Thanks, Nano and Pat.
Nothing bad has kept me away for the last two months, only that I haven't added anything since Christmas and was in auto-mode.
Finished my first bottle of NO3-PO4-x and the lowest I was able to get my phosphates was 0.43 ppm (started out at 1.82ppm). Is this good or bad? Well, you can read many different opinions on the internet; however, the best indicator of whether it works or not is your tank. Water quality, fish, coral and invertebrates are amazing "test kits" to let you know whether your tank is doing well or not. We have read that you shouldn't chase numbers and this is good advice.
My bottle ran out about two weeks ago. What have I seen since then? No noticable increase in Nitrates, but little crops of GHA here and there (nothing at all to worry about). I will most likely get another bottle if just to keep the GHA in check. Thanks to Oxy's excellent post on activated carbon (sorry, can't remember just yet where it was), I thought to myself "oh yeah, I need to change out some"
I spent the last couple of months playing around with my point-and-shoot camera, trying to get better at taking pictures. Simple realization was that my iPhone blows the camera out of the water. I will slowly start putting some up on here to show some of the growth I have had since I started this hobby last summer. Amazing, insane growth? No, but "slow and steady wins the race" and "nothing good happens quickly in a reef tank" continuously run through my mind.
