Cant catch a break

[m0jjen]

Hi!

So the title says it all. Tank not doing good, tanks havent done good for years. Tried it all i feel like.

About a year ago we bought a house and moved, exsisting tank moved into a holding tank and did pretty good in it while i was setting up the system. System has been up and running about 1 year now (same rock, same livestock same everything) as before move and from the holding tank.

System consists of a reefer 625XXL with a remote sump in a fish room. The sump is shared with a fragtank. Total volume about 850-900 litres 225 - 240 us gallons.

Problems im having is random alges, snot, cyano, dino you name it. one goes away another one comes around. Something all at once sometimes one at a time.

Filtration

Bubble king mini 200. About the right size for the system in my opinion. Always running and preforming great
Various biological media, Siporax in reactor, maxspect bio block and balls.
Occational filterfloss when blowing of rock and doing waterchanges
UV plumbed inline on the display return and regulated by valves.

Light
Over the display i use 3 radion xr30 pro gen 3. Getting abit outdated and probably due for a replacement, thinking ATI straton. But not quite yet. For the fragtank i use 2 hydra 32HD.

Flow
Display has 4 vortech set to 100% reefcrest, one side on anti sync and oneside mastering the reef crest.
Fragtank has various pump, tunze and jebao more than sufficient and probably overkill.

Dosing
Havent been doing much. Keep nitrates up around 5-10, i do waterchanges and done some cycles of microbacter7. Apart from that i keep alk stable with alkatronic and a calcium reactor. the reactor is running at a pH of 6.4 with a flowrate of 22 ml / min. Recently started with aquaforest traceelements with little to no change.

Maintainance
Pretty basic, 10% WC every week. blow of rock and remove detritus and what not. Take messurements before WC

Livestock
This might be the culpit for some problems. Im heavy on the fish side. A friend left the hobby and i got to take care of the fish.

2xYellow tang (medium)
1x Sailfin tang (medium)
3x Clownfish
2x Scopas tanks (their small)
2x Longnosed hawkfish
1x Capentri wrasse
1x Bristletooth Tomini Tang
1x White Tail Bristletooth Tang
1x Copperband butterfly (medium)
1x Purple tang (medium)

So alot of bigger sized fishes. That all consume oxygen and poops.

Problem
First of the nucianse alges and what not. Cant seem to shake it off. Tried a year of elbowgreace and keeping it stable. Wont do much.
Second corals are suffering, dying or barely haning on. Do a bigger or afew consecutive waterchanges and everything look ok for awhile and then back to normal
Third low PH. Daily PH around 7.7-7.9
Fourth alot of detritus nomather how much i remove it back the next week. In all areas, sump display and fragtank.


My belief of what wrong is two things mainly. The low ph and the amount of detritus. Nomather how i configure flow i cant seem to get the detritus to stay in the water colum and move to the sump it just settles. Might be due to my scape blocking flow or something along that line, i feel like i have a pretty ok scape that alows for flow tho. Did an ICP recently that dont show anything to off.

Any ideas?

 

[JonoH]

With your filtration, you mention occasional filter floss... but are you running socks or a Reefmat?

I feel with that high bio-load you need something to catch the bulk of the detritus before it makes it into the sump.

 

[shwareefer]

We'll assume your tangs are eating any traditional algaes that would compete with the goop. What other cuc do you have in terms of snails, brittlestars, worms, etc that might consume some of the other stuff and detritus?

Have you checked for any coral pests? MAybe pull something that is struggling and do a dip to see what falls off. Clingy cyano and definitely dinos will make a lot of corals unhappy as well.

Can you run a skimmer line for outside air or even open a window near the tank for a day to see if PH rises?

 

[The_Paradox]

I would start by bumping the alkalinity and stopping the trace and microbactor. Most trace additives I have used have a very small window between therapeutic and what the helI just happened?!?!

 

[boogiesnap]

I would start by bumping the alkalinity and stopping the trace and microbactor. Most trace additives I have used have a very small window between therapeutic and what the helI just happened?!?!

I hear ya OP…I’m not sure I like this hobby…My nitrates are low, added 4ml Acro power to see if that might give it a bump until the brightwell nitro arrives.

literally minutes later one of the last of my 15 or so acros that had been hanging on and gaining back some color stripped all its flesh to bare skeleton in front of my eyes.

 

[Pickle_soup]

Hi!

So the title says it all. Tank not doing good, tanks havent done good for years. Tried it all i feel like.

About a year ago we bought a house and moved, exsisting tank moved into a holding tank and did pretty good in it while i was setting up the system. System has been up and running about 1 year now (same rock, same livestock same everything) as before move and from the holding tank.

System consists of a reefer 625XXL with a remote sump in a fish room. The sump is shared with a fragtank. Total volume about 850-900 litres 225 - 240 us gallons.

Problems im having is random alges, snot, cyano, dino you name it. one goes away another one comes around. Something all at once sometimes one at a time.

Filtration

Bubble king mini 200. About the right size for the system in my opinion. Always running and preforming great
Various biological media, Siporax in reactor, maxspect bio block and balls.
Occational filterfloss when blowing of rock and doing waterchanges
UV plumbed inline on the display return and regulated by valves.

Light
Over the display i use 3 radion xr30 pro gen 3. Getting abit outdated and probably due for a replacement, thinking ATI straton. But not quite yet. For the fragtank i use 2 hydra 32HD.

Flow
Display has 4 vortech set to 100% reefcrest, one side on anti sync and oneside mastering the reef crest.
Fragtank has various pump, tunze and jebao more than sufficient and probably overkill.

Dosing
Havent been doing much. Keep nitrates up around 5-10, i do waterchanges and done some cycles of microbacter7. Apart from that i keep alk stable with alkatronic and a calcium reactor. the reactor is running at a pH of 6.4 with a flowrate of 22 ml / min. Recently started with aquaforest traceelements with little to no change.

Maintainance
Pretty basic, 10% WC every week. blow of rock and remove detritus and what not. Take messurements before WC

Livestock
This might be the culpit for some problems. Im heavy on the fish side. A friend left the hobby and i got to take care of the fish.

2xYellow tang (medium)
1x Sailfin tang (medium)
3x Clownfish
2x Scopas tanks (their small)
2x Longnosed hawkfish
1x Capentri wrasse
1x Bristletooth Tomini Tang
1x White Tail Bristletooth Tang
1x Copperband butterfly (medium)
1x Purple tang (medium)

So alot of bigger sized fishes. That all consume oxygen and poops.

Problem
First of the nucianse alges and what not. Cant seem to shake it off. Tried a year of elbowgreace and keeping it stable. Wont do much.
Second corals are suffering, dying or barely haning on. Do a bigger or afew consecutive waterchanges and everything look ok for awhile and then back to normal
Third low PH. Daily PH around 7.7-7.9
Fourth alot of detritus nomather how much i remove it back the next week. In all areas, sump display and fragtank.


My belief of what wrong is two things mainly. The low ph and the amount of detritus. Nomather how i configure flow i cant seem to get the detritus to stay in the water colum and move to the sump it just settles. Might be due to my scape blocking flow or something along that line, i feel like i have a pretty ok scape that alows for flow tho. Did an ICP recently that dont show anything to off.

Any ideas?

Sorry to hear about your problems. Can you take a picture of your tank?

 

[m0jjen]

With your filtration, you mention occasional filter floss... but are you running socks or a Reefmat?

I feel with that high bio-load you need something to catch the bulk of the detritus before it makes it into the sump.

I do not atm. Looking into getting the red sea version. Had a clarisea gen2 but it drove me nuts with the poor choice of motor.

We'll assume your tangs are eating any traditional algaes that would compete with the goop. What other cuc do you have in terms of snails, brittlestars, worms, etc that might consume some of the other stuff and detritus?

Have you checked for any coral pests? MAybe pull something that is struggling and do a dip to see what falls off. Clingy cyano and definitely dinos will make a lot of corals unhappy as well.

Can you run a skimmer line for outside air or even open a window near the tank for a day to see if PH rises?

Its abit lackluster, tried replenishing snails and such but most died due to dinos i would guess. No pests, dipped bastered and all that. Had AEFW twice so im pretty meticulous with new addition, havent added anything in two years since most corals just look crap and or die slowly over time. No point in killing more until what i have thrive.

regarding PH i have a window open in the fishroom and door to the fishroom closed. Gets me to about 7.8-8 during the cycle

 

[RRA]

So few things, I can't see the tank but your having algae. You are testing N03 5-10 but there is a good chance the algae is taking a good amount of it and masking that number.

Personally if it was me I would of never started alot of your dosing, I feel you are doing to much to fast it seems and not allowing things to take effect and sometimes it takes months, changing more then one thing adds to many variables to make educated decisions on the right path. Its gonna suck and might cause some more issues, but I would stop with all the dosing and other additives (except Cal/alk/mag of course), and just do heavy water changes for several months (Doing a 25% WC every week lowers your NO3 25% each week). You are doing something that is fueling this PO4/No3 spike, filter socks that I change every 3 or so days to mechanically take out as much floating particulates as possible and for my WC I would turn off as much flow as I can and scrub as much stuff off the rock to take out manually as-well. If WC are getting corals happy why not do more, one thing I would note make sure your WC levels are the same as tank, last thing you want is more fluctuation, also I would be testing once or twice a day at least my alk to try and keep that as stable as possible. During rough tank times corals will use less but if your still dosing like things are happy and growing it is just more fluctuation.

I could argue that all this change could cause some shock but it would be my goal to get down to as KISS as possible, once I am there then if I want to experiment with dosing something then try one thing at a time for months with that being the only things I change. Your most likely going to be in a struggle for awhile playing catch up.

 

[Stevorino]

So few things, I can't see the tank but your having algae. You are testing N03 5-10 but there is a good chance the algae is taking a good amount of it and masking that number.

Personally if it was me I would of never started alot of your dosing, I feel you are doing to much to fast it seems and not allowing things to take effect and sometimes it takes months, changing more then one thing adds to many variables to make educated decisions on the right path. Its gonna suck and might cause some more issues, but I would stop with all the dosing and other additives (except Cal/alk/mag of course), and just do heavy water changes for several months (Doing a 25% WC every week lowers your NO3 25% each week). You are doing something that is fueling this PO4/No3 spike, filter socks that I change every 3 or so days to mechanically take out as much floating particulates as possible and for my WC I would turn off as much flow as I can and scrub as much stuff off the rock to take out manually as-well. If WC are getting corals happy why not do more, one thing I would note make sure your WC levels are the same as tank, last thing you want is more fluctuation, also I would be testing once or twice a day at least my alk to try and keep that as stable as possible. During rough tank times corals will use less but if your still dosing like things are happy and growing it is just more fluctuation.

I could argue that all this change could cause some shock but it would be my goal to get down to as KISS as possible, once I am there then if I want to experiment with dosing something then try one thing at a time for months with that being the only things I change. You’re most likely going to be in a struggle for awhile playing catch up.

Couldn’t agree more with this advice…

I’ve learned the hard way (many times over) when you are constantly reacting to every change in the tank, you aren’t really giving it a chance to catch up and settle into a groove.

The equipment is all totally fine. I agree to stop dosing anything but alk/cal/mag.

If you have the ability with your existinf dosing equipment to do an AWC I’d consider that to stabilize water changes more.

Clean up crew and pods never hurt IMO and can help a good bit when fighting ugly stages

Good luck OP!

 

[m0jjen]

I would start by bumping the alkalinity and stopping the trace and microbactor. Most trace additives I have used have a very small window between therapeutic and what the helI just happened?!?!

Alk is around 8.5-9 which im pretty happy with. Started with trace about 3 weeks ago, problems have been presistant for about 2-3 years so I see no correlation there as of now

 

[m0jjen]

Sorry to hear about your problems. Can you take a picture of your tank?

Poor quality but you get the picture. Quite a sad view at the moment.

 

[m0jjen]

So few things, I can't see the tank but your having algae. You are testing N03 5-10 but there is a good chance the algae is taking a good amount of it and masking that number.

Personally if it was me I would of never started alot of your dosing, I feel you are doing to much to fast it seems and not allowing things to take effect and sometimes it takes months, changing more then one thing adds to many variables to make educated decisions on the right path. Its gonna suck and might cause some more issues, but I would stop with all the dosing and other additives (except Cal/alk/mag of course), and just do heavy water changes for several months (Doing a 25% WC every week lowers your NO3 25% each week). You are doing something that is fueling this PO4/No3 spike, filter socks that I change every 3 or so days to mechanically take out as much floating particulates as possible and for my WC I would turn off as much flow as I can and scrub as much stuff off the rock to take out manually as-well. If WC are getting corals happy why not do more, one thing I would note make sure your WC levels are the same as tank, last thing you want is more fluctuation, also I would be testing once or twice a day at least my alk to try and keep that as stable as possible. During rough tank times corals will use less but if your still dosing like things are happy and growing it is just more fluctuation.

I could argue that all this change could cause some shock but it would be my goal to get down to as KISS as possible, once I am there then if I want to experiment with dosing something then try one thing at a time for months with that being the only things I change. Your most likely going to be in a struggle for awhile playing catch up.

That is true and i have accounted for that. My nutrient numbers + what the algae have bound / consumes is the true number. To much to fast is abit of an overstatment. I've had the live rock for about 8 years, 4 of the years the tank did fantastic.

Since the move to the house its been 1 year with the tank setup. During fall i tried MB7 for 2 months without results. Apart from that i ran the calcium reactor do maintain CA, KH and MG. and did waterchanges. About 3 weeks ago i dosed started dosing small amounts of trace elements. So thats two types of dosing over the span of 13 months giving it ample time to give results in the MB7 case. Otherwise i didnt dose anything. Just calcium reactor and waterchanges.

 

[m0jjen]

Just to make clear. Im not throwing myself into random dosing and changes. I have had succssess full tanks, this for me is puzzeling since i just cant wrap my head around it.

Same tank and most of the same LR from about 4 years ago.

Tank before that:

 

[RRA]

That is true and i have accounted for that. My nutrient numbers + what the algae have bound / consumes is the true number. To much to fast is abit of an overstatment. I've had the live rock for about 8 years, 4 of the years the tank did fantastic.

Since the move to the house its been 1 year with the tank setup. During fall i tried MB7 for 2 months without results. Apart from that i ran the calcium reactor do maintain CA, KH and MG. and did waterchanges. About 3 weeks ago i dosed started dosing small amounts of trace elements. So thats two types of dosing over the span of 13 months giving it ample time to give results in the MB7 case. Otherwise i didnt dose anything. Just calcium reactor and waterchanges.

What were you trying to achieve with MB7 and trace elements. (Assuming you stopped mb7 after those two months, and are currently still dosing trace?)

Currently over the past 12 weeks how many WC have you done?

At what point did all of the algae start in the time line?

Tank prior to the issue use to be stunning

 

[m0jjen]

What were you trying to achieve with MB7 and trace elements. (Assuming you stopped mb7 after those two months, and are currently still dosing trace?)

Currently over the past 12 weeks how many WC have you done?

At what point did all of the algae start in the time line?

MB7 was pure nutrient control / competition for other organism. Trace elements was abit of a shot in the dark while its abit justified since my trition came back with slight lower traces.

Currently over the past 12 weeks how many WC have you done? - 12, every sunday.

At what point did all of the algae start in the time line? - Since i moved the livestock its been gaining more and more of a grip of the tank for the past 12 months.

 

[RRA]

MB7 was pure nutrient control / competition for other organism. Trace elements was abit of a shot in the dark while its abit justified since my trition came back with slight lower traces.

Currently over the past 12 weeks how many WC have you done? - 12, every sunday.

At what point did all of the algae start in the time line? - Since i moved the livestock it’s been gaining more and more of a grip of the tank for the past 12 months.

Your tank was absolutely stunning prior to this issue, so you definitely know how to run a system correctly.

During this transfer is it possible you moved rock/sand and sand that you released trapped nutrients into the system in the sand bed?

 

[Mr. Roboto]

I think most of the people here have hinted at it but I am going to say it again...

You are doing too much.

Shouldn't be dosing nitrates and trace elements and keeping that skimmer wide open.

Back off the light schedule, quit chasing numbers and instead of occasional filter floss, we should have heard reef mat 24/7 or 5m socks

Do the water changes and suck as much out as you can, buy some regular powerheads to point at trouble areas until you can figure out the layout for your mains and toss everything but fish food. Test every ounce of water in and out of your tank and go back to the basics.

You are doing too much.

 

[m0jjen]

Your tank was absolutely stunning prior to this issue, so you definitely know how to run a system correctly.

During this transfer is it possible you moved rock/sand and sand that you released trapped nutrients into the system in the sand bed?

Thats a possability along with adding bioload to soon when my friend shut down his system. The concerning part for me is the chronically low ph and that the algae and whatnot seems to be here to stay. Guess i could change 100% water over the upcoming 2 weeks or something. but apart from that i would think im on track.

And im not saying i've done everything and the right things. Im obviously here with a problem

 

[m0jjen]

I think most of the people here have hinted at it but I am going to say it again...

You are doing too much.

Shouldn't be dosing nitrates and trace elements and keeping that skimmer wide open.

Back off the light schedule, quit chasing numbers and instead of occasional filter floss, we should have heard reef mat 24/7 or 5m socks

Do the water changes and suck as much out as you can, buy some regular powerboats to point at trouble areas until you can figure out the layout for your mains and toss everything but fish food. Test every ounce of water in and out of your tank and go back to the basics.

You are doing too much.

Thanks for the input

 

[Mr. Roboto]

Stop chasing numbers, your PH isn't "chronicly low" again, back to the basics. Test your salt water for water changes. Keep you alk ca and mag stable and chart the ph, po and nitrate but stop chasing them.