Triton result finally came. Please help.

[Lasse]

I'm no expert on painting but if you are able to remove the stand you can use whatever.Blasting is the best method in order to take away rust. Afterwards you can paint with an 2 component epoxi dye. If you can't remove the stand you must be very careful in order to mimize paint fumes mixing with the water.

However - I do not think the rust is your main problems

Sincerely Lasse

 

[rkpetersen]

Your sand is fine. Shouldn't be the source of the contamination. I also agree with stopping dosing all the supplements (except for basic two-part), at least for now. Reassess later and only add things that have a reasonably demonstrable benefit. Every company wants you to use all of their products; resist the urge to do so.

I find your stand scary. I can picture flakes and bits of rust and paint falling off or being knocked off into the sump, or getting on towels which then can potentially contaminate the water too. I'm pretty sure that your stand is the source for much of this metal contamination. I don't know how you can fix it without, at the very least, turning off the system and removing the sump. You could probably sand and paint then, with lots of ventilation, but even that is likely to turn out to be a mess and a less than ideal result. To really make the stand clean and safe I would tear the system down and take the stand to another location where I could work on it properly for several days. Or replace it with a non-metallic stand/cabinet, which would also result in less downtime for the tank.