Escaping Old Tank Syndrome

[jda]

Detritus is mostly benign. If it had any organic value, it would have been scavenged already/quickly. Dr. Holmes-Farley has posted on this a lot - the used to talk about inches of it in his sump. While not a "nitrate factory" or sink, it can gum up the works of the microfauna, fill holes in LR that do not allow water to get denitrified, etc. - I do remove it because of this, but more at my leisure.

Aragonite that is bound-full of phosphates is more of a time-based issue, but regular export will keep this down. It can bind a massive amount of phosphate and can mask all kinds of maintenance issues for years.

 

[brandon429]

Thread kick

So it's been about five years

Who logged some work in other people's reef tanks regarding old tank syndrome

Any new articles written about it anyone can find?

here's a place where waste in sand wasn't benign

Sand Bed

I have a stable, successful (by my standards) tank for many years. I has a dsb which may or may not be relevant to that. Seems like all I read about DSB is anecdotal. So, I will add to it. I had to excavate a small section of my sand bed for a plumbing issue. With in 12 hours, both my tangs...

www.reef2reef.com

Nanoreef crash after DSB cleaning

Hello R2R. So... I nearly wiped out one of my 14G Biocubes after an aggressive cleaning. The system has been running and doing well-enough for about 6 years. It is home to a handful of "easy" corals, a couple of clownfish, and a few mobile inverts. I bought an external filter (generic HD10...

www.reef2reef.com

that's old tank syndrome priming. we had a way to prevent that. there are old tank syndrome reversal work threads available with fix examples in the last 5 years, to test methods.

fixing old tank syndrome tanks isn't risk free, tank crashes are on the line so in my opinion it's high stakes work

 

[blstravler]

I just found this thread last night. I’m starting to wonder if I have this issue. My tank is right about 5 years old. My tank is a custom acrylic 140g and is bare bottom, SPS only, skimmer, refugium and a lot of rock. I started with dry rock but added a few pieces of established rock from my LFS. I dose ESV 2 Part and do monthly ICP tests and 1.5 gallon AWC every day. Here are my numbers -

ALK 7.8
Cal 450
Mag 1350
P - .05 - .08
N - 8.5

Over the last 6 months my coral growth has slowed down tremendously. I’ve had a few corals slowly just die off. What is even more odd to me is some corals still thrive and grow very quickly and I still have to trim them back. I do monthly ICP test and nothing ever comes up. For the most part the tank is stable. But it isn’t doing well.

I did trying dosing a bunch of KZ products for a few months but saw no change. I’ve only kept dosing FlatWorm stop and Coral Boster as I used to do during the first few years of my tank.

About a month ago I was doing some work on my tank and looked in my external overflow and I was shocked to see the amount of detritus in it. There must have been 2 inches of thick nasty gunk. When I took it out, at the bottom of the build up, it was almost like black tar and the smell was unreal. I thought to myself, how bad is it in my tank? So that was the next step.

I changed the flow in my tank by repositioning 3 of my 4 MP40’s. I took one and put it at the rear right bottom of my tank blowing under my rock . I had already had one at the left back but it wasn’t in a great spot so I moved it. When I turned all the pumps on what got kicked up was insane. My water turned gray and the smell again was bad. The detritus build up in the over flow and filter socks was crazy again.

I then started blowing my rock off with a small maxi jet every day. The next day once things settled I’d siphon it out from the bottom. Then I’d blow it off again and repeat. I’m now at a point where I blow off the rock about 3/4 times a week and what comes out is just a little ‘dust’ and things seem to be ‘cleaner’ now. I also cleaned my sump but there is still an acceptable level of detritus down there.

So the tank is ‘cleaner’ but my coral health has yet to really improve. I saw this video and it was interesting to me -


I wonder if my rock was so plugged up with detritus that all my good bacteria was suffering? Maybe Abe in the above video is feeding that with Carbon and is seeing a good results. I’ve started to dose a very small amounts of Vodka and I’m up to 2ml. It’s still early so no visible or measurable results as of yet. I’ve even thought about dosing bacteria, something from ProdBio maybe but I want to see how the Vodka does.

I’m open to any thoughts or ideas. I’m not giving up on the tank I’ve been in the hobby too long. But I’ve also come to the realization that many of my old tanks that were very successful where up for 2/4 years but I’d move or upgrade so this might the ‘oldest’ tank I’ve ever had.

 

[jimk60]

I just found this thread last night. I’m starting to wonder if I have this issue. My tank is right about 5 years old. My tank is a custom acrylic 140g and is bare bottom, SPS only, skimmer, refugium and a lot of rock. I started with dry rock but added a few pieces of established rock from my LFS. I dose ESV 2 Part and do monthly ICP tests and 1.5 gallon AWC every day. Here are my numbers -

ALK 7.8
Cal 450
Mag 1350
P - .05 - .08
N - 8.5

Over the last 6 months my coral growth has slowed down tremendously. I’ve had a few corals slowly just die off. What is even more odd to me is some corals still thrive and grow very quickly and I still have to trim them back. I do monthly ICP test and nothing ever comes up. For the most part the tank is stable. But it isn’t doing well.

I did trying dosing a bunch of KZ products for a few months but saw no change. I’ve only kept dosing FlatWorm stop and Coral Boster as I used to do during the first few years of my tank.

About a month ago I was doing some work on my tank and looked in my external overflow and I was shocked to see the amount of detritus in it. There must have been 2 inches of thick nasty gunk. When I took it out, at the bottom of the build up, it was almost like black tar and the smell was unreal. I thought to myself, how bad is it in my tank? So that was the next step.

I changed the flow in my tank by repositioning 3 of my 4 MP40’s. I took one and put it at the rear right bottom of my tank blowing under my rock . I had already had one at the left back but it wasn’t in a great spot so I moved it. When I turned all the pumps on what got kicked up was insane. My water turned gray and the smell again was bad. The detritus build up in the over flow and filter socks was crazy again.

I then started blowing my rock off with a small maxi jet every day. The next day once things settled I’d siphon it out from the bottom. Then I’d blow it off again and repeat. I’m now at a point where I blow off the rock about 3/4 times a week and what comes out is just a little ‘dust’ and things seem to be ‘cleaner’ now. I also cleaned my sump but there is still an acceptable level of detritus down there.

So the tank is ‘cleaner’ but my coral health has yet to really improve. I saw this video and it was interesting to me -


I wonder if my rock was so plugged up with detritus that all my good bacteria was suffering? Maybe Abe in the above video is feeding that with Carbon and is seeing a good results. I’ve started to dose a very small amounts of Vodka and I’m up to 2ml. It’s still early so no visible or measurable results as of yet. I’ve even thought about dosing bacteria, something from ProdBio maybe but I want to see how the Vodka does.

I’m open to any thoughts or ideas. I’m not giving up on the tank I’ve been in the hobby too long. But I’ve also come to the realization that many of my old tanks that were very successful where up for 2/4 years but I’d move or upgrade so this might the ‘oldest’ tank I’ve ever had.

 

[jimk60]

Check out subsea's thread titled Coral holibiont This is a current thread that discusses these issues

 

[brandon429]

I have never seen a standard bare bottom sps tank (which has good current by nature of being an sps tank) suffer from old tank syndrome because of rocks storing up detritus, those two conditions are opposite of 95% of reef tank in design and they don't store up detritus.


rule out OTS as a cause here. if you manage this bacterially expect to spend money on something nobody has good control over

to mitigate sps and lps coral issues my strong recommend is unfactor OTS and bacterial issues, factor in things like feeding quality, lighting control tuning (not chasing the highest par, everyone does that and it bleaches many setups that would otherwise do fine)

if a bare bottom, live rock only tank was absolutely full of algae to the point everything was plugged up in the rock crevices and couldn't express waste then yes removal + cleaning of the rocks so they can begin to express built-up detritus would be in order

but if you don't have algae blanketing the rock then OTS isn't the factor

post a tank pic

 

[blstravler]

I have never seen a standard bare bottom sps tank (which has good current by nature of being an sps tank) suffer from old tank syndrome because of rocks storing up detritus, those two conditions are opposite of 95% of reef tank in design and they don't store up detritus.


rule out OTS as a cause here. if you manage this bacterially expect to spend money on something nobody has good control over

to mitigate sps and lps coral issues my strong recommend is unfactor OTS and bacterial issues, factor in things like feeding quality, lighting control tuning (not chasing the highest par, everyone does that and it bleaches many setups that would otherwise do fine)

if a bare bottom, live rock only tank was absolutely full of algae to the point everything was plugged up in the rock crevices and couldn't express waste then yes removal + cleaning of the rocks so they can begin to express built-up detritus would be in order

but if you don't have algae blanketing the rock then OTS isn't the factor

post a tank pic

I’m not home but this video is from

September 2023


I haven’t changed anything in my tank, lights, etc. most people look at my tank and think nothing is wrong… but I know things aren’t growing like they should. Maybe my ALK is too low, who knows. Might now be an easy answer.

I’m cutting frags and they are growing but not like they should. It’s odd some things have lost PE while others look like this JF Frankie’s Gumdrop…

If you look in the above that is WWC Taste the Rainbow behind the it JF Frankie’s Gumdrop and it’s growing very slowly but has next to zero PE. It used to be a fuzzy bush.

 

[Paul B]

Any new articles written about it anyone can find?

Brandon, this isn't a new article, I wrote it in 2016. I was looking for it and couldn't find it on my computer, so I googled it and found it. Who knew?

Understanding Old Tank Syndrome | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

Old Tank Syndrome, or OTS, is something we have been hearing about since the hobby started, and I am not quite sure exactly what it means. Is it due to parameters, loss of diversity, lack of interest…

reefbuilders.com

 

[blstravler]

Check out subsea's thread titled Coral holibiont This is a current thread that discusses these issues

Thanks!! going to read this one later today.

 

[blstravler]

Brandon, this isn't a new article, I wrote it in 2016. I was looking for it and couldn't find it on my computer, so I googled it and found it. Who knew?

Understanding Old Tank Syndrome | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

Old Tank Syndrome, or OTS, is something we have been hearing about since the hobby started, and I am not quite sure exactly what it means. Is it due to parameters, loss of diversity, lack of interest…

reefbuilders.com

Thank you for posting, will read this one as well!

 

[brandon429]

I thought that was great, Paul's article, and the mention of clogged pores and the visual of the clogged pipe tied it all in

The sps tank shown doesn't have accumulation, so it's not an ots issue here.

At least it'll help to remove causes then what you're left with is a strong contender