I need a paradigm shift in aquarium management - help please!

[justonwo]

I posted on 3reef as well, where I know many people. Hoping to get some feedback from this considerably larger audience. I apologize if it's redundant for some of you.

As many here will know, I'm relatively knew to the hobby. I inherited a 90 gallon tank in June, fully stocked, and have been making my own marks on the tank with the addition of a few fish, removal of a few, and some new acros and acans. The previous owner of the tank was very hand's off. No additives of any kind. He never monitored pH, alkalinity, calcium, etc. I mean NEVER. Just faithfully changed the water every week (with tap water, no less), fed pelletized food, and fed the acans and scolymia maybe once per month. Most of the fish, coral, anemones, shrimp, etc seemed to do ok.

When I adopted this approach after moving the tank, things started to go south, so I spent quite a bit of time getting my water parameters where they need to be. I've invested in an RODI system and high quality chemistry monitors and now have salinity, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, etc right where I want them.

I wanted to take a comprehensive and well explained approach to tank management and basically bought into Red Sea's entire program because it was at least fairly prescriptive. I started with NO3PO4-x and got my nitrates down from 40+ ppm to 1 ppm or less at times. The trouble is that when nitrate gets that low, the corals can starve so, according to the program, I need to add Coral Energy A and B every day (coral food), which also requires that I turn off my skimmer for 30 minutes.

I've noticed that when I'm dosing at levels high enough to get the nitrate down to below 1 ppm, things start to go south. Corals bleach, shrimp disappear. It seems like everything is starving. Some corals even RTNed/STNed. So I back off on the NO3PO4-x and keep nitrates at 2 ppm or so, which phosphate around 0.16 ppm. I dipped below 1 ppm NO3 for the second time this past week, and one of my acros immediately STNed. Very frustrating. That acro had been doing SO well and was in such beautiful shape! Argh.

Now that I'm adding tons of soluble nutrients to the water every day to make up for the depletion from the NO3PO4-x, I've gotten a ridiculous infestation of vermetid snails EVERYWHERE. Little ones are encrusting all over anything and everything. If one tiny part of a coral gets unhealthy, there are 5 or 6 vermetid jerks just waiting to encrust.

The bummer of all this, beyond the fact that I'm creating more problems than I think I may be solving, is that I'm having to add so many additives to the tank. It's expensive, and if I wanted to automate it would be insane. I'd have to have a program that would deal with 1) NO3PO4-x dosing, 2) Reef Energy A dosing, 3) Reef Energy B dosing, 4) alkalinity dosing, and 5) calcium dosing. Not to mention, I need the ability to top off my water and turn the skimmer on and off. That would cost a FORTUNE to automate. And I don't feel like it's so effective that it's even worth the investment.

I need a simpler approach to tank management than this. I don't think the Red Sea approach is going to work for me. It's simply too complicated and it seems to create some problems. I would prefer to have to dose nothing more than alk/calcium every day. How can I get my nitrates and phosphates to the right levels (I am told that some nitrate and phosphate is good, 1-2 ppm nitrate and 0.1 ppm phosphate) without having to back fill a bunch of nutrients that just cause blooms of anything and everything in my tank. I don't feel like I should have to supplement nutrients for my acropora every day, since I know there are many people that never really feed them. Help me find a simpler approach that can help minimize unwanted side effects (like explosive growth of vermetid snails), keep my chemistry where it needs to be, and keep my acros happy and healthy.

I'm happy to add some hardware if needed. I have a sump with a skimmer and UV sterilizer. I know there has to be a simpler way. Show me gurus!

 

[Wiz]

Well, as far as nitrate and phos. I use a large refugium. I can keep both undetectable by common test kits this way. You could use a gfo reactor for phos which is also affective. Carbon dosing is affective as well. I used vodka for a short while and it worked well in a pinch. But that is also an everyday thing. Lowering feeding is usually affective against both nitrate and phos.
My setup is far from perfect. But low to no phos and nitrate. And good coral health on all kinds of coral sps, lps, nps, and softies. I use a skimmer, small carbon bag and a large fuge with macros. Only add calc, alk, and ocasionally iron and iodine. No water changes in over a year. But I do use tank water to hatch brine and add about a cup of salt a month to compensate for loss in the top off.

 

[Wiz]

I do have those darn vermatids as well though. If you find a cure for those let me know.;-)

 

[IndoReefer]

I would suggest stop all additives/dosing and 2 to 3 large water changes over the next 2 to 3 weeks, approximately 50% with a quality salt mix with RODI at 0 TDS, let your levels stabilize and then start testing every few days and then dose as/if needed. Good luck!

 

[wpeterson]

I would work the fundamentals in your tank from the bottom up:

1. Stable Temperature
2. Stable Salinity (ATO, calibrated water changes)
3. Stable Alk / Calc / Mg levels and pH (manual dosing, dosing pumps, calcium reactor)
4. Nutrient Export to match your feeding (Skimmer, media reactors, water changes)

Are you able to maintain a stable salinity with an automatic top-off system? If not, that's the best thing you can do for your corals and invertebrates. Once your salinity is stable, look at your levels for the essentials and consider how to dose to keep them stable. For an LPS or soft coral tank you can do this manually, but it may be worth thinking about a dosing pump or calcium reactor.

Once your levels are stable and match the needs of your tank, figure out your nutrient export - how are you going to get all of the nitrate/phosphate caused by feeding out of your tank? Protein skimming is a great start. You may want to consider running GFO in a media reactor to export phosphate. Perhaps you're happy to do good sized water changes every week. There's a lot of tools to use here and you can strike a balance that matches your reefing style.

I would be careful with carbon dosing via the NO3PO4-x product, it can be successful but may be hard to maintain. Other folks with more carbon dosing experience can evaluate that.

 

[justonwo]

Wpeterson, thanks for the tips. My levels are actually all very stable and right where they should be, with the exception of phosphate. I can maintain them all pretty well manually. I can't get the phosphate down any further without higher doses of NOPOX, which has already proven to cause all sorts of other problems.

I have a protein skimmer in place and do regular weekly water changes. I believe I am going to stop with NOPOx and install a GFO and chaeto system.

As for the suggestion to stop all dosing and perform massive water changes, I'm not sure I understand the goal? My alkalinity and calcium are exactly where I want them, as are all other parameters (other than phosphate). If I stop NOPOx, it will be consumed quickly, as will the coral food. No need for massive water changes as far as I can tell. And I'm using 0 TDS water.

For reference, here are my parameters:

Temp 79
Alk 8.1
Ca 435
Mg 1350
pH 8.3
Nitrate 1-2 ppm
Phosphate 0.1-0.16

 

[wpeterson]

Wpeterson, thanks for the tips. My levels are actually all very stable and right where they should be, with the exception of phosphate. I can maintain them all pretty well manually. I can't get the phosphate down any further without higher doses of NOPOX, which has already proven to cause all sorts of other problems.

That's good to hear. I believe you will have good luck with a GFO reactor sized to your tank. 0.10-0.16 is high, but definitely manageable with more export via a phosphate reactor. I've had pretty good luck with cheapo TLF reactors on the low end. Folks seem to like the BulkReefSupply media reactors. On the high end, the vertex and reef octopus reactors are nice but expensive. All of these will do well with GFO or other phosphate media to bind the phosphate.

I don't know what your goals are for your tank, but anything from 0.03-0.09 should put you in a good place for a mixed reef - which should not be hard to obtain with GFO in a media reactor. Start with a small amount and work your way up slowly so you don't shock the system by going to 0.0 ppm too quickly.

It sounds like your tank is otherwise stable and doing well and now you can zero in on the final nutrient export for long term stability.

 

[justonwo]

Thanks very much for the feedback. I've order a reactor for GFO, as well as a dosing pump system for bicarbonate/Ca2+ and an ATO. I'm going to try some chaeto in my sump for nitrate control. This sounds like a much more manageable and sensible approach. Whether or not the Red Sea program works (I've had some real problems while using it), it is labor intensive and quite expensive. I think having all the extra nutrients around from the Reef Energy dosing seems like a likely cause for my vermetid explosion. Man I hate those things.