Help with nutrients

[Pondweed]

So I've got this weird problem, probably a fair few people can relate.

At the moment my tank is 3x1.5x1.5 and it only has 2 fish, small clown and a wrasse

I've got algae / nutrient problems I usually feed 2x per day but cutting back to 1 because of this

Current filtration
Coralbox D500 Skimmer
5ltrs of siporax along with 4kg of live rock

I'm dosing vinegar and lanth at the moment to keep everything down but I'm still getting the algae
Nitrate is at 3ppm from the Nyos test
Phos 0.016 on the hanna low range checker

I can work out where it's coming from the bio load is pretty tiny and feeding for 2 fish shouldnt be causing this

someone help

 

[Braves Fan]

I am no Pro ,,, but I am guessing the problem is the vinegar ,, you have to be skimming wet if your dosing vinegar

I was pretty much going down the same road your are in my 155g tank,,, Phosphates I could control with GFO ,, Nitrates stayed in the 25 range ,, I tend to over feed my fish & corals I cut back the amount I was feeding the fish & corals ,, did a 16g water change each week cleaned my sand bed 3 times ,, was dosing 5 to 10 ml of vinegar ,, skimmed wet as best I could ,, I had Chaeto growing in a tray in the sump tank ,, was dosing a Iron supplement to help with the Chaeto growth ,, I had nitrates down into the 5 range ,,, then I would feed my corals,, Nitrates would go back up,,,, Point is ,, when I was dosing the vinegar ,, algae ,, I am guessing a dark hair algae ,, popped up in the tank

Over a two month period ,, I put a Bio Pellet reactor online ,, adding Bio Pellets slowly 1/2 cup every week or so ,, I now have 2 3/4 cup in the reactor ,,about a month into the Bio Pellets ,, I stopped dosing the vinegar ,, I also added a Chaeto reactor ,, best money ,,, next to the auto top off I have ever spent on my tank

The algae that was growing in the tank,, is all but gone ,, pretty sure it was the vinegar ,, kinda over night ,, when the Bio Pellets kicked in ,, Nitrates went into the 5 range ,, phosphates are reading 0 ,, I am sure they are there though ,, one test I will get a phosphate test at 2 ,, next one will be 0 ,, I haven't ran my GFO reactor .. going on 3 weeks now

Here is the thing ,,, I am feeding my LPS corals Fauna Marin pellets once every 1 to 2 weeks ,, I am feeding my fish 1/2 again as much per feeding as I was before ,,, no vinegar dosing ,,, no algae ,,, fish & corals are fat and happy ,,, life is good

 

[scottrotton]

How old is your tank, what are you feeding + how much?

How long the tank has been established has a major impact on how bio diverse it is, i find new tanks cant cope with much bio load at all.

Check the back of the food and post on here would give you an idea of exactly how much you putting in the tank. Frozen foods are usually better then died as there less nutrient dense.

I only feed once a day, just before the lights go out. I use either 0.5-1 cube depending on what i feed, i have a 300L and 7 fish.

 

[Pondweed]

I feed the Hikari pellets once a day at the moment, maybe 10ish pellets?

Tank is about 5 years old so I'd say pretty well established, just had it without fish for 10weeks from an Ick outbreak though so maybe that's cause something, but that was over 4 months ago now as well.

@Braves Fan I've been skimming fairly wet as well, all my readings are pretty low just the algae that still growing so obviously it's absorbing some. I might try reducing my light cycle a bit further to see if that helps.

I've also just last night put a fuge light on down in one of the compartments in the sump so will see how that goes even if it grows green hair algae I don't mind I can just move my return over the the next chamber over and clear out that whole compartment, so see how that goes I guess

 

[scottrotton]

If you have a fuge light, always a good idea to check the correct spectrum, im running at 5000k and after an initial algae outbreak in my fuge, i added additional chaeto and thin it out so light has more surface contact area it seems to be working much better, ive had no algae growing in my main display because of it. Algae in the sump is reducing and cheato is expanding

 

[Pondweed]

Yep it's just a new addition as of last night so will see how it goes, its one of the LED grow lights from ebay. Red/ Blue LEDs a lot of people seem to use them here in Aus for the fuge

I'm just trying to figure out where all the nutrients are coming from really I see some people with crazy good tanks and they show their sump and it's literally just a skimmer and I'm sitting here like HOW?

 

[scottrotton]

I had blurple one but didnt work for me, think my display lighting is too high, i run at 300par and sump was only 90, i had to go 3 x vero 29 COB 5000k 50v with meanwell dim-able driver, important to get dim-able otherwise it will fry algae within a day. im slowly trying to max the chaeto will allow.

alot of people use water changes, carbon dosing. im going carbon on my nano as i dont have room for all the equipment but the problem with carbon is i find it hard to get any reading of nitrate and phos which has its own issues.

I bleached all my corals doing that but will try it again on my new nano as its only frags and not mother colonies

 

[Pondweed]

Yea I've been carbon dosing and it seems to keep things down but still have algae. If the new fuge light doesnt help out I'll up my dose on that see how we go there, just want to free up some does pumps for when I start adding more corals

 

[scottrotton]

I find the problem with most export methods is its easy to export nitrate, but phosphates dont reduce for carbon or chaeto alone, i run GFO to combat this, chaeto reduce nitrates to less than 5ppm. i run 75g of GFO in reactor to bring my phos to 5ppb, if it goes lower i take the reactor offline

 

[Peng]

3ppm NO3 and 0.016 PO4 doesn't sound like you've got a nutrient problem. Do you have cleaner snails? What type of algae do you have?

To be honest I only have a skimmer and a small mesh bag of carbon for nutrient exportation and it's pretty sufficient for my tank. 0.016 PO4 is pretty good. 3ppm NO3 is in the normal range too.

It's definitely quite confusing to me that your nutients aren't depleted at this point considering how small of a bioload you have plus you are dosing bacterial food. Are you using deep sandbed? If your bioload is small is it really necessary to dose vinegar? Many tanks with 5+ ppm NO3 don't seem to have any algae problem.

 

[Pondweed]

I had a weird wipe out of all my snails a little while ago so need to pick up more, have plenty of hermits and bristle worms though. I always read if you get algae growth that your readings are usually a lie as the algae is absorbing the phos/ nitrates.

Yep I know that chaeto and fuge gets rid of nitrate faster so I'll keep my lanth based phos remover handy to counteract that I think, hopefully at a much reduced dose

 

[Peng]

What's causing your snails to die? A type of dino is famous for being snail killer. Also, if there was a big dying event recently and then algae boom followed afterwards, I would let the algae run its course without trying to curb it. Once they run out of sources they'll go away. But that's assumed you have green hair algae or similar ones not dino.

 

[Pondweed]

Don't think it's dino's, doesn't seem to trap or create its own air bubbles, think it's just normal hair algae. Wasnt a huge die off previously I only had 5 pretty decent sized turbos but they died fairly slowly. Maybe a month or 2 ago I added 5 baby turbos like real tiny and they all died within a few days.

Is there any other way to tell if its dinos or just hair algae? got me scared now

 

[Jeff Hall]

Is this a newer tank? I will assume it is and would reccomend stopping the dosing of lanthium chloride and vinegar. The new rock could very well be the problem if it wasn't cured propperly. If this is the case, I would do very little. The algae will eventually burn itself out and the rocks will cure in the tank. Just do occassional water changes.

 

[Pondweed]

Hey Jeff - as above tank is over 5 years old probably closer to 8 years or so now. When I first got it I was pretty bad at maintaining and had no sump on the original set up so rocks could have build up a lot of bound phosphate, this should all be sorted now.

Am testing out the fuge light as a fix and going to pick up more cuc on the weekend see how that goes