large aquarium water changes....

[Neptune 555]

I upgraded from a 75 gallon to a 180 gallon. My main concern about the upgrade was falling behind in Water Changes would be disastrous and I would not have the ability to catch up... as I can only do 30 gallons at a time. SOOOO when I designed my tank I purchased a sump that would provide me space for Chaeto and other other algaes to help maintain water quality.

My nitrate is about 20... the tank is 6 months old. I do feed heavily live food, reef frenzy, algae. I am doing water changes 30 gallons every 2 or 3 weekend.

Why is my sump not producing chaeto or algae to help reduce nitrates? My sump looks dirty but I am holding out cleaning it as I want extra pods for my soon to be purchased mandarin. I even added the kessill LED light to the tank on the setting for algae growth. It looks kinda purple.

Can you share how your sumps look and how you clean them and use them for nutrient control? I can't imagine doing more water changes. My chaeto is not growing and my algae looks slimy?

thanks!

 

[Deep dive coral]

You may have too much flow. Or not enough flow if the cheeto is in a separate chamber.

 

[inktomi]

I have about 280 total gallons, and also do about 30 gallon water changes, maybe once a month or so. Gotta love those brute trashcans. I should probably go do a water change....

 

[Deep dive coral]

Can you post pics of your current sump so we can see if anything jumps out. Also what are you using to test your parameters with?

 

[Dubs83]

I have a 300g tank and do 55g changes every three weeks. Picked a norwesco 55g tank with tractor supply. Found out they do match online prices, so I suggest you look around online and call ahead and give you the internet price.

 

[User]

I upgraded from a 75 gallon to a 180 gallon. My main concern about the upgrade was falling behind in Water Changes would be disastrous and I would not have the ability to catch up... as I can only do 30 gallons at a time. SOOOO when I designed my tank I purchased a sump that would provide me space for Chaeto and other other algaes to help maintain water quality.

My nitrate is about 20... the tank is 6 months old. I do feed heavily live food, reef frenzy, algae. I am doing water changes 30 gallons every 2 or 3 weekend.

Why is my sump not producing chaeto or algae to help reduce nitrates? My sump looks dirty but I am holding out cleaning it as I want extra pods for my soon to be purchased mandarin. I even added the kessill LED light to the tank on the setting for algae growth. It looks kinda purple.

Can you share how your sumps look and how you clean them and use them for nutrient control? I can't imagine doing more water changes. My chaeto is not growing and my algae looks slimy?

thanks!

There are two nutrients that are essential for growth of plants- nitrate and phosphate. you need to check your phosphate levels in addition, and if you really want to grow cheato to reduce the nitrate, then dosing phosphate will let it grow and pull out the nitrate.

i have a 300 g system and do 50 gallons WC every 3-4 weeks. i plumbed my sump with a hardline to my 55g mixing barrel- pull a valve, it drains, hit a switch, NSW goes in. if i hadnt done that, and was pulling water out by siphon, id never do it.

check your phosphate. if you really want to kick the chaeto into overdrive with a 20ppm nitrate level, your looking for a phosphate level around 0.15ppm. thisll let cheato grow a little shy of 'robustly' but will hopefully keep the ratios good so that itll continue to grow. if it goes too fast, itll exhaust the food, die, then dump all those nutrients back into the water as it breaks down.

its a very fine balance to begin with. it takes some time to find the balance.

regarding the pods- if you think you have enough, you dont. buy another bottle and get them super established. look into growing phytoplankton and using that to establish a separate colony of pods that you can then dose into the tank. i have a little info on that in my thread (im building v2 of my PhytoPod farm) but theres a lot of info in the forums). Theres nothing wrong with having a fat mandarin, but if your pods are low, then having one waste away is a terrible thing.

and finally- if you dont need to grow chaeto- then dont. if your nutrient levels dont support it, thats a way of raising a tank too. not everyone needs to grow chaeto, or wants to. but if you lose the chaeto, then phyto and pods are definitely a thing to look into for your mandarin

good luck!