old corals and sand in my sump?

[dblue351]

The person I got my saltwater tank from said to keep sand and old corals in my sump. I am having an issue with high Nitrates right now and have been consistanly doing 10% water changes weekly to little decrease in Nitrates. See the pics... Should I keep all this in there or remove and clean out the sump?

 

[McMullen]

So this is a new tank? Or a tare down and using the sand and rock?

How high are nitrates? Ammonia?

 

[dblue351]

Tank has been running for 3 years. Ammonia is 0, Nitrate is 20. It was 40... water changes have helped, but i cant get this dang purple algae to die off.

 

[McMullen]

This is a new problem!

What kind of nutrient export do you have?

Can you add Cheato to sand and rock area for a fuge?

Chemi clean has worked very well for me in past.

Flow inside tank?

Phosphate?

 

[dblue351]

I recently added a reactor with GFO in it. I have a Skimmer that I clean out weekly. Flow in the tank is on the higher side I feel.. two 950GPH pumps. Phosphate is reading 0, but I will admit the kit is on the older side. Like really old...

 

[Bradley Crocker]

The reason people put sand, rocks, extra filter sponges, etc. in their sump is to create more surface area for beneficial bacteria. More area = more bacteria = faster processing of nitrogen compounds. If you remove these substrates, it'll actually be counterproductive to your problem.

That doesn't mean that you can't remove them. If you do, you will get a small spike of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Whether or not they're measurable, or noticeable, spikes will depend on how much of the bacterial populations are removed. This should balance out quickly though.

 

[McMullen]

What size tank?
What's in it?

 

[dblue351]

55 gallon tank. 20-30 gallon sump, live rock, 7 fish some snails, random soft corals. and hat dang purple and now green algae.

 

[McMullen]

How's the tank doing?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Its probably a bit of old tank syndrome. If the sump is collecting detritus go ahead and clean it. Looking at the rock scape its likely to be stuff trapped in the rocks.
A couple things to consider would be checking the PH, seee if its running on the low end and perhaps add some kalk to the ato. Cyano likes co2.
Id also look into either a bit of carbon dosing if the po4 isnt too low. Or an aggressive bottled bacteria like Waste Away, Mb7, Or a probidio product.
its also quite likely at that age the sand has collected a lot of organics, so bumping up the CUC would be a good Idea or manually cleaning the sand.