Help!!!

[Jamie_4544]

Hey guys,


I’ve been recommended to post on this site by a very good friend, who suggested I give Randy a shout.


I’m not new to reefing by any means, but I’m completely losing the will to live with my new Reefer 350 setup . I’ll try to give as much detail as possible.


A few weeks ago, I picked up a Reefer 350 with all the equipment for just £350. It was in pretty decent condition, so I thought I’d grabbed a bargain.


The previous owner also offered me around 25kg of rock that had been left outside after the tank was shut down. It had completely dried out. Knowing how expensive rock is these days, I didn’t think twice and took it.


This is probably where I made my first mistake.


I used the rock without curing it and glued/scaped everything ready for the tank to be filled. I then filled the tank completely with RO water and mixed the salt directly in the tank. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have done this, but everything initially looked fine once the system was running.


I brought the salinity up carefully over a couple of days to 1.026, with the temperature at 26°C.


Over the next few days I added Fritz TurboStart 9 and transferred some livestock over to help kick-start the cycle. Everything initially seemed fine.


Then, over the following week, a bacteria bloom from hell appeared.


I’ve now been battling it for around two weeks and just cannot seem to shift it. I’ve added a UV steriliser, but even after running that, the water remains cloudy.


The strange thing is that I’m still getting:


● Ammonia: 0


● Nitrite: 0


● Nitrate: 0


I’m starting to question whether those readings are actually telling me what I think they are.


And now comes the really worrying part…


I’ve noticed what looks like calcification building up all over the glass. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remove, so I tested calcium and alkalinity.


Calcium: 600+ — completely off the scale/unreadable
Alkalinity: 20.0 dKH — also extremely high


I have not dosed any calcium, alkalinity or other supplements. The only thing I’ve added to the system is Fritz bacteria.


The system is going to be FOWLR, so I’m not trying to maintain reef-level calcium/alkalinity either.


The really strange thing is that my salinity is still consistently reading 1.026, even after checking it with multiple refractometers .


At this point, I’m honestly not sure what I’ve done wrong.


I’m currently changing the filter floss regularly and running the UV in the hope that the bloom will eventually clear, but it just doesn’t seem to be improving.


The fish are still behaving completely normally, eating well and showing no obvious signs of distress.


Could the dried-out rock that had been sitting outside be responsible for any of this? Could it be releasing something that is causing the extremely high calcium/alkalinity and bacterial bloom?


Any advice or suggestions would be massively appreciated!


And sorry for the long post — I just wanted to include as much information as possible. I’m happy to answer any questions and provide any other readings you think might help.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

How are you calibrating the refractometers?

Did you use tap water?

The bacterial bloom is likely from organic matter.

If there were any visible solids or cloudiness in the tested samples, alk and calcium may read higher than actual since calcium carbonate solids will dissolve in both tests.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[Peer.Boerner]

I’ve seen something similar after I too introduced uncured base rock into a new reef tank. I think the calcium carbonate dust from the rock caused the false calcium and Alk readings. Not sure about the rest. I hope all works out for you. I bet this is a short term thing.

 

[Dan_P]

Hey guys,


I’ve been recommended to post on this site by a very good friend, who suggested I give Randy a shout.


I’m not new to reefing by any means, but I’m completely losing the will to live with my new Reefer 350 setup . I’ll try to give as much detail as possible.


A few weeks ago, I picked up a Reefer 350 with all the equipment for just £350. It was in pretty decent condition, so I thought I’d grabbed a bargain.


The previous owner also offered me around 25kg of rock that had been left outside after the tank was shut down. It had completely dried out. Knowing how expensive rock is these days, I didn’t think twice and took it.


This is probably where I made my first mistake.


I used the rock without curing it and glued/scaped everything ready for the tank to be filled. I then filled the tank completely with RO water and mixed the salt directly in the tank. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have done this, but everything initially looked fine once the system was running.


I brought the salinity up carefully over a couple of days to 1.026, with the temperature at 26°C.


Over the next few days I added Fritz TurboStart 9 and transferred some livestock over to help kick-start the cycle. Everything initially seemed fine.


Then, over the following week, a bacteria bloom from hell appeared.


I’ve now been battling it for around two weeks and just cannot seem to shift it. I’ve added a UV steriliser, but even after running that, the water remains cloudy.


The strange thing is that I’m still getting:


● Ammonia: 0


● Nitrite: 0


● Nitrate: 0


I’m starting to question whether those readings are actually telling me what I think they are.


And now comes the really worrying part…


I’ve noticed what looks like calcification building up all over the glass. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remove, so I tested calcium and alkalinity.


Calcium: 600+ — completely off the scale/unreadable
Alkalinity: 20.0 dKH — also extremely high


I have not dosed any calcium, alkalinity or other supplements. The only thing I’ve added to the system is Fritz bacteria.


The system is going to be FOWLR, so I’m not trying to maintain reef-level calcium/alkalinity either.


The really strange thing is that my salinity is still consistently reading 1.026, even after checking it with multiple refractometers .


At this point, I’m honestly not sure what I’ve done wrong.


I’m currently changing the filter floss regularly and running the UV in the hope that the bloom will eventually clear, but it just doesn’t seem to be improving.


The fish are still behaving completely normally, eating well and showing no obvious signs of distress.


Could the dried-out rock that had been sitting outside be responsible for any of this? Could it be releasing something that is causing the extremely high calcium/alkalinity and bacterial bloom?


Any advice or suggestions would be massively appreciated!


And sorry for the long post — I just wanted to include as much information as possible. I’m happy to answer any questions and provide any other readings you think might help.

WOW, what a way to join R2R, but welcome!

The high calcium and alkalinity may be causing calcium carbonate crystallization both on the glass and in the water, the latter giving rise to very cloudy water. I would expect this to consist of very small particles with a slow settling rate and not filterable. The catch is would this phenomenon last a week? It is possibly part of the problem but why dud it happen? Crappy salt mix or very high salinity? Fish seem OK so maybe salinity reading is correct. Randy suggest confirming salinity reading.

The unwashed used rock is certainly a possible source of enough organic material that could feed bacteria in the water quite some time.A sever bloom might suffocate the fish, but the fish are OK, so maybe the bacteria bloom at this point is only a nuisance. The lack of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate is OK if you have a heterotrophic bacteria bloom. The flaw in this idea is that a heterotrophic bloom is likely to have a rise in ammonia or nitrate if the added TurboStart was any good.

This leads me to favor the notion that your system has a chemical bloom of calcium carbonate rather than bacteria. Not sure how to test this conjecture.

 

[Jamie_4544]

How are you calibrating the refractometers?

Did you use tap water?

The bacterial bloom is likely from organic matter.

If there were any visible solids or cloudiness in the tested samples, alk and calcium may read higher than actual since calcium carbonate solids will dissolve in both tests.

Hi Randy nice to meet you!

I use 0 TDS RO to calibrate. I also have another tank running to take reference aswell.

I used Spotless water in the UK they provide a 0 TDS supply of water.

I come downstairs this morning and I literally can’t see inside the tank now very worried about the fish. Lots of oxygen going in now.

I should also add I put some media and filter from my established tank yesterday to see how that goes down…. Obviously worse now it’s even more clouded!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

While calibration with ro/di is not optimal and is inherently inaccurate for many of the types of refractometers reefers use (they are not made for seawater) it is not likely off by enough to explain the high alk and calcium.

That may be from loose particles or some other reason related to the rock.

One useful experiment is to take some tank water, and if you can see the cloudiness in glass, add a few drops of vinegar to see if the cloudiness disappears. If it does, it was calcium carbonate. If it does not, it is probably a bacteria bloom (or maybe both).

 

[Jotabe]

Once you have the salinity calibration corrected, after a small water change to you see an improvement? FYI: after years, I gave up on my refractometer and went with a Tropic Marin Hydrometer / cheap poly graduate cylinder ... a little bit of a pain to use, but more peace of mind.