Reef Aquarium!

[LAsps]

hey RL I am just going to explain my tank and I will add questions that I need to know. please answer, thank you!

my reef is kept at a constant 450 ppm calcium, 9 dkh and 8.1-8.2 ph. I wonder why it stays at that level.. water changes bi-daily for quarantine fish tanks and miracle mud? I also have a short GHA garden growing on the top of my live rocks. I would say the longest it only gets is half an inch. (most of the GHA came from my recent full-on GHA disaster! GHA is dying down but not completely gone yet.) will this GHA ever go away?nitrates, nitrites, phosphate are undetectable. I got my 3 bags of chemi-pure elite working, at least I think they are working. There isn't much flow going through them except them being sucked between chambers in the sump. How much flow does chemi-pure elite require? should I go get a water pump? Diatoms keep on growing on the sand and walls a lot! of course I am using homemade RO/DI water. oversized Phosban 550 with nitrate/phosphate removing media. <-- LFS ripped me off there, can't get my money back >. After a while, I will have to start dosing a 2 part buffer. and I chose Reef Fusion. it says it is specially formulated to have Magnesium and Strontium.. hmm.. if you had experience with Reef Fusion from SEACHEM, should I still dose Mg and Sr separately? LAst but not least, iodine. will I be needing to dose Iodine in the near-future? I have no test kits for Iodine and I have Xenia's and a BTA in my tank.

[Reefing Madness]

Pretty sure that if your phospoahte levels are 0, or undetectable, your GHA will be going away soon. But, do you have a CUC to take care of it faster? Turbo Snails perhaps?
So, by-daily water changes? this should keep all parameters stable, if not exact, day to day. And by telling us you have Diatoms, thats telling me that your tank has just recently finished its cycle. And those will go away by themselves also.
Dosing, no need to dose Strontium, if you keep up on those water changes, they will handle that for you. Are you dosing Mag already? What is the level? If you can't test for it, its not a good idea to dose, you could get levels up way to high and not know it.

[LAsps]

yeah i have like 5 turbo snails, 8 banded trochus, 8 hermits, and 2 margaritas. when they eat the GHA, it grows back slowly

[gregr]

Couple questions for you-- how long has the tank been running and what are you testing the phosphates with? Reason I ask the phosphate question is because I think that to get an accurate reading you need to use a colorimeter.
I agree with Reefing Madness about dosing-- I wouldn't worry about iodine, magnesium or strontium if you're using good salt (specifically for reef tanks) and doing regular water changes-- at least until the tank is heavily stocked. Once you have a lot of corals in there using up the calcium, mag, etc., then you will want to be testing for all that stuff. I don't dose anything except food for the corals since I have a good calcium reactor and do two good sized water changes a month. I do have a phosphate reactor and a bio-pellet reactor since I've had hair algae trouble in the past. Not now though!
Also- I'm curious about how you got ripped off at the lfs. It's so common but I hate to hear about it. What product do you have in that reactor now? Unless you're still adding phosphates or excess nutrients somehow- that hair algae should be disappearing.