20 gallon long issues

[Morpheus77]

Tank is about 10 months old, 20 lbs of rock, and 20 pounds of Carib sea black and white substrate. Have 20 different corals, mostly softies, i.e. nepthea leather, various zoas, gsp, paly, duncan, some cyphastrea, etc. Two clowns, and scooter blenny, 3-4 snails, blue legged hermit for cuc. During cycle, no lights, cycled about two months, started added a few corals here and there over about 4-5 month period. Filtration is a fijicube AIO drop in, running filter floss, matrix, and purigen. I have always had a nitrate issue of about 30-40 range even before adding fish. Fish just went into tank about a month ago. I do 30% wc's a week using distilled water, sometimes two wc's a week, and nitrates may get into the 20's, but will be back close to 40 in 6-7 days. Bought a separate HOB filter to see if it would help, and even a skimmer (skimmer still in break in phase) and still manage to have 30-40 nitrates. Salinity is consistent around 1.025, temp 78-80 range, PH around 8.0, Calcium running 460, magnesium is around 1490, and my alk just won't get past 7dkh. I am dosing AFR one part, and am currently up to 6.5 ML a day. So what do you recommend on getting nitrates down to 10-15 range? What can I do to get alk up? If I continue to use AFR, then mag and cal will continue to climb, is there a middle ground with AFR? Should I dose something else entirely? I have one DC wave maker running on opposite side of return flow running at low and med flow throughout lights on period, it fluctuates from low to medium every few seconds. Alk, PH, and Nitrates are my concern here. What do yall suggest? Spent alot of time watching BRS TV, but the info can be overwhelming. I have been deep vacuuming the sand the last two weeks, something I wasn't doing recently, and that seems to pull out a lot of nastiness, but not making much of a dent. Will a skimmer make much of a difference once it's running properly, should I consider nopox? Anyway, let me know what yall think. Just baffled at this point. Thanks.

 

[WrasseyReefer]

If you want to only increase alk, you’ll need to dose an alk only supplement, like ESV B-Ionic component 1. As you said, continuing to add AFR will increase alk, calc, and mag.

2 Gallon Package - ESV B-Ionic Calcium Buffer System

Each ESV B-Ionic Calcium Buffer System has two components - Alkalinity and Calcium. When used in equal parts, easily maintain calcium and alkalinity levels with no mixing of powders, disruption of ionic balace or addition of organic chemicals. Formulated to provide all the proper ratios to...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

Here’s component 1 on Amazon:
ESV Aquatics Bionic Part 1 Treatment, Alkalinity https://a.co/d/a4VUTku

As for nitrates, yes, a skimmer will help a lot in removing excess nutrients once it breaks in. You can carbon dose with nopox, which will remove nitrates. But you have to have a skimmer if you’re going to carbon dose, because carbon dosing depletes oxygen. The skimmer will oxygenate the water. But you also have to have phosphates present in order for carbon dosing to effectively remove nitrates. Carbon dosing works as the denitrifying bacteria consume carbon, phosphates, and nitrates. Without all three, it won’t work. So you’ll need to be monitoring phosphates closely to make sure you have sufficient phosphates for nitrate reduction. But you also don’t want phosphates to bottom out, as this starves corals. This is why carbon dosing is considered a more advanced technique in the hobby and not typically recommended for beginners.

What are you feeding the tank? How much? How often? It’s possible you are overfeeding.

You could also add another wave maker on the other end of the tank. More flow will blow excess food and waste into the filter for removal.

As for your pH, 8.0 is normal. What pH would you like to be at? 8.3 is ideal, but 8.0 is perfectly fine. A co2 scrubber can be utilized to increase pH. This is hooked up to your skimmer and removes excess co2 in your water. CO2 causes lower pH. An easy thing to try would be increasing surface agitation and opening doors and windows to remove excess co2 in your home. Also, as you start to add alk supplement, this will also increase your pH.

 

[Morpheus77]

If you want to only increase alk, you’ll need to dose an alk only supplement, like ESV B-Ionic component 1. As you said, continuing to add AFR will increase alk, calc, and mag.

2 Gallon Package - ESV B-Ionic Calcium Buffer System

Each ESV B-Ionic Calcium Buffer System has two components - Alkalinity and Calcium. When used in equal parts, easily maintain calcium and alkalinity levels with no mixing of powders, disruption of ionic balace or addition of organic chemicals. Formulated to provide all the proper ratios to...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

As for nitrates, yes, a skimmer will help a lot in removing excess nutrients once it breaks in. You can carbon dose with nopox, which will remove nitrates. But you have to have a skimmer if you’re going to carbon dose, because carbon dosing depletes oxygen. The skimmer will oxygenate the water. But you also have to have phosphates present in order for carbon dosing to effectively remove nitrates. Carbon dosing works as the denitrifying bacteria consume carbon, phosphates, and nitrates. Without all three, it won’t work. So you’ll need to be monitoring phosphates closely to make sure you have sufficient phosphates for nitrate reduction. But you also don’t want phosphates to bottom out, as this starves corals. This is why carbon dosing is considered a more advanced technique in the hobby and not typically recommended for beginners.

What are you feeding the tank? How much? How often? It’s possible you are overfeeding.

You could also add another wave maker on the other end of the tank. More flow will blow excess food and waste into the filter for removal.

Speaking of phosphates, they usually test around 0.03 using salifert, and often times I feel it's less than that, most of the time I don't even see a blue hue. To answer your question I feed a mixture of frozen brine, and pellet food, but not much of either. Maybe 7-8 pellets broken up to finer pellets and about a third to half a cube of frozen brine. I had nitrates before adding fish, that's the head scratcher for me. Are the low phosphates a concern? Like is there not enough balance between phosphates and nitrates, causing higher nitrates?

+1 on wave maker, I have thought about that, the returns are facing slightly up for aeration, problem is, bout maxed out on my power strip.

 

[Morpheus77]

One more thing, I feed once a day, maybe twice on the weekends.

 

[WrasseyReefer]

Speaking of phosphates, they usually test around 0.03 using salifert, and often times I feel it's less than that, most of the time I don't even see a blue hue. To answer your question I feed a mixture of frozen brine, and pellet food, but not much of either. Maybe 7-8 pellets broken up to finer pellets and about a third to half a cube of frozen brine. I had nitrates before adding fish, that's the head scratcher for me. Are the low phosphates a concern? Like is there not enough balance between phosphates and nitrates, causing higher nitrates?

+1 on wave maker, I have thought about that, the returns are facing slightly up for aeration, problem is, bout maxed out on my power strip.

Low phosphates won’t cause high nitrates. Phosphates of 0.03 are ok. You could go a little higher. Target 0.03-0.10. You had nitrates before you added fish from cycling your tank. How did you cycle? Did you ghost feed?

 

[WrasseyReefer]

One more thing, I feed once a day, maybe twice on the weekends.

Try decreasing feedings to max once per day, you can even feed every other day, and decrease the amount you feed by 30-50%. See if that helps. You only have 3 fish, so you don’t need to feed a lot. We often feed our fish way more than they actually need, because they look hungry or like eating. Everyone enjoys feeding their fish, but it can cause problems if we aren’t careful.

The only source of nitrates will be food and poop, and the poop comes from the food. Only way to decrease nitrate input is to feed less. Only way to increase nitrate removal is to increase filtration.

 

[Morpheus77]

Low phosphates won’t cause high nitrates. Phosphates of 0.03 are ok. You could go a little higher. Target 0.03-0.10. You had nitrates before you added fish from cycling your tank. How did you cycle? Did you ghost feed?

I used ammonium, and lights off, took about 6 weeks, but gave it two more before I started to add anything and turn lights on, so two months light out, ammonia spiked to about 3, and let it do its thing, then 50% WC, then another 30% within the next week. Phased in the lights, don't remember how long, but a couple of weeks if I remember correctly.

On another note, currently using IO reef salts, would moving over to Red sea pro salt help with PH and ALk over time? Thought about doing this.

 

[WrasseyReefer]

I used ammonium, and lights off, took about 6 weeks, but gave it two more before I started to add anything and turn lights on, so two months light out, ammonia spiked to about 3, and let it do its thing, then 50% WC, then another 30% within the next week. Phased in the lights, don't remember how long, but a couple of weeks if I remember correctly.

On another note, currently using IO reef salts, would moving over to Red sea pro salt help with PH and ALk over time? Thought about doing this.

The ammonia you dosed was converted into nitrates. That’s where it came from before you added fish. Fish food and poop turns into ammonia but is quickly converted into nitrate by beneficial bacteria.

I wouldn’t use Red Sea pro. It has extremely high alk, which some people prefer, but it’s not necessary for your situation. I and a lot of others use Red Sea blue bucket. It has an alk around 8. It won’t innately help with alk and ph. You’d still need to maintain alk with an alk supplement like the one I mentioned above, as your corals consume alk. And like I said before, low ph is usually from excess co2 in your home, not from your salt.

 

[Morpheus77]

The ammonia you dosed was converted into nitrates. That’s where it came from before you added fish. Fish food and poop turns into ammonia but is quickly converted into nitrate by beneficial bacteria.

I wouldn’t use Red Sea pro. It has extremely high alk, which some people prefer, but it’s not necessary for your situation. I and a lot of others use Red Sea blue bucket. It has an alk around 8. It won’t innately help with alk and ph. You’d still need to maintain alk with an alk supplement like the one I mentioned above, as your corals consume alk. And like I said before, low ph is usually from excess co2 in your home, not from your salt.

I have the intake of my skimmer running out the window, via a tube, it was running about 7.8 prior to this. I will look into the bionic for sure, and the blue bucket as well. The tank is in my room, and it's just me in there, no one else, all I do is sleep in there, and maybe watch an hr of TV.
Forgot to mention, I started dosing about 5 ML a week of MB7, should I increase this? Been two weeks now dosing this.

 

[Morpheus77]

The ammonia you dosed was converted into nitrates. That’s where it came from before you added fish. Fish food and poop turns into ammonia but is quickly converted into nitrate by beneficial bacteria.

I wouldn’t use Red Sea pro. It has extremely high alk, which some people prefer, but it’s not necessary for your situation. I and a lot of others use Red Sea blue bucket. It has an alk around 8. It won’t innately help with alk and ph. You’d still need to maintain alk with an alk supplement like the one I mentioned above, as your corals consume alk. And like I said before, low ph is usually from excess co2 in your home, not from your salt.

Is ammonium not a good option anymore?

 

[WrasseyReefer]

I have the intake of my skimmer running out the window, via a tube, it was running about 7.8 prior to this. I will look into the bionic for sure, and the blue bucket as well. The tank is in my room, and it's just me in there, no one else, all I do is sleep in there, and maybe watch an hr of TV.
Forgot to mention, I started dosing about 5 ML a week of MB7, should I increase this? Been two weeks now dosing this.

I don’t use microbacter and don’t see a need for you to use it.

 

[WrasseyReefer]

Is ammonium not a good option anymore?

Are you dosing ammonium? Why? That’s why your nitrates are high.

 

[Morpheus77]

Are you dosing ammonium? Why? That’s why your nitrates are high.

No no no, used it for the cycle 10 months ago.

 

[WrasseyReefer]

No no no, used it for the cycle 10 months ago.

Oh ok. Then what’s your question about ammonium not being a good option anymore?

 

[Morpheus77]

Was that a bad idea? This the reason why I am having nitrates continously?

 

[WrasseyReefer]

Was that a bad idea? This the reason why I am having nitrates continously?

No, that’s totally fine for cycling. Like I said, it’s gotta be the food and filtration.

 

[MrGisonni]

Increase maintenance a bit and cut back on feeding. My mixed reef is stable and corals are growing with Nitrates in the 30s. As far as AFR it takes a while to dial it in and for balance to be achieved. Slightly increase your dose spread it out over a few times a day and monitor your alk until to get it up and stable. If that doesn't work you can use the Alk component alone from tropic marin, Balling part B. But another product will probably work for you.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I think your tank looks fine, everything sounds fine. I would dose some kind of alk buffer till you get to where you want, and then switch to all for reef to maintain the parameters, all other parameters look good.

HOB filter won't do anything for nitrates, a good skimmer would be more effective.

What kind of fish food are you feeding? Try to feed frozen or live food food

I really wouldn't make any major adjustments to your system, if you only added fish just last month, then you went from 0 fish to 3 fish and the tank will go through an adjustment period while it gets used to the new bioload, so just keep feeding the way you are now, once a day is not much

 

[Morpheus77]

Increase maintenance a bit and cut back on feeding. My mixed reef is stable and corals are growing with Nitrates in the 30s. As far as AFR it takes a while to dial it in and for balance to be achieved. Slightly increase your dose spread it out over a few times a day and monitor your alk until to get it up and stable. If that doesn't work you can use the Alk component alone from tropic marin, Balling part B. But another product will probably work for you.

I do not have a dosing pump, I dose manually, so should I increase the AFR a tad, and dose that total in the morning and evening? Half and half basically?

 

[WrasseyReefer]

Increase maintenance a bit and cut back on feeding. My mixed reef is stable and corals are growing with Nitrates in the 30s. As far as AFR it takes a while to dial it in and for balance to be achieved. Slightly increase your dose spread it out over a few times a day and monitor your alk until to get it up and stable. If that doesn't work you can use the Alk component alone from tropic marin, Balling part B. But another product will probably work for you.

Just curious, wouldn’t increasing AFR continue to increase his calc and mag, which are already high? I have no experience dosing AFR, so maybe this is not the case. It seems to make more sense to focus on dosing only alk.