Other than water changes, and not looking for a magic elixir, what are good practices to start reduce elevated nitrogen and increased organics. Then, how to maintain the right levels once one gets the increased/elevated levels down? I siphon out small amounts of cyano every other day but looking for advice before i get behind or it tips to an extreme outbreak. Trying to avoid chemiclean, because even if i use chemiclean, i still have elevated nitrogen and increased organics and it will come right back.
How did i get here, well I do not really know but there are some clues along the way that probably did not help. I had a couple events of an ATO siphoning into the sump, luckily it was a larger system (-600 gallons) and nothing ever died but some minor salinity swings of 35ppt to 32ppt. Shortly after that, my nitrates and PO4 were bottoming out (after i realized i had a bad test kit that was giving me extremely high P04-it was one of the Hanna tubes that was throwing it off). So a small bout with dino's, three bouts to be exact over about six weeks and increasing my nitrates so the good bacteria had a fighting chance. Well, dino's are gone and about three weeks later small batches of cyano are appearing. Not panicking, just trying to get everything stable and keep to the basics. As a sanity check, I sent out a Triton DOCs test and sure enough elevated nitrogen and increased organic carbon.
All the fish, snails, inverts are all good, no losses. Corals (mixed reef) are still growing and encrusting, I only lost one hammer about two months ago with a polyp bailout.
I run about 4x turnover though the sump, filter socks, GFO reactor with about a cup of GFO, calcium reactor and recently added a 5 micron and 1 micron canister filter to some leftover reactors i had laying around.
Salinity 35ppt
Temp 78-79
Alk 8.9 - 9.1
Cal 425
Mag 1350
PH 8.3 daily high, 8.05ish daily low at night, typically daily swings.
ICP test came back all good as well except a slight detection of lanthanum but not in the red zone (remember i had an erroneous reading of high phosphates because of bad test vile
, well i treated some very small amounts lanthanum over a few weeks until i figured out the bad test vile)
How did i get here, well I do not really know but there are some clues along the way that probably did not help. I had a couple events of an ATO siphoning into the sump, luckily it was a larger system (-600 gallons) and nothing ever died but some minor salinity swings of 35ppt to 32ppt. Shortly after that, my nitrates and PO4 were bottoming out (after i realized i had a bad test kit that was giving me extremely high P04-it was one of the Hanna tubes that was throwing it off). So a small bout with dino's, three bouts to be exact over about six weeks and increasing my nitrates so the good bacteria had a fighting chance. Well, dino's are gone and about three weeks later small batches of cyano are appearing. Not panicking, just trying to get everything stable and keep to the basics. As a sanity check, I sent out a Triton DOCs test and sure enough elevated nitrogen and increased organic carbon.
All the fish, snails, inverts are all good, no losses. Corals (mixed reef) are still growing and encrusting, I only lost one hammer about two months ago with a polyp bailout.
I run about 4x turnover though the sump, filter socks, GFO reactor with about a cup of GFO, calcium reactor and recently added a 5 micron and 1 micron canister filter to some leftover reactors i had laying around.
Salinity 35ppt
Temp 78-79
Alk 8.9 - 9.1
Cal 425
Mag 1350
PH 8.3 daily high, 8.05ish daily low at night, typically daily swings.
ICP test came back all good as well except a slight detection of lanthanum but not in the red zone (remember i had an erroneous reading of high phosphates because of bad test vile
, well i treated some very small amounts lanthanum over a few weeks until i figured out the bad test vile)
