Finally Reaching Out For?

[Halal Hotdog]

I was thinking about throwing some more phosphate in even if just to help the chaeto a bit more. I dosed a bit of iron to help with that as well. My thinking was a such: worst case scenario, I fascilitate an algae outbreak, that algae consumes a lot of nutrients, I pluck it, vacuum it, etc and then I'm manually exporting it. When the nitrates dip, I use GFO to lower the phosphates back down. Obviously that a nuclear option but.....

May not be a bad idea. Also with carbon dosing, as you probably know, a lot of times it goes through a plateau phase then all of a sudden, BAM, nitrates drop like a sinking ship. If you just upped the dose then it may take a little bit of time.

 

[CNDReef]

According to the experts , the sand really doesn’t have a lot of biological bacteria on it. Our rock is the main source of biological filtration, hence the bare bottom tanks with no issues.

 

[Luno]

I wouldn't worry about the sand causing an ammonia spike too much although I know very little about the modern "live sand" sold in a sealed bag. So I don't know if the die off of life inside the bag being old may be an issue. Again no idea about live sand sold as live sand.


I would buy a bunch of strombus snails first before emptying the sand bed. Something that will naturally sift through the sand. Also apologies my notifications are not currently working. So I didn't see you respond to my post.

Honestly and like I said in my first post, if I was you and because you do sound like you have a pretty firm grip on reefing. I would literally just start the new tank now. Cycle it with new sand, new rock. And make sure you've got a good sand sifting crew. Make sure you have really good flow
Around rock structures and hopefully it doesn't happen again and chalk it upto reefing is a heck of a hobby why this tank isn't responding.

 

[Comic_Reef]

So I had about 3/4 a bag of expired live sand in a bucket in my closet. Decided this morning to throw that in a bucket of RO water, figured I'd let it soak for 24-hours or so and see if it is leeching any significant amount of ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, etc. If it seems clean, I may use it to replace the same amount of old sand in my tank.

I will be using tonight and tomorrow to tear all the rocks out of the tank and give them a good rinse in old saltwater.

I would love to start up the new tank right away, however due to the cost of adding a sump and all the sump related equipment, a new skimmer, new lights, etx, I will not have the ability to get that tank up and running right away. It probably seems like a waste to go through all this trouble when a new tank is down the road, however I would like to figure this out so as to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

 

[Comic_Reef]

So rinsing the rocks may have been the solution. Took each out of the tank and shook it, blasted it and shook it again to see if any were being detritus traps. Two in particular seemed to be large traps.

Between 5 rocks, i shook out a ton of detritus. The two biggest culprits aren't going back in the tank. Between carbon dosing, 4 other large rocks and a small bioload, I think I should be okay with less rock.

Not sure if this was the cause of the nitrates, I'll find that out with further testing tomorrow and Sunday. Tank got a ~60% water change in the process

 

[pdisner]

Do you trust the Hannah instruments? I’ve had some problems with the reagents lately and have been trying to get them to supply me with some more reagents. They are obviously something wrong with it unless it’s normal to have turbidity after adding the last reagent. Have any of you guys had any issues similar to this.? I am thinking of selling mine, all of my due to the high cost of the reagents, the amount they give you with each order. I just don’t think they are worth all that they are cracked up to be. I hope that helps, that’s my anecdotal observation. I have not done more than a weeks worth of checking with my API caskets. API is the most economical and should be sufficient for a pretty wide range ofWhat we do keeping small reef aquariums. I concur with a lot of people taking care of 50 gallons or smaller by I feel that they do not have adequate proteins gaming if at all. You must do 10% water change his weekly which should be nothing to keep on top of otherwise you were going to have high nitrates phosphates and all the rest of the guck that comes with it such as decaying organics!!! You can order or get s bunch of Rotifers, Copepods as well as amphipods that will crawl all over your system, believe it or not, to take care of those extra nutrients. They’res a ton of booms out there that make me look good. I’ll share excerpts depending on who’d like. I can share in pdf format if you give me you FB address in your PM request. Lemme know. I believe that the PDF should be all over THIS THREAD! Just gimme props for finding.

 

[pdisner]

Hello everyone,

So after 6 months of thinking I could handle it myself and tearing out my hair, I am finally reaching out for help and/or ideas.

I have been dealing with obnoxiously high nitrates since November. The problem started when I had a skimmer outage for about a week due to a broken impeller. Since then I have tried everything I can think of to get the nitrates under control to no avail. Prior to the outage I maintained 2-5ppm nitrates for nearly 2 years. Since the spike, consistently sitting at 50-100+.I have lost all my SPS corals while LPS and softies appear fine. No visible algae growth except one small spot of Cyano on the sandbed.

Parameters as of tonight :

Tank: 29g Biocube
Lighting: RapidLED Biocube Kit
Skimmer: Eshopps PSK-75H (pulling plenty of skimmate)
Powerhead: MP10

Salinity : 1.026
Phosphate: .024ppm - Hannah
Calcium: 450ppm - Salifert
Alkalinity: 12dkh - Hannah
Magnesium: 1380ppm - Salifert
Temperature: 79F (stable)
Ammonia: 0ppm - API
Nitrite: 0ppm - API
Nitrate: 100+ppm - Salifert

Things I've tried:
- Different test kits
- Dosing Phosphates (was testing at 0.00 using Hannah Phosphorus ULR prior to dosing)
- Continuous Large Water Changes (50% per week)
- Upping Vinegar Dosing gradually to 1ml/gal a day (bacteria everywhere, little to no change)
- Siphoning Sandbed
- Changing aqua scape to facilitate flow.
- Different filter medias (floss, carbon, chemipure elite, purigen)
- Adding more powerheads (no visible dead zones)
- Chaeto reactor (saw a big dip temporarily, still using)

Livestock:
1 Oscellaris Clown
2 Blue Chromis
1 Tuxedo Urchin
Cleanup Crew (snails and 2 scarlet hermits)

Any help is hugely appreciated. Thank you.

Looks like a good start. Here’s a book to get you a little more organized, with the information accurate until the early millennium.

 

[pdisner]

Hello everyone,

So after 6 months of thinking I could handle it myself and tearing out my hair, I am finally reaching out for help and/or ideas.

I have been dealing with obnoxiously high nitrates since November. The problem started when I had a skimmer outage for about a week due to a broken impeller. Since then I have tried everything I can think of to get the nitrates under control to no avail. Prior to the outage I maintained 2-5ppm nitrates for nearly 2 years. Since the spike, consistently sitting at 50-100+.I have lost all my SPS corals while LPS and softies appear fine. No visible algae growth except one small spot of Cyano on the sandbed.

Parameters as of tonight :

Tank: 29g Biocube
Lighting: RapidLED Biocube Kit
Skimmer: Eshopps PSK-75H (pulling plenty of skimmate)
Powerhead: MP10

Salinity : 1.026
Phosphate: .024ppm - Hannah
Calcium: 450ppm - Salifert
Alkalinity: 12dkh - Hannah
Magnesium: 1380ppm - Salifert
Temperature: 79F (stable)
Ammonia: 0ppm - API
Nitrite: 0ppm - API
Nitrate: 100+ppm - Salifert

Things I've tried:
- Different test kits
- Dosing Phosphates (was testing at 0.00 using Hannah Phosphorus ULR prior to dosing)
- Continuous Large Water Changes (50% per week)
- Upping Vinegar Dosing gradually to 1ml/gal a day (bacteria everywhere, little to no change)
- Siphoning Sandbed
- Changing aqua scape to facilitate flow.
- Different filter medias (floss, carbon, chemipure elite, purigen)
- Adding more powerheads (no visible dead zones)
- Chaeto reactor (saw a big dip temporarily, still using)

Livestock:
1 Oscellaris Clown
2 Blue Chromis
1 Tuxedo Urchin
Cleanup Crew (snails and 2 scarlet hermits)

Any help is hugely appreciated. Thank you.

What....no clown or any pair. What did u want me to look at?

 

[Comic_Reef]

A week later and 4 50%+ water changes later and I still testing over 100. Chaeto has ceased to grow, tank looks clean and sand has been thoroughly vacuumed, and stirred. I'm at the point of giving up on this tank. More corals are beginning to regress.

 

[CNDReef]

If your cheato is dying, pull it out. It’s probably the cause of the nutrients

 

[Fudsey]

Agreed

 

[tiggs]

Did you start out with dry or live rock? There have been instances of dry rock leaching months/years after introduction and causing such spikes. If you're doing 50% water changes with 0 nitrate water and not overfeeding and it's climbing back up that quickly (especially with a light bio load), something is leaching.

Another thing to consider is adding some additional bacteria to help break down the nitrates. Since you're already dosing carbon, that should help push things forward a bit sooner since they'll have a plentiful food source. Personally, I probably wouldn't rip out the substrate right now. While it's true it's not anywhere near the biological filtration rock is, it's definitely part of it and I wouldn't want to mess with my biological filter if it's already not keeping up right now. It's certainly possible the sand could be leaching, but that just seems wayyyy too high and too quick of a spike for a lightly stocked tank.

 

[Comic_Reef]

All chaeto has been pulled. It wasn't dying (holding its green color) but was not showing any signs of growth. I dosed a bit of iron and raised my phosphates just a tick to see if it would help but saw no improvement over last week. I started with live rock and have been dosing Microbacter7 to assist with carbon dosing. Believe me, there is no lack of bacteria in this tank. There were strands of bacteria everywhere before I cleaned everything.

Since I had it, I replaced the chaeto in the reactor with some plastic mesh. Having seen people have success running Algae Scrubbers, I decided to kind of rig up an up flow version of it using my media reactor. Essentially I just roughed up some plastic mesh and put it inside of the reactor. I then placed two air stones near the intake of the pump feeding the reactor. The result is a media reactor constantly pushing air through it with the bubbles quickly rising over the mesh. Figured there was nothing to lose in this situation since I'm essentially grasping for straws. I will be leaving the lights on this 24/7 until I see some meaningful growth. I'll keep you all updated on that. I don't know that I've seen someone try to run something like this before while making sure to include air.

 

[Luno]

Did you start out with dry or live rock? There have been instances of dry rock leaching months/years after introduction and causing such spikes. If you're doing 50% water changes with 0 nitrate water and not overfeeding and it's climbing back up that quickly (especially with a light bio load), something is leaching.

Another thing to consider is adding some additional bacteria to help break down the nitrates. Since you're already dosing carbon, that should help push things forward a bit sooner since they'll have a plentiful food source. Personally, I probably wouldn't rip out the substrate right now. While it's true it's not anywhere near the biological filtration rock is, it's definitely part of it and I wouldn't want to mess with my biological filter if it's already not keeping up right now. It's certainly possible the sand could be leaching, but that just seems wayyyy too high and too quick of a spike for a lightly stocked tank.

Rock does not bind/hold nitrate. The only time it would come close to holding nitrate is the live material on the rock such as detritus.

 

[Luno]

A week later and 4 50%+ water changes later and I still testing over 100. Chaeto has ceased to grow, tank looks clean and sand has been thoroughly vacuumed, and stirred. I'm at the point of giving up on this tank. More corals are beginning to regress.

I'm determined to help you figure this out. It's starting to bug me big time too!

Out of the box thinking but how's your surface skimming to the overflow? Is it a thin layer going over? Wild shot in the dark but being about to extract from the water column is important to have good surface skimming. The other question in relation to this is gas exchange, how's your surface water movement?

 

[Comic_Reef]

I can take some photos later when I get home. But surface skimming is solid. Water goes into the overflow and then down into an InTank media basket. All I have in the basket now if filter floss since the Purigen and ChemiPure Elite were just becoming covered in bacteria and were removed when I started this post. Surface water movement is good as well. My MP10 causes quite a bit of surface movement. All pH tests put me in the acceptable range.

 

[Luno]

That level doesn't come from no where especially with that amount of water changes.

So gas exchange is good, and your overflow has a nice thin layer flowing over.

You've removed some of your sand yeah? And replaced it and how much crap was in the sand? You pulled the rock out and cleaned it, how did you clean it? Could you have caused die off from that?

Did we talk about refugium light? And refugium flow? Was the chaeto getting movement to it?

 

[Comic_Reef]

I didnt remove any of the sand. The sand that I had in the bag was leaching a ton of phosphates so I opted not to use it yet, its currently soaking in a bucket. There was a lot of crap in the sand and on the rocks. There shouldnt have been much die off from the rocks as i kept them submerged during cleaning which involved blasting them with a powerhead and wiping them down with a wet rag, no hardcore scrubbing as i didnt want to cause that kind of die off. I am not running a refugium/sump on this unit, I was running an algae reactor with anything from 150-250gph flow going through it. I tinkered with higher and lower flow but didnt see much improvement.

 

[Comic_Reef]

So in my last testing, my nitrates were at or above 100 and phosphates at .086. Just spit balling (and I know that .08 isn't necessarily low) but would it benefit me to raise the phosphates up a bit?? The "ideal" redfield ratio says 16:1 however sitting at my current levels, I am at nearly 1250:1 if my math is right (probably very wrong). My only worry is the possible harmful effects this would have on my remaining corals and fish.

It might be a crazy idea but tossing out a hail mary at this point.

 

[gcarroll]

I have to ask. Is your tank having any problems besides high nitrates? Is that high nitrate issue causing other issues?