Established 20G IM Drop Off NEEDS HELPFUL TIPS

[rweeks42]

Hi everyone, I have a 20 gallon Innovative Marine Panorama Drop Off Tank. The tank is coming up on 9 months of age and has had very minimal success. I have had survival with all fish, all types of soft coral, and some LPS corals (Small growth from softies and very little growth with LPS). No luck with SPS or non-hardy LPS like torches. I can't even get GSP to grow very fast. I will give the details of the tank and my husbandry habits below. ANY TIPS OR POINTERS WOULD BE MUCH APPRECIATED! This is my first tank and I could really use the help. Thanks y'all.

Tank: 20 Gallon IM Drop Off Panorama
Rock and Sand: Carib Sea Rock, 1 inch Aragonite Sand, Actual Volume of 16.5-17.5 gallons
Salt: Red Sea Coral Pro Salt
Equipment:
IM Protein Skimmer
Jebao OW Wave Maker (Usually on low flow settings)
BioPellet Reactor(1 month up)
Filter Socks with filter floss.

Lighting: Schedule is for 10.5 hrs a day
Kessil Tuna A80 over shallow end @ 70%
Kessil Tuna A160 on deep end @ 60%.

Inhabitants:
1 Snowflake Clownfish
1 Diamond Goby
1 Banggai Cardinal
CUC:
1 Peppermint Shrimp (Temporary to kill apastia)
3 Astria Snails
2 Turbo Snails
2 Nassarius Snails
Corals:
3 Zoanthids Frags- Okay growth
4 Favia Frags- 1 has strong growth
1 Pink Hammer- No growth but healthy (only 1 month in tank)
2 GSP Frags- Minimal GSP growth (I believe old emerald crab was eating it)
1 Green tip Australia Leather Coral- NEW
1 Birds Nest Frag- Just Died after week in tank
1 Pulsing Xenia- NEW

Feeding
Corals- 2 times a week with Reef-Roids at recommended amount
Fish- Mix of Pellets, Dried Mysis Shrimp, Frozen Brine, Frozen Mysis, Frozen Blood Worms.
(Routine up until March 1st)- Daily feedings of any of these options. I used to not let the pellets de-thaw completely and heavy pinch of pellets.
(Since March 1st)- Every other day feeding of these options. Completely let frozen cubes de-thaw and drain that water and light pinch of pellets.

Husbandry
2.5 Weekly Water Change
Clean All Equipment every 3 months
Empty Protein Skimmer every 3 days
Clean Glass Weekly
Change Filter Socks every 4 days

Parameters Average
Ammonia- 0
Nitrate- 10-15 (Tried large 5 gallon water changes back to back days, always back up in a few days)
Phosphate- .06-.1
Alkalinity DKH- 8.4-9.0 (Hand Dosing to keep at 8.8)
Calcium- 400-450
Magnesium- 1200-1350 (Slight Dosing to keep in range)
Salinity- 1.025
RO/DI Water TDS- 0ppm

More Details:
Algae has never been a bad issue. Diamond Goby keeps sand bed clean. Unfortunately have never had much Coralline Algae. Occasional Apasita outbreak. Magnesium and Alkalinity tend to drop more than calcium??

Some of my early mistakes include not rinsing out sand bed well, automatic feeder flooded tank with food while on vacation, early on would have powerhead on max power for most the day (way too much flow for softies and LPS). For 5 months I only had the Kessil A80 over entire tank which was not strong enough.


SORRY FOR SO MUCH INFO. ANY HELP WOULD BE AMAZING!!!

 

[Justfebreezeit]

One thing I would consider is to use the Red Sea Salt (Blue Bucket). It's closer to your target Alk and wont swing your params during a water change.

Another thing I might consider is to stop feeding Reef Roids. If you keep feeding it maybe consider doing it this way.
This should reduce leftovers that turn it nitrates and phosphates.

Do you have an ATO? I would probably consider that a must for a small tank like yours and sps. Its pretty hard to do it by hand and keep salinity stable.

Also do you have any powerheads to increase flow?

Picture of your tank?

 

[ccombs]

The Kessil 160 being on 60% seems like it might be high. I was actually researching this exact topic and if lighting conditions aren't right, corals will do better under lower than ideal light than higher than ideal light.

 

[Billldg]

First things first, don't let any problems get u down, we all, and I mean all have had problems at some point. So u aren't alone.

Now to any possible problems and solutions. A 9 month old tank isn't old at all, so that may be one reason why sps frags have issues. Sps frags dont like a dirty tank like lps and softys do, the nitrates really need to be around 5 ppm and phosphates need to be around .03 ppm. That's not to say sps can't survive in a little dirtier tank, but less likely. I previously had issues with dinos because my nitrates and phosphates were steadily at 0 ppm. I also had issues with sps melting down and browning out. I also had a maxspect razor 200 watt fixture, plenty enough for lps, but I would find out later that is wasnt enough for sps, will explain later. So since the rebuild I concentrated on keeping my nitrates and phosphate elevated to combat dinos, I also changed my light to a t5/led fixture with enough power to raise my par levels to above 600 if needed. So after roughly 2 months I added some montis frags just to see what would happen, and wouldn't u know my they look far better than any sps frags previously. I also recently took some par reading and that's when I found that this light setup provided what I needed for sps, more light. With this setup I had it turned down thinking I had higher par readings, after I took reading I found out that, in fact, I had to raise the levels even higher to get what sps needed hince the maxspect by itself wasn't enough. Sorry for the long explanation, but hopefully yo uh can find some solutions in this. We will help you be successful.

I forgot to add that I increased my flow rate of my power heads for a 50 percent turnover.

 

[rweeks42]

Forgot to put my ATO system on the forum. But yes I have an ATO system that keeps the salinity steady. Thanks for the video link, I do try and target feed but I still have much of the reef roids floating away. I will start to make it thicker. I have the one power head but I leave it pretty low on flow. The challenging part with this tank shape is consistent flow. Right now I have tried to place the pulsing xenia's in any spot possible but they get blown around like crazy.

Here is an old picture when I only had the Kessil A160 running.