I could line out the entire sordid story, but the bottom line is that I've have had good batches last for weeks and months, and others that crash quickly. If I could figure out what I'm doing when things go wrong, I could stop it.
I've been adding 1 ml F/2 directly to each two-liter bottle, once they've been filled up with 1.019sg water. I have premixed my water at times, and other times mixed it up right when I needed some.
The soda bottles sometimes still smell of the drink that used to be in them. And I talked to one guy today and he told me he always reuses his bottles, where I'm always using new ones with each new split or new batch.
Ironically, I can keep a reef alive, but not the food...
