried it within the Matrix bags of media to hopefully provide this. It’s basically exactly the same product as Matrix but just smaller ‘rocks’.
The target Nitrate level is ideally around 10, but around 15 or less will be fine.
The Nopox dose is getting towards 4ml/100 litres which is above the recommended but I’ve been here before and it’s fine. It does increase the amount of glass cleaning, as you get a fine layer of white ‘dust’, and you also need to avoid white slime, bacterial flocks, mainly in the sump. I ‘ripple’ the water surface at higher doses and this stops the slime forming.
So we shall seen how the major increase in biological filtration affects the levels over the next few weeks.
Oh I nearly forgot, a picture of a ‘green coral’.....