surplusrifleguy
Member
When I started my tank I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get any coraline to grow. I now know why and in less than 3 weeks my coraline (and my corals)have gone crazy. My hair, green and red algaes haved stoped growing and I can see white on the rock again. My couple of snails easily maintain the rock now and my front glass no longer has a daily growth of green on it (I have to clean it every 3 days now). Here's where I was going wrong. I went to buy a piece of xenia from a guy advertising nearby. He had the most beautiful 40 gallon tank, t-5 lighting, tons of coraline, many corals that have grown to huge sizes. I asked him how he maintains his tank and what he adds as supplements. To my surprise he only said two things. He changes 5 gallons of water a week and only adds a small amount of Kent's Essential Elements twice a week. I was wondering, how can this be? I add calcium, mag and everything else daily, just like the bottles say. My calcium level will never go above 440 even with daily additives. I told him what I do, and about my algae problems, and he simply told me LESS IS MORE. He explained by adding to many additives into the water I'm creating a food source for the bad algae which out competes coraline and other corals. He also said the 5 fresh gallons of water he's changing has all the proper levels in it, and if my corals need more by the middle of the week, add just a tiny bit of what is low. So I decided to try his method. It worked great. Within a couple days I noticed the first real coraline growth on my powerhead, and now all over the higher water flow areas and on back glass. My green star polyps have grown at least 3/4" in all directions and my bad algae growth has almost completely stopped. And the BIGGEST surprise was, my calcium, alk and all other levels really don't change from week to week. Calcuium stays at a constant 400 all the time. My AlK stays at 9KH most of the time as well. Maybe if I add more stony corals it might change, but for now my tank is going crazy in a good way. I do have to say, however, it's hard not to add all the chemicals in. I feel like they are magic. But I've found they were just causing me trouble. The only other thing I do is watch my phosphates, which is never a problem. All this time my thinking was leaning towards adding in all these pham grade chemicals makes my tank better. I wish I learned this before I spent hundreds of dollars on them. One last thought, as soon as I stopped adding extra supplements in the water and I did water a water change, the tank transformation happened very quickly.
