It’s been a while since I sat down and checked my water chemistry.  The corals are growing for the most part, and growing well.  Color still seems to be trouble, and in the last month, algal growth on the glass has picked up the pace.  With the pH probe on my Apex routinely starting to warn me about the pH hitting 8.5 (and shutting down all my lights to stop the rising pH) I finally sat down tonight and did some testing.  This time, it was quite clear that things were out of whack, for while my Apex was reading 8.50, the Seachem liquid test came back around 8.2.
And this is why you should keep the pH probe calibration solutions on hand.  I actually had to clean the probe with some vinegar, but once that was done, I got down to recalibration.  It’s an easy process, well explained in the Apex manual.  When it was done, my pH came out at 8.13; much more in line with my liquid test.  Of course, I’d been holding back on my C-Balance 2 part dosing due to pH “riding high”, but I may have been relying too much on the probe.  The water quality checked out like this after calibration.
pH probe – 8.13
pH (Seachem) – 8.2
Alkalinity (Seachem) – 2 meq/L
Calcium (Salifert) – 420 ppm
Magnesium (Salifert) – 1270 ppm
Nitrate (Salifert) – 50 ppm
Wait, yes, seriously, the nitrates have shot up to 50 ppm.  Great.  That very well could explain why my Hot Pink Birdsnests are brown, my Sour Apple Birdsnests are lavendar, and my Red Pocilloporas are looking more yellow with purple polyps (I call them Red Pocilloporas, but they came to me as a Red Birdsnest, and it seems that they’re growing without problems right into the Sour Apple Birdsnest, so the jury is out on what genus this coral belongs to right now!).  I did add a frag from John Coppolino, a very special “Hulk Milli” Acropora milleopora.  I’ve just been curious to see how other SPS will do under the Ecoxotic LEDs as well as whether the Foureye Butterfly would take it out or not.  So far it’s sitting there, and has obviously darkened, no doubt a direct result of the high nitrates.
I’ve been doing very low level Vodka dosing for a while, but perhaps not to the volume and consistency I should be.  Of course, I’ve also been pumping the tank full of food in an effort to push the clowns to breed.  Looks like some water changes are unavoidably in their future.
And that’s all there is to say about the Lightning Project right now.  It is still very much a waiting game.