To give full context I will try to give the full story as short as possible.
My tank was thriving and splitting (lps and softies) but my zoanthids started to not be as open. Water changes were not lowering nitrates and there were no metals in my tank (I ran higher nutrients (30-40 ppm Nitrate)) so I decided to buy Dr.G's nitrate remover to lower my nitrates. I went on a business trip and forgot to take it out so when I came back and tested, I bottomed out and started to get dinos. Luckily I caught it early, did a 4-day blackout and it was gone. But because I bottomed out too quickly from 40 ppm to 3 ppm in a few days, my coral started to recede. Mostly my euphyllia. I tried increasing my nitrates and phosphates by feeding more and dosing Red Sea Aminos almost daily (heavily). This elevated my nutrients to go up but then I started to get really bad green hair algae in my tank. (Which is weird because before I bottomed out, I didn't have that issue.) So I was stuck in a situation where I needed to get my nutrient levels up so my corals can go back to the environment they are used to but the GHA was soaking it up making the situation worse.
Things that I tried to do in order to get rid of the GHA were: Vibrant, add a cleanup crew, lots of manual removals, and now chaeto in a reactor in one of my AIO chambers that's melting for some reason! I have significantly fewer algae but at this point, I considered starting over.
I currently have a small mystery wrasse, green Chromis, pajama cardinal, and a clownfish in there along with the cleanup crew and coral. I moved all my euphyllia and higher-end mushrooms in my 15 gallon anenome tank temporarily to give the coral time to recover. It has been a month or two and they have recovered. That tank tests around 15-25 ppm on nitrates while the bigger one runs at around 10.
Right now I have an aquascape for my 50 gallons in a bin with a heater, powerhead, and two fishes for a constant ammonia source. (Before adding the fish I made sure cycle it once with a dead shrimp) but even though I used Dr.Tims, Fritze 900, and been dosing Microbacter to give a more diverse group of bacteria to cycle the tank and giving a carbon dose, I am experiencing a huge bacterial bloom in the bucket. I started cycling it on December 8th and I am still receiving ammonia and nitrite after a month despite putting live nitrifying bacteria in the dry rock bin.
At this point, I would like to replace all the rocks in the display to get rid of the hair algae after the rock in the bin has been cycled. How do I ensure that I don't run to this issue again, how can I ensure that my fish in my main display doesn't suffer, and how can I remove all the hair algae engulfing the few zoa frags I have in there to not reintroduce the algae in the tank. I need to replace everything all in one shot as the spores will just travel to the new rock.
My current plan is to wait til the new rock is completely cycled, drain 5 gallons of water into a bucket, put all the fish in the bucket temporarily with a heater and power head, take out an additional 10 gallons from the display in 2 more 5-gallon buckets to put all the old rock in, and then with the remaining water siphon the entire sandbed to pick up any nuisance algae on the sandbed, drain the back chambers, scrub all the algae off in the back chamber and put the biomedia I have in a bucket, and then clean all powerheads, return pumps, tubing, skimmer, etc. before putting 100% new saltwater with the new cycled rock and then dose liquid nitrates to 5 ppm nitrate and 0.02 ppm phosphate so Im not at 0 and return all fish in the tank. What can go wrong? What did I miss?
Thanks for reading all of this. I know it's like an entire essay but I tried to give as many necessary details.
My tank was thriving and splitting (lps and softies) but my zoanthids started to not be as open. Water changes were not lowering nitrates and there were no metals in my tank (I ran higher nutrients (30-40 ppm Nitrate)) so I decided to buy Dr.G's nitrate remover to lower my nitrates. I went on a business trip and forgot to take it out so when I came back and tested, I bottomed out and started to get dinos. Luckily I caught it early, did a 4-day blackout and it was gone. But because I bottomed out too quickly from 40 ppm to 3 ppm in a few days, my coral started to recede. Mostly my euphyllia. I tried increasing my nitrates and phosphates by feeding more and dosing Red Sea Aminos almost daily (heavily). This elevated my nutrients to go up but then I started to get really bad green hair algae in my tank. (Which is weird because before I bottomed out, I didn't have that issue.) So I was stuck in a situation where I needed to get my nutrient levels up so my corals can go back to the environment they are used to but the GHA was soaking it up making the situation worse.
Things that I tried to do in order to get rid of the GHA were: Vibrant, add a cleanup crew, lots of manual removals, and now chaeto in a reactor in one of my AIO chambers that's melting for some reason! I have significantly fewer algae but at this point, I considered starting over.
I currently have a small mystery wrasse, green Chromis, pajama cardinal, and a clownfish in there along with the cleanup crew and coral. I moved all my euphyllia and higher-end mushrooms in my 15 gallon anenome tank temporarily to give the coral time to recover. It has been a month or two and they have recovered. That tank tests around 15-25 ppm on nitrates while the bigger one runs at around 10.
Right now I have an aquascape for my 50 gallons in a bin with a heater, powerhead, and two fishes for a constant ammonia source. (Before adding the fish I made sure cycle it once with a dead shrimp) but even though I used Dr.Tims, Fritze 900, and been dosing Microbacter to give a more diverse group of bacteria to cycle the tank and giving a carbon dose, I am experiencing a huge bacterial bloom in the bucket. I started cycling it on December 8th and I am still receiving ammonia and nitrite after a month despite putting live nitrifying bacteria in the dry rock bin.
At this point, I would like to replace all the rocks in the display to get rid of the hair algae after the rock in the bin has been cycled. How do I ensure that I don't run to this issue again, how can I ensure that my fish in my main display doesn't suffer, and how can I remove all the hair algae engulfing the few zoa frags I have in there to not reintroduce the algae in the tank. I need to replace everything all in one shot as the spores will just travel to the new rock.
My current plan is to wait til the new rock is completely cycled, drain 5 gallons of water into a bucket, put all the fish in the bucket temporarily with a heater and power head, take out an additional 10 gallons from the display in 2 more 5-gallon buckets to put all the old rock in, and then with the remaining water siphon the entire sandbed to pick up any nuisance algae on the sandbed, drain the back chambers, scrub all the algae off in the back chamber and put the biomedia I have in a bucket, and then clean all powerheads, return pumps, tubing, skimmer, etc. before putting 100% new saltwater with the new cycled rock and then dose liquid nitrates to 5 ppm nitrate and 0.02 ppm phosphate so Im not at 0 and return all fish in the tank. What can go wrong? What did I miss?
Thanks for reading all of this. I know it's like an entire essay but I tried to give as many necessary details.
