hello.. 27 gallon cube

dieselwagon · Feb 3, 2016

well.. new to the site. newish to saltwater. about 7 months with my current tank. I've done freshwater for many years and have decided to attempt to start a reef tank. Got a Marineland 160 canister filter, aqualife 115 skimmer, small powerhead. and a crappy t8 10k light bulb. I will be buying a ai prime, once I save a little money up. Had one of the worst algae outbreaks because person watching the tank left the light on 24/7 for 2 weeks. any pointers or help is welcome. I've read and done most of the things for algae removal, less light, skimmer,

microbacter 7, and manual removal.

bairdimusprime · Feb 3, 2016

welcome!~ nice tank!!
but a nice clean up crew and that algae will be gone in no time, as well nutrient control.

i always say a few hermit crabs (blue legged and red legged) cant go wrong and for my algae control i have a tuxedo urchin
best of luck

Salt Creep · Feb 3, 2016

light feedings, less light, siphon sandbed... speaking of that, crushed coral is too coarse for my liking. It is way too easy for waste to get stuck down beneath the substrate and never get eaten. I would switch that out for a special grade aragonite. A clean-up crew CAN help a little, but getting to the root of the problem is more important IMO. The clean-up crew's job should just be to eat any food the fish/coral didn't catch before it rots away. Do you use RO/DI and if so, when was the last time you changed your media? If not that is the first change I would make, then a skimmer (or aggressive, regular cleaning to remove waste asap).

dieselwagon · Feb 3, 2016

just got a cleanup crew yesterday. 3 snails, 6 hermit crabs, 2 green crabs. and the lawnmower blenny but he has been in there a while. I do filter changes every 2 weeks. and 25% water changes weekly with rodi water . I've been researching phosphate removers, but not sure about adding too many chemicals to the tank. I honestly think my problem is lighting t8 10k bulb. reduced feeding to once a day as well.

steelheader.262 · Feb 3, 2016

Welcome to R2R!!!

Bunnee911 · Feb 3, 2016

You are probably going to want to loose the canister filter in the long run. For now, you want to service it weekly.

Bunnee911 · Feb 11, 2016

How is your cuc doing?

Hawain_Rob · Feb 11, 2016

Salt Creep said:
light feedings, less light, siphon sandbed... speaking of that, crushed coral is too coarse for my liking. It is way too easy for waste to get stuck down beneath the substrate and never get eaten. I would switch that out for a special grade aragonite. A clean-up crew CAN help a little, but getting to the root of the problem is more important IMO. The clean-up crew's job should just be to eat any food the fish/coral didn't catch before it rots away. Do you use RO/DI and if so, when was the last time you changed your media? If not that is the first change I would make, then a skimmer (or aggressive, regular cleaning to remove waste asap).

What kind of sand did you use?

dieselwagon · Feb 11, 2016

@Bunnee911 going better thankfully. starting to get a reduction in GHA. Took some water to the LFS to make sure my test were correct. salt 1.026 nitrate at 0. phos. near 0. ph 8.1 cal 390. alk 12. Been slowly raising PH. 8.3 this morning. GHA is starting to turn white and been picking the dead stuff out. modified my 115 nano skimmer. Got it to finally run correctly.

dieselwagon · Feb 11, 2016

@Hawain_Rob I have a thin bed of crushed coral. siphoned out during water changes.

Hawain_Rob · Feb 11, 2016

dieselwagon said:
@Bunnee911 going better thankfully. starting to get a reduction in GHA. Took some water to the LFS to make sure my test were correct. salt 1.026 nitrate at 0. phos. near 0. ph 8.1 cal 390. alk 12. Been slowly raising PH. 8.3 this morning. GHA is starting to turn white and been picking the dead stuff out. modified my 115 nano skimmer. Got it to finally run correctly.

What did you do to it? I had one of those and I dispise it..lol

dieselwagon · Feb 11, 2016

@Hawain_Rob drilled out the old air vent, ran tubing thru it to the base. then added an air valve. it works pretty good for the size. cant really complain. it works, just seems to run really wet all the time. but it works and its helping my algae problem so im happy.

dieselwagon · Feb 13, 2016

algae update. cleaned the last big rock. only a little left on the substrate and ill be happy once this is finished. the skimmer and seachem phosguard and all the other little adjustments really did the trick.

Bunnee911 · Feb 14, 2016

Are you dosing anything? I was looking at your numbers.

dieselwagon · Feb 14, 2016

@Bunnee911 I am now. dosing calcium and seachem 8.3 buffer. I buy salt water from lfs. said they use instant ocean and they recommended adding them.

Bunnee911 · Feb 15, 2016

Tell me again how often you wc please.

dieselwagon · Feb 15, 2016

@Bunnee911 Change water (5 gallon) once a week. also change out filter pads during that time.

Bunnee911 · Feb 16, 2016

I use IO myself and haven't had to dose anything until recently. My tank is 6 months old. I just started to top off with kalkwasser.

dieselwagon · Feb 16, 2016

@Bunnee911 im thinking with that huge algae outbreak caused a lot of swings in my parameters. everything has seemed to stabilized after the algae removal. im thinking they might have had a problem with their salt (mixer/ro) because he had the same trouble as me. might have to start making my own.