I just realized it's been so long since I updated this thread. Mostly because I ended up frustrated and discouraged with the problems resulting from my trip way back in August. It's hard to imagine 2 weeks away could upset a system for this long. Of course with the discouragement and busy holiday season I didn't exactly keep on top of things like I should've. So for about the past 2 months my tank had very few water changes due to some complications I had making my own water. It went waaaay too long without a cleaning of the algae, and especially the algae on the koralia's. That's something I'll never let slip again. I bet there was hardly any flow in my tank for who knows how long Well I have done several thorough cleanings on the tank in the past month and things are starting to look better.
Two months ago I started dosing Sanolife MIC-F. It's a probiotic designed for fish hatcheries that has been getting rave reviews over on the seahorse forums. I decided it was the least I could do since my tank is a seahorse tank first and I didn't want to lose any horses while I tried to find the time to fix the tank. Within a week or two I started seeing a difference in the seahorses. They were out and about more, the coloration is better, and they are eating more. The most striking difference for me is the improvement in color. I'm really excited about this stuff and the difference it's made in the apparent health of the seahorses. I've sure enjoyed seeing them dancing around at the front of the tank. I hope it's been beneficial for the other fish as well, although I never saw a problem in them. It has also resulted in a need to empty the skimmer every couple of days. I've had that skimmer hooked up to my tank for years and just barely ever got any skimmate. Now that I'm dosing this probiotic, I get quite a bit of really yucky gunk in there that I'm happy to pull out of the tank. I imagine that's a good result too. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that it's less than 20 bucks for a years worth
So that's the good news. The bad news is I've lost almost all of my sps, and a couple of lps. Some coral are doing great though like the gorgonians especially, and especially the nps one. After racking my brain the past several weeks, I'm narrowing it down to a phosphate problem. For a while I was worried it was the Sanolife, but no one else seems to think it could harm coral. The timing for starting to dose the Sanolife and starting to see a decline in coral is right on but that might just be a coincidence. For around 3 years I never had a phosphate problem. It has really creeped up since my trip in August so I'm still figuring out the best way to lower it and I need to figure out something fast. I don't have a sump and there is nowhere to put a powerhead for a reactor. I will decide between hooking up a canister filter again to run some resin, adding a bag of resin to the existing hob filter I use to run carbon, or carbon dosing. My nitrates stay really low so I think the carbon dosing is out.
FTS to come....