Newbie question about polishing pads

Aymazing · Jul 29, 2013

I am brand new to marine aquariums, but my husband had one in the past. We have a Red Sea Max250 (65 gallons) that is live rock and fish only, up and running for about 3 months now. We had live rock only for a month, and have slowly been adding livestock. Currently, we have two firefish, two Clark's clowns, two cardinals, one large and one small Condy anemone, one emerald crab, two hermit crabs (one larges and one small), red fire shrimp, and about 6 snails of varying sizes.

In addition to mechanical filter, carbon, bio filter, and protein skimmer, we have polishing pads as the last step in filtration. My problem is that I'm having to change the pads out daily as they keep collecting brownish-green gunk. However, the tank itself looks good. Levels are all listed below, and I'm doing water exchanges (5 gallons at a time) twice a week. I'm emptying the protein skimmer daily and washing it out weekly, along with cleaning the mechanical filter. Carbon was just changed in last two weeks, and bio filter was cleaned in last week.

Everything I read make it sound like I'm changing the polishing pads too frequently, but leaving them in messes with my water flow. I have some diatoms and dusty green algae n the glass, but nothing unmanageable. All livestock seem in good health and active. I don't think I'm feeding too much, they polish off 1/2 frozen cube in a few minutes

Am I obsessing too much about these darn polishing pads? I'm trying to avoid any chemicals in my water and hoping I'm "doing it right" with all my existing filters.

Salinity: 1.025
Nitrates: 40 ppm
Phosphates: 0 ppm (on 1-10 scale, not very fine)
Calcium: 340 ppm
Carbon hardness: 9 dkh
Ph: 8.2

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

Reefing Madness · Jul 29, 2013

I would say your not doing it enough. Your Nitrates are high at 40. Really want to keep them under 30 in a FOWLR. And even if your Trate numbers were in line, I'd say go ahead and clean em everyday if you wanted to. All your bacteria thats good is in the Live Rock and sand bed.
Your Calcium is low also, so if you want Coralline to grow, you'll need that up a bit.

ReeferBob · Jul 30, 2013

Is your mechanical filter a canister? That is the source of your nitrates. I assume you are opening it up and just replacing the polishing pad and leaving the rest. If you want to use a canister, you need to clean out the entire filter weekly. Depending on how much rock you have, it might be time to lose that canister. You should slowly remove the bio-media so the bacteria levels in the tank can compensate. When all of the biomedia is out, remove the other media a little at a time as it will also contain bacteria that you need. Keep an eye on ammonia. Do it slowly over 2 weeks and once the filter is empty, remove it. You'll have a much easier time managing nitrates without the canister.