Thank you for the nice comments. We'll from the start. I've always vacuumed the sand bed every 4-5 days. In the beginning, I went through the ugly stages for a long time due to starting with man made dry rock and dry sand. Also, water changes every two week with out fail. I've also always vacuumed the sump and rear chambers, too. The sump has some bio media, and I think running the rollermat and the large skimmer has helped keep levels in check. To be honest, every week, I have to add phosphates. Otherwise, they run low. I noticed that my nitrates sit at 3.5 usually, but once I dose the nyos nitrates up to 5.5, it drops naturally to around 4.3 within 2 weeks. I now I only have to vacuum the sand bed every 2 weeks or more as the sand bed stays clean with clean-up crew, and higher flow helped me.
@@reeferexplained8846 glad to hear that worked out for you. I've been dealing with diatoms for just about 2 weeks now and have been gravel vac -in once a week despite adding 6 jars of pods to the system . Rock is fine and I've been adding corals for some beneficial fauna to the system. All are just popping and healthy since this is a reboot from a previous crash. Couldn't keep nutrients in the system at all. Dosed calcium nitrate and Neophos but once I'd get a readable number the next day everything went south. I couldn't even get back to a base line and dinos took over big time and I had enough and stripped it clean. This was the fastest cycle I've ever done on the reboot but at least I'm keeping nutrients in the system now. What a nightmare and after reading your post I believe I'm totally on the right track. Also what happened was I used bio-actif salt mix and was dosing bactor7 and yeah not a good combo. I listened to to many ppl and should've just did my own thing like I did 20 years ago ;)
