Can't Grow Anything

ketchup318 · Feb 24, 2019

Hi All

I can't seem to grow anything in my tank. Anything I start with slowly withers away after a while and I don't want to add anything else until i figure out what's going on.

My tank is 3 years old, a 55G red sea reefer. I'd have algae problems in the past and I've resorted to using red sea nopox and GFO. That seemed to fix all the algae problems, but nothing seems to grow. I recently sent in for a ICP test and got the results back and as expected I had low/no nitrates and phosphates. I'm thinking is may be the problem, but I'm worred that if I lay off the nopox/GFO I will have blooms come back.

How much nitrates and phosphates should I have? I have 6 fish (2 clowns, a yellow watchman goby, a royal gramma, a firefish and a purple firefish), 2 shrimps (peppermint and pistol), and a small cleanup crew. I feed one hikari cube of mysis split between day and night.

Thanks

Flippers4pups · Feb 24, 2019

5-10ppm N03 and 0.02 P04.

Stop dosing the Nopox and take the GFO off line.

Flippers4pups · Feb 24, 2019

Flippers4pups · Feb 24, 2019

Flippers4pups · Feb 24, 2019

dantimdad · Feb 24, 2019

Agreed with @Flippers4pups

You are starving your corals.

Rick.45cal · Feb 24, 2019

Since you have no NO3 and no PO4 and you’ve been dosing NoPOx you now have a surplus of organic carbon in the system, which is really bad for corals. It causes bleaching and polyp bailout and all kinds of bad things. Like Flippers4pups said you need to stop dosing the NoPOx.

ketchup318 · Feb 25, 2019

Thanks for the comments, I've stopped dosing nopox and stopped running gfo.

I do have fuzzy growth on my pumps and on my snail shells. Plus testing with my hanna checker always showed around 0.06 phosphates. Plus various nitrate tests, salifert, ATI, showed there was something. It wasn't until the ICP test that I realized i was stripping all nutrients .

Guess I was fearful of dealing with another outbreak and didn't think I'd go to far to the other extreme.

ketchup318 · Feb 25, 2019

Thanks for the comments. I have stopped dosing nopox and running gfo.

I do have fuzzy growth on my snail shells and on my pumps. And testing on my hanna checker always showed around 0.06 phosphates. Plus various nitrate tests, salifert and ATI, always showed there was nitrates. It wasn't until the ICP test that I realized that I was stripping all the nutrients.

Guess I was too worried about another outbreak that I didn't consider I was going to far the other way.

ketchup318 · Feb 27, 2019

Hi All

It's been a couple days since I've turned off the noPox dosing as well as turning off my GFO reactor. I'm seeing a little bit more polyp extension, maybe...

But the most obvious change is that my sandbed is starting to get brown and pink patches, and my glass is getting considerably more algae.

How do you balance having enough nutrients for your corals, but not so much where you have an outbreak. Or maybe a better question is how do you keep the algae from out-competing your coral?

Brad Miller · Feb 27, 2019

Sounds like a large clean up crew is in order ?

ketchup318 · Feb 27, 2019

i have 3 good sized turbo snails (1" long), a couple of ceriths and 3 hermit crabs. Never really seemed to need them before, they just kinda looked cool. The ones I do have don't seem all that interested in algae anyways.

Oldreefer44 · Feb 27, 2019

I dose nopox but slowly adjusted the amount until I had the parameters I wanted. From then on once a week tests seem to do the trick. Have good growth and little to no algae.

Brad Miller · Feb 27, 2019

Look up reefcleaners.org for the cuc packers for your size tank....
You need a bunch to eat detritus, algae and other good stuff

Rick.45cal · Feb 27, 2019

More cleanup crew, then as your nutrients start to rise start dosing smaller amounts of NoPOx, ideally you want to dose only enough that your NO3 and PO4 levels stay constant

. It’s takes patience to get it just right

Eb1air · Feb 27, 2019

Looking at the icp test your iodine is way down and iodine really helps keep coral happy and healthy. What salt are you using and how often do you change it. And algea could be do to not using rodi or bad filters n your nitrates test can be faulty do to algea soaking it up and giving you a false reading. So have to ask
Do you use rodi
What salt is used
Water change schedule
HAPPY REEFING

Gareth elliott · Feb 27, 2019

This result is not unexpected. Near zero nutrient tanks often have very little biodiversity in microfauna. I would add some bacteria product(i like microbacter 7)

I would also add pods, or any other microfauna you have available. Be it another liverock etc.

ketchup318 · Feb 28, 2019

Thanks for the comments, I am looking into ordering a larger cleanup crew. In addition to that, I must have glossed over the low iodine in the report, got that on order too.

As for the water change routine, I change out 10-15% every other week. The salt I use is Instant Ocean, reef crystals. I do use an Rodi system with DI media; though I will admit the last water change, corresponding to the test had media that i just switched out. So new water is better than the tested water.

I'll also look into microfauna. Not sold on it yet, as I need to research it before i put it into the tank.

Eb1air · Feb 28, 2019

I will say instant ocean works but it's dirty not knocking it but try a different salt I use red sea blue bucket with a mixed reef but it is by far a better salt n will probably help you out with iodine too little more cost but beats dosing another thing. . ... less time working on the reef n enjoy it.
HAPPY REEFING