Wow this is long overdue for an update! I guess I'll just give the quick version of major events from the past few months:
The Atlantic Blue got adopted out and then the PBT got Crypto . . . again . . . while in QT and didn't make it through an attempted copper treatment. I think this was my fault for introducing other things to the system while he was under observation to make sure things had cleared. My fault for rushing things and lesson learned. Seeing has how there were no more fish in QT I just gave the system a full 2+ months of nothing in there to let the Crypto die out.
I did run an experiment to reclaim rock that was treated with Cupramine and put all the rock through another muriatic acid bath, then let it sit in RO for a month with a carbon reactor, and then put it back in the QT system with clean sand. I added a Polyfilter pad, threw in some snails and hermits, and everything seems to be fine. Test results show no copper either so it seems like you can reclaim rock that has been treated with Cupramine if you take the right steps.
I dealt with a alkalinity drop disaster in the main system. Basically, one of my dosing tubes came out of the sump and was dumping Alk supplement into the stand . . . for a whole week! My alk dropped from its regular range to 5.6 dKH. Amazingly enough, I only lost a few frags and every decent sized colony survived.
I've also come to the conclusion that the Red Sea Program does help with coloration but overdosing Reef Energy supplements will lead to cyano. That's just based on a correlation of when I've had cyano and eventually being able to get rid of it when I stopped using Reef Energy. I'm still working on finding the right amount to use without triggering a cyano bloom. The coloration is a subjective thing and also hard to quantify as I had a lot of corals brown or bleach out when I ran into my Alk issue.
After all the fun stuff listed above and setbacks I've finally been able to get back on the path of adding and improving things . . . more to come in a little bit.
