Fluval M90 with sump using Triton Method

[sebastiaan1985]

Hi all,

first let me introduce myself briefly. I am Sebastiaan from the Netherlands. I have had several fresh water tanks and several reef tanks for the past few years. (Had to change tanks due to changing home..).

My current tank is a customized Fluval M90, with a sump. It has been running since October 2014.
After some hardware upgrades, I am currently running as follows:

Tank: Fluval M90
Sump: Custom sump, 3 chambers
Refugium: several macro algae with grow LED, and one Marinpur Block
Skimmer: Deltec SC1351
Return: Jecod DSC 4000
Lighting: 2x Radion XR30 G3 Pro's (max 35% on SPS+ program)
Flow: 2x Vortech MP10QD
Controller: Apex system
Media reactor: 2 Aqua Medic reactors size M containing Carbon and Rowaphos
Dosing: ATI 6channel doser, dosing Triton Core7

Aquascape is made up out of RealReefRock and live sand added.

 

[GraphicReefer]

Very Cool! Any pics?

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Pictures will follow, as I am currently battling high nitrates and a bactaria bloom as a result of carbon dosing...

 

[Tahoe61]

Welcome Sebastiaan to R2R.

 

[revhtree]

Sounds like a great plan!

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Ok, some older pictures from before the latest additions and trouble...

 

[sebastiaan1985]

How it started

Experiment with retrofitted Maxspect Razor

Higher in blues

Upgrade to AI Sol Blue and new scape


Looking back at all the changes in the past two years, I think I have to take it a bit slower from now on...

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Current situation;

As you can see, my skimmer is having some issues since the carbon-dosing.
Have kept it up, to lower insane nitrates.

Measuring at 32ppm last Sunday, so has dropped quite a bit already (was above 100ppm) in the past two weeks.
Decided to lower the dosing each day, so hopefully the cloudiness will go away soon.

The tank:

Must be the worst shape any of my tanks has ever been in... Corals are struggling and felt like I had to choose the lesser of two evils. Hope I made a right decision in continuing dosing and lower nitrates.

 

[fabutahoun]

Welcome To Reef2Reef.

You should stop the carbon dosing, not just lowering it.

Fadi~

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Welcome To Reef2Reef.

You should stop the carbon dosing, not just lowering it.

Fadi~

Thanks! And thought you are supposed to decrease dosing and not stop directly...
And even with the elevated nitrates I should stop?

 

[fabutahoun]

Bacterial blooms that will remove O2 from water is dangerous than elevated nitrates. make sure that there is enough flow to promote gas exchange at water surface
also partial 20% water change will help . consider making every few days until the water is clear

How much are NO3 and PO4 ?

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Thanks for the feedback. I am aware of the lowered oxygen, so have closely followed my pH measurements. Bacterial bloom has been going on for 5 days now, so really have to do something about it.
Water change is definitely a good idea! Was also thinking about adding a canister filter for a couple of days, you think this will help?

Nitrates are now around 30 ppm, phosphates showed 0 ppm using Hanna ULR checker.

 

[fabutahoun]

Nitrate is a little high but not that harmful, I think Clearing the water is your priority, also water change will reduce the nitrate. try to eliminate the cause of high nitrate by checking your source water. do you use RO/DI ? if you have filter socks remove them, reduce feeding , adding more cured rocks or bio media, all these will help lowering No3. after the tank is clear you can go back to use carbon dosing if the NO3 still high but start very slowly. just keep in mind and with carbon dosing strong high quality skimmer is a must.

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Nitrate is a little high but not that harmful, I think Clearing the water is your priority, also water change will reduce the nitrate. try to eliminate the cause of high nitrate by checking your source water. do you use RO/DI ? if you have filter socks remove them, reduce feeding , adding more cured rocks or bio media, all these will help lowering No3. after the tank is clear you can go back to use carbon dosing if the NO3 still high but start very slowly. just keep in mind and with carbon dosing strong high quality skimmer is a must.

Yes, I use RO/DI, and have an skimmer which should be more than capable of handling my bioload. I did reduce feeding already, and have added the MarinePur filtercube.
Filter sock might be an issue, so this was removed this morning (normally only use a filter sock during the weekend to polish water).

Tonight I will clean all equipment, as I feel my skimmer is not working as it should due to the bacterial film on all my equipment.

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Cleaning the skimmer was very necessary, since the inside and outside were covered with bacterial film. Also some algae in the pump, so the skimmer was performing less than it should have.

Also stopped the dosing of Carbon and the bloom is getting less very rapid. (unfortunately did not have the ability to do a water change yet)
Since the cloudiness is getting less quite quickly, I am wondering if I should do the water change. I do realise that it can never harm the tank, so am keen on doing a change.

My full system is close to 45 gallon, so guess I could do a 8 gallon WC using Nutri Sea Water.
This should lower nitrates and improve the number of beneficial bacteria as well. Besides this, my plan is to leave the tank as it is, and prevent stress as much as I can for the coming weeks.

Bacteria messed up my refugium as well, so will give the marco algae a change to grow back.

Besides the water change, I would like to do a proper cleaning for detritus in sump and DT using a canister filter, but not sure if this would cause additional stress and mess the balance (if there is any)...

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Guess it is time for a damage report...

This weekend, the bacteria bloom was almost gone. So finally I got a decent view of the inside of my tank again.. Well, it wasn't decent.

Apparently, the corals suffered more than I could see... So lost a lot of nice corals, they were already having a hard time because of the high nitrates and this bacteria bloom made it even harder.
Also my parameters are all over the place now...

KH got real high, from 8 to 14 within 4 days. And even after really cutting down the dosing, it continued to rise, up to 16... So stopped dosing altogether and now it started to go down, from 16 to 14 in period of 3 days. (Rather keep it slow I guess???)

Phosphates are now at 0 ppm with Hanna ULR and Nitrates around 2.5 ppm with Red Sea Pro testkit.
KH was tested with both a Hanna Checker and Salifert, difference between the measurements was within .2 dKH, so am fairly confident that measurements are done correct.

So now the damage report;
Corals lost:
- Red Lobophyllia
- Green Euphyllia divisa
- Seriatopora hystrix
- Calendrium
- Montipora (several species)
- Stylophora (purple and green)
- Blastomussa (red)
- Acanthastrea (several colonies)

Corals having a hard time:
- 2 large colonies of Caulastrea
- Green star polyp
- Zoa's

Corals doing relatively good:
- Ricordea's (heads actually split last week)
- Mushroom's
- pachycerianthus

Also lost my 2 cleaner shrimp and 2 sandsifting starfish...

Fish seem to be doing ok, so will slowly up the feeding of the fish and corals again. Keeping track of the nitrates, so find the balance again. After KH is add an acceptable level, I will introduce some new frags, because I hate the sight of my tank at the moment...

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Good morning fellow-reefers, (well... not really a good morning, but wishing all of you a good morning anyway)

starting off again after a bad weekend; after all the issues I went through, it finally was too much. Intentionally waited with this post for after the weekend, just to analyse a bit more. And honestly, I felt gutted yesterday after how I found the tank when waking in the morning.

My tank crashed. That is what it comes down to, cold and hard reality.. So a short write up of what happened.

It started with some first signs on Saturday, some fish were having issues.
So turned down the flow and lights, and did some measurements.

Alk: 13
No3: 0 ???
Po4: 0.01 ??
pH: 8.2

Double checked the measurements, with same results. Still felt like something was off, so started mixing 50 litres of saltwater to do a 30% water change.
It took until Sunday for the water to be warm enough, but was too little, too late.

Both Clowns had died, two wrasses dead... Damsel and Foxface barely holding on. Tank looked green and smelled terrible.

I am assuming that the bacteria died off rather quickly, setting off the tank crash, since balance was already very fragile...

So what to do next?? Consulted with a friend and fellow-reefer, was ready to through in the towel. This way, the hobby is no fun.
He helped me, convinced me that it would be a shame to quit, all my equipment is like new and really top of the line, so rather start over and really build a nice tank (he has been struggling for over a year as well, but finally has the results he wants)

Conclusion:
I am going to start over, luckily my LFS is open on Sunday, so bought some additional live sand, salt and few other pieces. I set up my QT-tank and left it running all Sunday.
Acclimated the remaining fish and put them in QT, the cannot stay there for long, at least the Foxface should move quickly due to size, but had to do something. (Foxface will probably go to LFS)
Remaining corals are also in the QT, will keep a close eye on everything, to prevent any more issues.



Later this week, I will empty the tank and clean all equipment. Not sure about the RealReef Rock that are currently in the tank, will clean them, but what to do with them next? Re-use in new set up or better to start completely new?

 

[jason g]

Man, sorry to hear. Tank crashes suck. You'll make a comeback. Good luck on your next try.

 

[sebastiaan1985]

Man, sorry to hear. Tank crashes suck. You'll make a comeback. Good luck on your next try.

Thanks for the support, starting from scratch, so will take some time planning everything. Lot of equipment has changed since I first started this thank, so need to adjust.
Perhaps I will change the scape as well and go for more of a floating/islands look. Providing for more flow underneath the rockwork and will only start scaping after really looking how I would like to place my vortechs.

So really going back to basics..

 

[sebastiaan1985]

So, time for a new update. My QT seems to be running well, but am still keeping a close eye on it.

Some pictures I took yesterday afternoon:

The Foxface will move back to the LFS tomorrow, damsel is doing surprisingly well. (Can see him in the back)


Have cleaned the front of the main display, after two weeks of no need to clean the glass, it turned completely green overnight (Saturday).
All corals are dead, tried to recover a few, they are now in QT.
Snails and other inverts have also died, really depressing.


This morning the corals seemed to be doing allright. Foxface was still in sleeping the corner, the QT is too small for him, so he will have to move asap.