tank trouble any help would be great

[Kevstein227]

i have a smaller tank 30gal, which over the past 3 weeks or so i have been adding frags polyps and some other corals. everything was doing amazingly and just looked beautiful. about 3-4 days ago i checked my water and my nitrate level was pretty high. but like i said everything looked beautiful and was doing wonderfully, my local fish store advised me to add a pouch of "purigen" by Seachem to my filter so i did, and ever sense adding it all of my beautiful frag has been in hiding. should i remove the "purigen" pouch or does anyone think that it might just take a few days but will return to normal, any help would be great, i love my tank and it kills me to see pieces unhappy

 

[joshporksandwich]

If everything was looking nice I would have left it alone. If after you added the purigen everything closed then it makes sense to remove what was causing the zoas to close.
You can do a 10% water change and If you ever see any paramter is off but everything looks nice you should ask a friend to test for you or take some water to lfs to double check.

 

[duke4130]

i have a smaller tank 30gal, which over the past 3 weeks or so i have been adding frags polyps and some other corals. everything was doing amazingly and just looked beautiful. about 3-4 days ago i checked my water and my nitrate level was pretty high. but like i said everything looked beautiful and was doing wonderfully, my local fish store advised me to add a pouch of "purigen" by Seachem to my filter so i did, and ever sense adding it all of my beautiful frag has been in hiding. should i remove the "purigen" pouch or does anyone think that it might just take a few days but will return to normal, any help would be great, i love my tank and it kills me to see pieces unhappy

This is right up my ally!!! Purigen is a scavenging media. It helps polish your water to make it crystal clear. In such a small system you need to be careful how much and how fast you add livestock. Even though you tank is 30 gallons you need to think about actual water volume due to water displacement by rock and livestock. I did the calculations on my 34 gallon red sea max and even though it was 34 gallons total volume i really only had about 18-20 gallons of actual water in the system. Small systems like this can go through drastic changes very fast. . I wouldn't say the purigen is causing an issue. I always ran purigen and chemi-pure elite in my system and it was always beneficial. What are your other water parameters, temperature and salinity? How long has the tank been running? Also like Josh said water changes are always a must in such a small system.

 

[Eienna]

It's possible that the purigen is stripping the water too fast. Reduce the amount in the pouch...guessing by about half...and see what happens. The purigen itself is not harmful.

 

[KoleTang]

I did the same thing with purigen back when I had a 30g. In my case I added it too fast and the water became very clear. Which made the light hitting the corals more powerful. The corals were not too happy about the sudden change.

 

[jayhawk]

If everything was looking nice I would have left it alone. If after you added the purigen everything closed then it makes sense to remove what was causing the zoas to close.
You can do a 10% water change and If you ever see any paramter is off but everything looks nice you should ask a friend to test for you or take some water to lfs to double check.

Agreed.

If something causes ill effects, remove it. What do you mean by high nitrate? What's the ppm?

 

[Eienna]

It's likely not a case of something needing to be removed entirely. It's just a case of too much too fast, IMO.

 

[Kevstein227]

Hi and thank you, off hand I don't have all my parameters, I can have them a little later in the day, but I did have my water tested 3 days ago at my local fish store. I have them test it pretty often about once a week or so I just bring a sample when I go look at what new items they got in stock, my nitrate level was reading about 80, nitrites were perfect salt content was on the money as was PH, the kid at the store suggested the "purigen" . My tank is much newer it's only been set up a about 5 weeks or so

 

[Mike in CT]

80 is not going to make your coral very happy. I would imagine nitrates have more to do with your coral being unhappy then the purigen. My tank was at 80 a few months after I started it and I lost all but the most tough corals I had in there. It just took time for my tank to mature. Even large water changes was not having much of an effect (but I am sure they were helping some.) I would concentrate on getting your nitrates down before adding anything else.

 

[JLight]

I'm don't think the corals would add that much bioload would they? Seems to me that maybe something died in the tank and it's breaking down. Lost anything recently?

 

[Kevstein227]

Well I know the nitrate level is to high at 80 that's why I added the purigen to my filter, and that's why I posted here asking for help, everything was doing really well at the 80 level now that I'm working on bringing it lower I am having trouble... And things are unhappy that's what's so strange, nothing has really died, maybe a small small hermit but they usually get eaten right away or if they don't as soon as I see one dead I take it out as soon as it's seen, and that's right away. My fish seem happy. I guess changing water and praying is all I can do. Is there a way to vacuum the sand perhaps? Or possibly just removing some sand and replace it? Would that help?

 

[JLight]

Messing with the sand bed is usually a bad idea. A lot of organics get dissolved in it and can cause the tank to crash. I would pull the purigen and do water changes like you said.

 

[Mike in CT]

Mine looked fine at 80sh as well for a while....then it catches up with you. Even when you start bringing the levels down,
it will take a while to get everything going in the right direction again. It took months after I finaly brought nitrates under control for most of my corals to start looking better (the ones that survived). Is it coral only, or do you have fish as well?. I actually used the the vodka method to get mine under control becuase the water changes were not doing enough....even then it took months to bring my levels to the single digits. At 5 weeks your tank is very young, some coral will not be happy till the tank is 6 months or a year old no matter what you do.

 

[JLight]

Yeah you could run the vodka dosing or get a reactor and run biopellets

 

[Kevstein227]

I am unfilmilure with "vodka dosing" can that be explained, and yes I do have a few fish, I guess I can just hole these corals pull through, and work on lowering the levels

 

[Mike in CT]

Do a search for "CARBON DOSING" there are a bunch of articles explaining it and they will also tell you how much to dose in the beginning and how much to go up week by week. You pretty much add a small amount vodka as a carbon source. The bacteria consume the carbon as food and over time can reduce nitrates dramatically. It is very slow going in the beginning and you have to patient. As with anything you add to your tank, it can have an negative effect as
well so you have to keep an eye on things.