After all the changes I wrote about yesterday, I ended up changing things more. I waited a couple hours after I rearranged the chambers and grabbed a water sample. As I had written about, the water tests I have were showing the water as healthy, but there are two important tests that I didn't have... thus I grabbed the sample and headed to the fish store. He also said my salt level was to high (salinity / specific gravity).
The one I usually go to is closed on Tuesday (I always forget!), so I had to go a little further away to get it done. Bill is the owner if Neptune's Cove. I love his shop, and he is solidly the best teacher I know of. He knows his fish, and he doesn't mind giving advice to those who will listen. I had him test my water. He found that my KH (water hardness), and Calcium were way high. In fact they were so high, that in a 12g tank, I'm hurting my fish. As these two measures are so important to life, and I'm so far out of normal... I went ahead and purchased the test kits. I also purchased a pipette to spot feed my coral.
I've been wanting to do something with my water flow, so while I was there, I picked up one of these. I put it in the tank and I love it. I'm going to need to upgrade my pump now... but that will have to wait for payday.
To fix the salinity, KH, and Calcium levels I did a 1.5 gallon drain of the tank, then back filled with fresh water. I've done that twice (once last night, and once this morning). Specific gravity should read between 1.020ppm and 1.024ppm. Mine was at 1.027ppm.
I just tested it again. Salinity is at 1.022ppm (good). Calcium is 440ppm (good). KH is 143.3ppm (low). I've added a 'flick' of buffer to bring it back up.
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