Wanted to post this picture before the ugly phase starts. I have plenty of coral for this new build. I am looking forward to starting another reef keeping journey. Thanks Gavin and team for being available to answer questions and offer suggestions along the way.

The “ugly stage” - ride it out or do something to fix it? I don’t know what is the best practice and I have been finding conflicting info so I hoped that someone here could give me some advice.

So I started a 28g saltwater nano in late March. I’ve been testing my water weekly and everything is stable but slowly working on better levels in calcium, magnesium alkalinity and phosphate. I solely was using salifert as my testing kit until this week. Every week my phosphate has read zero. I mean, I have the skimmer off. I have sun coral so I’m feeding with reefroids every night and overfeeding to increase my phosphate. Yet, this week is still 0. In anticipation of the reading I ordered a Hanna testing kit for phosphate because I can’t believe it’s still at zero after all this time. First Hanna reading was 0.25 (eek) Second Hanna reading was 0.35 (eek even worse) Turned the skimmer on and went to Aquarium Arts their Hanna read 0.79 (🫪) Around 8pm checked with Hanna again after checking expiration dates (nothing expired) and it read 0.16. Wondering if anyone else has had experience with phosphate not showing at all with salifert?

Recently I had a firefish goby and a royal gramma (from a LFS) in an observation qt. The firefish died in qt I think from stress (no signs of illness). I moved the royal gramma to my display after observation and suddenly after 10 days or so it had major fin damage and couldnt swim. we moved back to qt where it died. I have two theories. 1 is our blue damsel bullying. 2 is that it got caught in the powerhead (sicce nano voyager). Always we planned to rehome the damsel if needed but we didnt see signs. That will be happening now as soon as its possible. Also had already planned to 3d print an anemone guard on the powerhead (still an amateur at modeling and haven't found an existing one that works yet). The royal gramma was larger so it does surprise me that the damsel was the issue. We did see them chasing each other occasionally. But this experience to date has made me rethink my stocking plan and sequence. Also as i learn more we find more fish we want 🤣. This is my current plan. Internet gives conflicting info on stocking levels. I am worried i will overstock. Also want to stock in the best order. Tank is an aio 31G tideline 4 months old with a protein skimmer and a micro refugium in the rear chamber, and I have started adding pods. Working to get phosphates down (above the hanna ulr test range). This "plan" is from google's AI, but it thinks this livestock plan needs a 40G. Ive seem similar plans online for a 32? If it is too tight what should I cut -or- when would we outgrow the tank lol? I have a pair of oscellaris who are hosting the side where the rear overflow is. These are the next steps from AI. The mandarin is a big priority but we love all of these fish. STEP 1: Add Firefish Goby & Tailspot Blenny together │ └── Wait 2 Weeks (Monitor parameter stability) │ ├──> STEP 2: Add Royal Gramma & Banggai Cardinal │ └── Wait 2-3 Weeks (Allows copepod populations to peak) │ ├──> STEP 3: Add Captive-Bred Mandarin Dragonet │ └── Wait until tank is 6-9 months old total

Tested my tank for the first time these are my test results going to let it be and keep testing every 3 days