Water Chemistry

The parameters continue to look excellent. And the brown stuff I've been worried about seems to be declining, but then again it is early in the day and the lights haven't had time to awaken that stuff today.

From this newly updated page: http://www.melevsreef.com/parms.html

I pulled out the test kits tonight to see where things are. I'm happy to report great numbers across the board.

Salinity 1.026sg
pH 8.22
ORP 313
Temperature 79.3F
Alkalinity 10dKH
Calcium 480ppm
Magnesium 1450ppm
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0

Even with these excellent numbers, I'm going to do a 50g water change tomorrow.

The LED refugium lighting was installed two nights ago, and they look fantastic. Totally ...

While I do tend to test various specific parameters as needed, I've gotten into a bad habit of not doing the full battery of tests regularly this year. Just looking at this chart, I can see just how infrequently I measured using all the kits. Part of the reason is because I don't like finding out what's wrong because then I have to fix it. For 2011 however, I need to work on a better mindset. Rather than fear the worst, I need to get back into the routine of testing to avoid problems.
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So with all that has been going on, I've been a tad lax on measuring all the water parameters in my system. I'll check this or that (alkalinity, temperature, salinity), but not everything... over time, I've been losing some SPS while others seem bulletproof. My numbers aren't horrible, but nitrate has skyrocketed somehow. I'll be doing a couple of big water changes over the next two weeks. Alkalinity has had some huge swings over the past 60 days, which is why I thought the SPS were reacting ...