Tank in trouble!

Reef AK · May 1, 2020

Hi all

I have a 210 Litre Aqua one tank with sump cheetah and red algae and a Magnus 3.5 Skimmer.

i overdosed PH buffer due to my PH reader was broken and showed 6-7 when all along it was within range around 8.2PH

As of today my water are as follows.

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5.0

Magnesium - over 1500
Calcium - over 500
Kh - 15.5 dKH

Current live stock - Salfin tang - Clowns - damsels - coral beauty all doing well.

tank is around 4 months old.

Snails and corals have all slowly died off.

Red Sea LED 90 lighting

my question is should I reset or would water changes weekly over a couple months bring down the levels as everything seems to be at sky rocket

Test kits API and salfert

lpsouth1978 · May 1, 2020

You can either keep doing things like normal and let things come down on their own, or do some water changes. Change 15% a day for the next week or so and things should improve. Don't do too much too fast. I don't recommend using buffers, especially for pH. pH buffers tend to do more harm than good.

Reef AK · May 1, 2020

I’ve managed to do 10% water changes every 3 days for the last couple of weeks but have seen no changes to the water parameters. would these go down itself over the weeks? Or months?

I was considering restarting everything as I have another set up that could house the fishes. Would that be too extreme? It just seems a better solution then battling some many issues

thanks for replies

lpsouth1978 · May 1, 2020

Keep with what you are doing, but increase the frequency of the water changes. Doing 10% water changes will lower things, but it will take time. Look at it this way, say your Magnesium is @ 1500 and you do a 10% water change, this would reduce your Mag to ~ 1350. We don't know what your actual numbers are because it appears they are higher than your test kits can show. Do daily water changes and you will get there quicker.

You said that the corals have slowly died, are there any corals still living in the system? If not, you could do larger water change without much effect on the fish. They can hande these types of changes a lot better than corals.