Been a while since I've updated this.
The fist and easiest thing I wanted to try was just raising nitrates. I bought a bottle of Brightwell NeoNitro. While I was waiting for the bottle to be delivered, I noticed my return flow was super low...like barely flowing. So I decided to pull my return pump...it has been a few months...and give it a scrub.
Normally when I pull the pump I pull it apart and give it a good scrub with a toothbrush. I haven't bothered with the tubing as it's a major pain to pull apart and cleaning the pump alone has always gotten flow back. This time I pulled the tubing as well. I should have taken a picture but I didn't unfortunately...the tubing was 95% clogged with white snot!
Without scrubbing, I dropped the pump and tubing in a bucket of citric acid and let it run for an hour. The snot wasn't even changed, flow was still slow, but the bucket stank really bad. So I pulled the pump and tubing apart, cleaned it all with Qtips to clear the snot and re-ran in CA again. Needless to say flow was back to normal.
I also took the time to pull my reactor and heater and run them in CA as well to clean them out well. Refilled with fresh carbon and got the tank running again.
The flow was increased so much I had to top off water because the level in the display went up.
Corals looked good, and then I dosed nitrates to 3ppm. I tested last night and....no nitrates!
So I went a step farther. Pulled my media racks..which had been pulled 2 days ago....and they were covered in slime. So I gave them a bath. I then scraped the glass and went to town on every inch of sand I could find and basted it over and over.
After a few hours the tank cleared...changed floss atleast 6 times. I dosed again with nitrates to 3ppm. Plan to test tonight.
If there's more of this bacterial snot somewhere i don't know where it could be hiding. I certainly got the major mass of it anyway.
I will report back with test results...
The fist and easiest thing I wanted to try was just raising nitrates. I bought a bottle of Brightwell NeoNitro. While I was waiting for the bottle to be delivered, I noticed my return flow was super low...like barely flowing. So I decided to pull my return pump...it has been a few months...and give it a scrub.
Normally when I pull the pump I pull it apart and give it a good scrub with a toothbrush. I haven't bothered with the tubing as it's a major pain to pull apart and cleaning the pump alone has always gotten flow back. This time I pulled the tubing as well. I should have taken a picture but I didn't unfortunately...the tubing was 95% clogged with white snot!
Without scrubbing, I dropped the pump and tubing in a bucket of citric acid and let it run for an hour. The snot wasn't even changed, flow was still slow, but the bucket stank really bad. So I pulled the pump and tubing apart, cleaned it all with Qtips to clear the snot and re-ran in CA again. Needless to say flow was back to normal.
I also took the time to pull my reactor and heater and run them in CA as well to clean them out well. Refilled with fresh carbon and got the tank running again.
The flow was increased so much I had to top off water because the level in the display went up.
Corals looked good, and then I dosed nitrates to 3ppm. I tested last night and....no nitrates!
So I went a step farther. Pulled my media racks..which had been pulled 2 days ago....and they were covered in slime. So I gave them a bath. I then scraped the glass and went to town on every inch of sand I could find and basted it over and over.
After a few hours the tank cleared...changed floss atleast 6 times. I dosed again with nitrates to 3ppm. Plan to test tonight.
If there's more of this bacterial snot somewhere i don't know where it could be hiding. I certainly got the major mass of it anyway.
I will report back with test results...