A Few Questions

[Bernardhny]

Hello all,

It has been quite some time since I last posted here and I figured I would take the risk of posting a question and hope that I don't get shamed away. I have been bad. Very bad. My tank is suffering and I know I am to blame. The question is how do I fix it.

Tank is a 75G Cube.
Sump is 24G
HOB Protein Skimmer
Radion X30 G3 Pro Light
Gyre and Vortech MP10W
Simple aquascape - about 30 pounds of live rock.
Sump has quite a bit of Chaeto in it and a base of miracle Mud
Dosing Pumps (Calc and Alk in equal amounts)

Problem:

I am the first to admit that I have been slacking on the tank maintenance. I won't make any excuses. I was simply on autopilot that did not have the tank as a priority. When I came back from my last business trip (14 days) Mostly everything was gone. All the pulsing Xenia are gone (it had overtaken the tank! prior to the trip). My maintenance at this low point was weekly sock changes, cleaning of the foam filter block in my sump and the occasional 10G water change.

The only thing thriving was my purple tip anemone and my RBA looks horrible. I am getting plenty of coraline algae growth. Skimmer is skimming with normal amount of froth and waste and I changed the sock and rinse out the foam block in my sump weekly (not that lazy).

Now I am back and motivated...not sure why I dozed off at the wheel...no excuses.

So my first thing was check my water chemistry.

Alk 16! (highest it has ever been but realized my Hanna checker reagents are expired...)
Calcium 340ppm
Ph 8.0
Nitrate 60ppm
Phosphate .54
temp 81
Salt 1.027


No wonder why everything died. Holy crap - these are the worst numbers I have ever had.

So my recovery steps:

1) Changed 40G of water in the last two weeks
2) Re-did all of my plumbing and tubing (the tubing was getting gross inside)
3) Cleaned all of my pumps, powerheads etc and made sure they were clean, well rinsed off etc
4) Vacuumed my sand bed (because even after the water changes my phosphate and nitrates were still high
5) Cleaned out my sump of the miracle mud, cut back on the overgrowth of chaeto. I had a huge amount of chaeto in the sump (A gallon sized ziplock bag was not big enough to hold it all)
6) Installed a phosphate reactor (I realize it will not help for at least a few weeks)

My problem is that my nitrates and phosphates are increasing instead of dropping. I thought it was my test kits but I replaced them and I am still seeing an increase. I checked my RO/DI filter and it is testing clean with no TDI leaving the filter. Example: When the phosphate was .54 I did another 10G water change. It dropped to .47, the next day, up to .52

I would have figured that I would be on the road to recovery. I decided to go back to basics. Lots of regular water changes until the phosphate and nitrates are back to acceptable range. Stopped the dosing pumps and I am going to see if I can stabilize the water chemistry through water changes (there is not a lot of coral left to require dosing). Any thoughts on how I can speed up the process? Any obvious things I am not doing that I should be.

Sorry about the book. Better to have too much info than not enough.

Thanks

Bernard

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Atta Boy! your on the right track.
Im pulling PO out of my rock and sand from my own disaster.
I added a canister filter(cheap sun sun on amazon) just for mech filtration and I blow off the rocks every day just a little. youll be kinda mind blown that everyone says theyre bad. Easy to clean.
I let the algae n cyano grow a few days then clean and WC(like chato trimming)
I also upped the intensity on my chato and macros in the fuge.
Once the tank stabilized I added back corals and started upping the lighting.(same principal as chato) PO in the colum dropping like a rock.
Been about 6 weeks for me. The PO from the sand has been finally leaching for the last 2 weeks as I had expected.
Now its just time.
Speed up? Nope. sorry.
Welcome Back!

Jason

 

[Bernardhny]

When I got home today I tested my phosphate. It was down to .34
I am going to do another 10G water change tonight, and get rid of the remaining miracle mud in the sump. I am also thinking I might replace the HOB Remora S skimmer for an in sump skimmer.
I need to get the phosphate and nitrates under control before next week.

 

[brandon429]

I read your descript and there is a certain fix, but its painful. much easier just to type it out

partial action is the cause of the ongoing issue. an easy claim made by a guy with a reef that weighs ten pounds when full, but nonetheless its the cause. Detritus is still left in this system. that, plus your contributing bioload and feeding equals your ongoing nutrient store readings from your test kits. the fix is a full tank cleaning, that's a full restart with no recycle. Whatever your original waste measures were when new, are gained again only through detritus storage ejection.

To any degree that is done partially, understandable in such a large system, that's a time factor it will add until full reset is gained. Also added are the ongoing contributions from fish, which is why only being thorough and $$ can get your true desired means. If your tank was in my house in current condition, it would be fixed over the course of two days by this exact action:

-have lfs ready with 75 gallons of water handy. all at once upon cleaning, my LFS would deliver me 75 gallons ready for the non partial water change. That, or Id have Rubbermaid trash cans full of it ready. first non partial action is the water change, comes at the end of the work.

-reduce fish bioloading to almost none, or your main favs, all luxury fish go back. Buy them again later when the tank shows control over nutrients.

literally discard the whole current sandbed and all miracle mud. they've been po4 absorbing a long time now. the MM isn't needed anyway, its a retail option for tanks that isn't harmful to use, but its part of your detritus loop now. Don't reuse. we have threads on how to use brand new live sand in your aged tank without a cycle. your sandbed and miracle mud is the largest sink of waste still in effect, the partial siphoning didn't clean the sandbed correctly. it will still cloud if you lift up a handful and drop it back down into the tank....our true cleaning will have that non clouding, just sand will fall to the bottom.

-**must find and locate tank parting out threads for the steps we have many. the point of doing this is to get your ends, and no loss of life. you are deconstructing your living reef to get this ends, serious science here** but we do this commonly, not hard to make it work.

-all your live rock has to be removed and forcefully rinsed with clean sw in collection buckets where the detritus that's in the rock can be expelled. it will continue to do this upon resetup, so expect large siphon water change work a few mos after this full fix.

-you put the whole tank back together clean, zero detritus, low fish bioload, we'll save all your corals, and to fill up this tank you use all brand new water and reacclimate your fish

all that is reef surgery. anything shy of that is typical reefing and it will be a long time till you enjoy it again.

that's the cost of reefing big tanks man heh. if you do all this in a very certain order you will have no loss of tank life, and a terribly hard work weekend as well.
B