110g tank in the works =]

[bluespotocto]

20 nitrates is reasonable. If it goes above 40 then you should worry. Not sure about he water.

 

[DWhatley]

One thing you can easily test is your tap water for nitrates to see if you are adding them with your water change. Mine shows nitrate even after RO/DI filtering (we have yucky water). I typically see 15~20 ppm in my tanks.

 

[Omega]

is there a big difference in using power heads that arnt controlable and using a wavemaker system like the one Hydor Koralia makes?

 

[DWhatley]

Some people swear that hard corals do much better with the irregular motion attributed to a wave machine or SCWD but others will tell you the concept is overrated (I have only two hard corals in any of my nano and none in my other tanks. One was inherited and one I bought when first starting out). I have an intermittent set up using the poor mans SCWD flow switching device in addition to Koralias in two of the octo tanks but the switching is more to facilitate water exchange than replicate wave motion. If it would not take up so much room and be a real mess with salt creep, I always wanted to make one of those weighted buckets that dumps once it gets to a certain fill point but my want is more for cool factor than for anything I would expect from the wave action.

The octos do like to hang out around the Koralias so they seem to be attracted to water movement and an intermittent only would not give them a regular place to park if their attraction has health benefits (I am assuming that it helps with skin shedding, based primarily on watching KaySoh use it directly for this purpose).

So I guess my suggestion would be to incorporate both. In doing so you get even more irregular motion than with just a wave maker/SCWD alone.