I forgot to mention my giant ball of chaeto in the sump!
I'm sure nutrients will catch up to me eventually but I think it's definitely helping my SPS recover from the upgrade. While troubleshooting my upgrade issues regarding SPS, it allowed me to reflect on our goals as hobbiest versus the nutrional needs of the SPS. Our goal is to have healthy stock, with brilliant colors. To do that, we starve the nutrients out of the tank so that the SPS can show their best colors. The line we tiptoe is getting the best color without starving the coral. Take too much nutrients away and they become very pastel-colored and look faded. Give them too much nutrients and they darken up from all the zooxanthallae, but are probably healthier. Not as colorful, but probably healthier. Give them way too much nutrients and they start STN'ING and RTN'ING. For now, I'm aiming for healthy and slightly brown. Let everything get healthy and happy again... recover a bit... put some meat on their bones, or the coral equivalent of that expression.
Afterwards, I will begin to reduce phosphates and nitrates again, not to ULN levels, but slowly start removing some until I see their brilliant colors shine through, and then aim to keep just about there.
All wishful thinking as always but that's the goal I'm aiming for.
Sent via Tapatalk