Help with reefing (Im about to quit everything)

[Freenow54]

Yes have to wonder why your water is so cloudy . Flow? Filtration? You have not mentioned a skimmer either

 

[Johnd651]

I have a 15 gal aio cube. I dose 5ml of AFR daily. Your dosing schedule causes instability since the daily demand will not change.

+1 water changes

How's your top off of evap?

 

[leo_martin]

GSP can handle a lot of conditions. If you give them good flow and a lot of light. I just don't see them not happy unless they are starved or something else in the water. If my 1 gallon PICO with no water changes for 2 weeks can grow GSP. So can you!

I would focus on getting stability.

If you are dosing AFR, how are you testing? skip magnesium testing. Just test for alk and dose accordingly.


Also is it just the picture or does the tank look cloudy? Potentially bacterial bloom?
You can also be getting bad water batches from your LFS.

That's what I do. I test Alk every week and then nitrates phosphates around once every two weeks. I may not log those if they don't change too much.
The water is not cloudy, just looks like it by the picture.
Thank you

 

[leo_martin]

what's mls? why dont you use your own salt mix?
water changes should be done on the regular too

mls = multiple milligrams
My understanding is that GSPS and Zoas didn't need sparkling water, hence the bioload and refugium under it. At first, the tank was fish only, later I went for those corals because they were forgiving, they would be easy and I legit don't care about any other corals.

 

[tripdad]

I would suggest you find a mentor and listen to them. Find someone local who is succesful if possible. If not then find a tank on here that is what your trying to achieve and ask them to mentor you. I think your trying to bake a cake using too many recipes and cook books. Find one only.

 

[leo_martin]

You got a large Bio-load for a small tank like that! I know it's technically 40 gallons, but still seems like a lot of fish.
If you don't do water changes often, let's start there, try to do them once a week, at 20% water change.
Is that

Start with weekly water changes. Probably around 25%.The tank looks really cloudy too. What is causing that? How much flow do you have in the tank? The phosphates are a little high and the other parameters are bouncing all over. Try dosing AFR daily after you figure out consumption. Just a little tweaking and you'll be complaining about everything growing too fast.

The water is not cloudy, its just the pictures. I have a nero 5 at around 1000 - 1300 flow, varying. Doesnt look like it because there's nothing to flow.

About dosing, does it really need that many water changes for a few corals? Even dosing, some weeks I just need to dose around 10mls a week. That's about it. This tank was fish only, I added a few corals, because they were supposed to be easy.

 

[stE26wy14]

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I would suggest you find a mentor and listen to them. Find someone local who is succesful if possible. If not then find a tank on here that is what your trying to achieve and ask them to mentor you. I think your trying to bake a cake using too many recipes and cook books. Find one only.

exactly this

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

The water is not cloudy, its just the pictures. I have a nero 5 at around 1000 - 1300 flow, varying. Doesnt look like it because there's nothing to flow.

About dosing, does it really need that many water changes for a few corals? Even dosing, some weeks I just need to dose around 10mls a week. That's about it. This tank was fish only, I added a few corals, because they were supposed to be easy.

10 fish in 30 gallons is a whole lot of poop and urine. That turns into nitrates via bacteria. I only have 8 fish in my 75g and that's with way oversized filtration.

 

[stE26wy14]

The water is not cloudy, its just the pictures. I have a nero 5 at around 1000 - 1300 flow, varying. Doesnt look like it because there's nothing to flow.

About dosing, does it really need that many water changes for a few corals? Even dosing, some weeks I just need to dose around 10mls a week. That's about it. This tank was fish only, I added a few corals, because they were supposed to be easy.

YES IT DOES MATTER!!!
firstly, you are here saying that u want to quit, but then u aren't listening/wanting to change anything, why ask in the first place????
of u dont care about the corals, remove them, sell the lights, and just do fish, or listen to us and change!!
the flow is fine, do actual water changes once a week or twice a week

 

[JTP424]

Yea, constant water changes are going to be your easiest way to more success. Your parameters were all over the place, so sometimes the corals are starving, sometimes they have an abundance, you need to keep them consistently happy.
Even if its not 20%, do 10%.

 

[stE26wy14]

Yea, constant water changes are going to be your easiest way to more success. Your parameters were all over the place, so sometimes the corals are starving, sometimes they have an abundance, you need to keep them consistently happy.
Even if its not 20%, do 10%.

just wanna add on, its not just the coral that need to be happy, the fish need to be happy too

 

[leo_martin]

Thank you all for your help, Ill start doing water changes weekly.

 

[JTP424]

just wanna add on, its not just the coral that need to be happy, the fish need to be happy too

True true :)

 

[IceNein]

I would suggest you find a mentor and listen to them. Find someone local who is succesful if possible. If not then find a tank on here that is what your trying to achieve and ask them to mentor you. I think your trying to bake a cake using too many recipes and cook books. Find one only.

I really like the mentor idea. One of the problems that Ryan Batcheller noted in his 80/20 lectures that you can see online is that newbies get advice from many different people, and sometimes this leads them to do a sort of "choose your own adventure" style of husbandry where they're taking advice from too many people. There's multiple ways to accomplish everything you need to do, so just find someone who you can get along with, who you feel has reasonable advice and stick with them.

When you're asking questions, try to identify consensus answers, not the answer you want to hear. An example of a consensus answer in this thread is "water changes." Everyone seems to be saying you need to do water changes more frequently, so I'm willing to bet that's good advice.

 

[Reefering1]

Thank you all for your help, Ill start doing water changes weekly.

It would be pretty easy to aim that powerhead at the water's surface, get some strong agitation/ ripples going. Easy, fast and free- might make a immediate difference.
I also agree that the lighting appears dim.

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

Thank you all for your help, Ill start doing water changes weekly.

You got this! Keep asking for advice!

 

[Science/G]

Get a single dosing pump and start All for Reef. Keep your Nitrates between 5-20 and Phosphates .02 - .1 Maybe ditch your current lighting and invest in a better setup. 2 AI primes or a Reefi uno. 10% weekly water changes would help also.

 

[Zyk5280b]

I'm not sure why everyone is so keen on recommending to continue dosing. Your tank is young and coral load is very small. Gsp/zoa's are not huge consumers of alk and calcium where dosing right now would make a difference in there overall health. It may however be adding to many unnecessary trace elements, if you are not doing water changes there could be a build up. Minor swings in alk shouldn't cause zoa's or gsp to be that grumpy.

Couple other ideas - you could shut down your refuge, your phosphates have bottomed out and that can cause loss of color and if continued to bottom would lead to closing etc. maybe give phosfeed a go and see if there's a positive reactive from them. You maybe over filtering the tank so to speak. Zoa's and GSP should bounce back within a week or so once they get some phosphates in them.

GSP could be agitated by your...tank lots of sand sifter fish and shrimp. They don't like getting covered with sand or ran over all the time by shrimp. Maybe try them up on the rockwork or off the sand bed? I do agree with others your tank would be a bit better off with a few more pieces of rock in there.

Weird one that causes browning: check your heater/tank temperature. If that's swinging too low before the heater picks back up

Salinity drift will also cause GSP to not be too thrilled as well.

 

[jabberwock]

If you want to quit, then quit. It does not appear to be going well. Your tank is young, nothing you can't fix, but if you don't enjoy it, don't carry on. My 2 cents.

 

[Faurek]

This is what I believe would help you, first thing, dump a lot of ceramic in that refugium, you don't seem to have a lot of filtration, as in place for bacteria and that is one reason your water seems cloudy, that aquarium hasn't figured itself and won't like that, big load needs big biological filtration. Other very important thing, lower that alk to around 7, you don't have an SPS farm, you don't need very high alk, the ocean doesn't have high alk and is the best coral farm. These are the two biggest things I notice more in your tank. And don't dose ANYTHING, your tank is not in need of dosing. Do some water changes.