Some problem children

hardcz · Nov 8, 2007

I have a tank that's been established over 4 years, I've had it for about 3 months at my house now, it was moved, keeping the LR in buckets of water, and the sand mostly undisturbed, believe it's a coral bed. Kept about 50% of the original water as well.

Ever since I've had the tank the amonia appears to be 0, who can tell with some of those colors on the card right? Nitrites are 0 for sure, the light baby blue, and the PH is a purple/violet color, so it looks like maybe 8.3 or 8.2. The nitrates though hover at 20-40 without fail. I do a 5 gallon water change every monday, I have a 45 gallon tank. I have currently a CPR bakpak skimmer/filter with bio confetti inside one of the tubes, and the skimmer gives me a green nasty liquid I throw out every few days.

I'll list my stats for ease of viewing

45 Gallon tank
nova extreme t5's HO, 2x 10k 2x actinic
ph 8.2-8.3
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 20-40
amonia: 0
calcium: 430
carbonate something: 16dkh
temp: 78F

I have maybe 50 lb of live rock or more, not sure anymore, a mix of softies, lps and sps corals, shrooms, about 30 various hermits, 100+ snails, mostly nassarius, a serpent star, cleaner shrimp, 2 domino damsels, yellow tail damsel, clown fish, firefish. to be exact with my corals it's at http://hardcz.com/cpm under coral progression.

I'm using a powder calcium and alk, but was advised not to use the alk till it dropped, so every now and again I use purple up, and with the water changes and sometimes during top off I'll add the calcium. I'm using RO water, otherwise nothing else is being added to the tank at the moment.

I'm adding a fuge soon as I can get rid of the excess snails, and have chaeto that I'll be adding in there, which I was told should lower the nitrates, along with water changes.

So my question is, what's up with my alk, and how can I lower the nitrates?

TimMSU · Nov 8, 2007

The cheato will help for sure. Do you regularly vac the substrate during water changes? Crushed coral beds need to be regularly cleaned to keep detrius build up from occurring. Nassarius snails, from what I have read, don't necessarily consume detrius but are more so recommended because they help stir up the substrate which can be bad in a crushed coral system if not regularly cleaned. I could be wrong, but thats my best guess.

With the tank being seasoned 4 years, you really shouldn't have seen too much die off which would have produced an ammonia/nitrite spike. If your nitrites are not showing up after 4 months, I doubt there is any ammonia present.

Silicates can cause algae blooms so you may want to test for that as well.

Also, if you can test the TDS of your RO/DI water, you may need new filters. Just trying to think of the obvious/easily overlooked.

How often/much do you feed?

Not really sure on the Alk issue so will leave that for someone more knowledgeable.

hardcz · Nov 8, 2007

well I was seeing that brown detritus on the CC bed every week so I stopped feeding to about 3 times or less a week, and I feed less now as well. And there's no more build up on the CC.

How can I test TDS? I just got a new prefilter and filter for the RO unit, I checked the phosphates and it's hard to tell if they're 0 or .25 since the colors are so similar, but either way they're pretty low. I had an algae bloom of hair algae and I believe some red cyano...looked like like deep red velvet. Since I moved the rocks around and started feeding less it seems like the algae issue is less prevelant.

How difficult would it be to change out the CC for sand? And would that be a better overall bed type?

hardcz · Nov 10, 2007

also wondering....would this blue stuff and the sponge be a nitrate factory? And if so, what reprocussions would I have from removing them?

zooomzoomguy · Nov 12, 2007

i was told to remove that from my skimmer

TimMSU · Nov 12, 2007

Are you rinsing the confetti when you do water changes? It can trap a ton of stuff and needs to be rinsed regularly. Just use the old tank water to rinse it.

CC is fine as long as you keep it clean. It's not necessarily what's on top that will get you, it's what can get trapped below the surface that causes the problems. I have a mixed substrate of CC and sand and vac once a month. If you want to remove it and replace it, do a search on here and a bunch of threads should come up on how others have done it. As far as what is better, I think most people on these forums prefer sand over CC.

What type of flow do you have in the tank? If you are getting or had cyano bacteria, it's sometimes a sign, your flow is too low. It sounds like you have that under control, but something to think about.

As far as feedings go, feed only enough for the fish to eat for about 2 minutes, anything more is overfeeding and providing nutrients to the algae...

You can buy a TDS meter (hand held or inline) to test with. I want to say they are around $20-30 for a basic hand held and $40-60 for an inline.

Regarding the Nassarius, I may have jumped the gun a bit. Some are reef friendly and others are predatory. A general rule on the difference is if their shell looks somewhat smooth, they are ok, but if they look really jagged they are potential predators. If you have the wrong type, they are most likely doing you little good.

hardcz · Nov 12, 2007

never had pulled it out, was told to keep it in there. I have two aquaclear 70's, one on the bottom left pointing to the center and one on the top right pointing to the center, seems to make a good water flow and give some turbulance.

I just got a TDS meter....well ordered one from the post in a diff thread, hope it comes soon.

Some problem children

hardcz

TimMSU

hardcz

hardcz

zooomzoomguy

TimMSU

hardcz

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