Possible Tank Problems ...

[davehead86]

I just shut down my 65 gallon to restart it here because I was having numerous problems with the tank. Upon cleaning the tank out I noticed the following things. Can someone help me understand if these two things would have cause major problems in my tank and is something I should be worried about on the restart (getting new / better equipment)?

1) Cleaning my Hydor Korillia i could not stop having black grains coming out of the magnet compartment. Looks like having that powerhead under the dosing tubes was a bad idea and the magnet was deteriorating and leaking into the tank. Im not sure if this had any detrimental affects on my tank.

2) I was overdosing the tank towards the end / dosing incorrectly. A bunch of the rocks towards the back wall of the sump under the dosing tubes had massive build up of precipitate. I also am unaware if this is detrimental to the tank.

 

[iDeath]

Heavy metals leaching from the magnets is definitely an issue. Depending on the amount of deterioration the tank could reach some level of toxicity from that alone. Overdosing is also something that will wreck your tank. If you can see precipitate in a single area where you were dosing, it could mean you were overdosing... but it could also mean that you were just dosing to close in time such that the two compounds were forming calcium carbonate in that area. Once formed it will break down very very slowly. Hard to tell from that deposits but not a good sign any way you cut it.

 

[davehead86]

Heavy metals leaching from the magnets is definitely an issue. Depending on the amount of deterioration the tank could reach some level of toxicity from that alone. Overdosing is also something that will wreck your tank. If you can see precipitate in a single area where you were dosing, it could mean you were overdosing... but it could also mean that you were just dosing to close in time such that the two compounds were forming calcium carbonate in that area. Once formed it will break down very very slowly. Hard to tell from that deposits but not a good sign any way you cut it.

Would any of these cause sudden fish and invertebrate deaths? How about large algae blooms?
Should I be dosing at extreme opposite ends of the day, it was separated by 15 minutes but that might be too close together?

 

[iDeath]

Yes, I would think that in high enough concentrations the rare earth elements being released into the water would create some level of toxicity. This is just a guess though as I'm not personally familiar with having this happen. I would think 15 minutes separation in dosing would be sufficient so long as there is adequate flow in the area. Assuming you have enough flow... if you're seeing heavy deposits in that area where you're dosing could be a couple of other things... The most plausible would be that your magnesium is low and so you'll see precipitate like that as well. That's my best guess.

 

[Super Fly]

2) I was overdosing the tank towards the end / dosing incorrectly. A bunch of the rocks towards the back wall of the sump under the dosing tubes had massive build up of precipitate. I also am unaware if this is detrimental to the tank.

This will also occur if dosing section has very slow water flow, which happened to me once. Precipitate stopped after I changed the flow.