This is quite long winded, sorry in advance, and thank you so much if you make it to the end.
Tank began in may 2019 as a 15 gallon desktop aquarium. I cycled it fishless with Dr. Tims and saw the usual ammonia, nitrite and nitrate spikes, then only nitrates at which point i added my CUC (dwarf ceriths, nassarius, and 3 astria snails) followed by my red firefish a week later, as awell as a cleaner shrimp a few months after that. Corals that were added in late november/december were 2 small heads of frogspawn, and 2 small red mushrooms. All was well until christmas day when i came home to find the firefish stuck to the filter intake (dead) I removed the fish, found no signs of sickness, thought he must have gotten spooked at night while i was at work and hurt himself somehow. Did a large water change and after this noticed that nitrate was very low, and it would continue to drop to zero, so i started feeding heavier (pe mysis frozen)
January 2020. I set up my 20 long display, with 20 long sump, and moved everything from the 15 including water, rock, filter media (seachem matrix), and sand over to the 20 system. It stayed like this with the cleaner shrimp, snails, and 3 corals until last thursday (feb 13 2020) when i added 2 small (<1.25 inch) oscellaris clowns. Did my testing on saturday (feb 15 2020) and found ammonia at .5ppm (api test kit) nitrite and nitrate both undetectable.
Sunday morning, ammonia was back to zero, but so were NO2 and NO3. Ordered a red seat NO2 NO3 kit because my faith in api is wavering. Also saw a rather large brown hair algae and i think diatom bloom the same day when i woke up in the afternoon. It seemed like it had taken hold overnight.
Tested again today with the red sea kit, and NO2 and NO3 are still undetectable and ammonia is back up to .25ppm (API kit), algae bloom is still present, corals and fish seem quite happy regardless.
What i see is that algae is present, so its getting nitrogen from somewhere, or its possibly uptaking the ammonia faster than the bio filter can, maybe the same for nitrates?
Where should i go from here? im stumped, TIA.
Tank began in may 2019 as a 15 gallon desktop aquarium. I cycled it fishless with Dr. Tims and saw the usual ammonia, nitrite and nitrate spikes, then only nitrates at which point i added my CUC (dwarf ceriths, nassarius, and 3 astria snails) followed by my red firefish a week later, as awell as a cleaner shrimp a few months after that. Corals that were added in late november/december were 2 small heads of frogspawn, and 2 small red mushrooms. All was well until christmas day when i came home to find the firefish stuck to the filter intake (dead) I removed the fish, found no signs of sickness, thought he must have gotten spooked at night while i was at work and hurt himself somehow. Did a large water change and after this noticed that nitrate was very low, and it would continue to drop to zero, so i started feeding heavier (pe mysis frozen)
January 2020. I set up my 20 long display, with 20 long sump, and moved everything from the 15 including water, rock, filter media (seachem matrix), and sand over to the 20 system. It stayed like this with the cleaner shrimp, snails, and 3 corals until last thursday (feb 13 2020) when i added 2 small (<1.25 inch) oscellaris clowns. Did my testing on saturday (feb 15 2020) and found ammonia at .5ppm (api test kit) nitrite and nitrate both undetectable.
Sunday morning, ammonia was back to zero, but so were NO2 and NO3. Ordered a red seat NO2 NO3 kit because my faith in api is wavering. Also saw a rather large brown hair algae and i think diatom bloom the same day when i woke up in the afternoon. It seemed like it had taken hold overnight.
Tested again today with the red sea kit, and NO2 and NO3 are still undetectable and ammonia is back up to .25ppm (API kit), algae bloom is still present, corals and fish seem quite happy regardless.
What i see is that algae is present, so its getting nitrogen from somewhere, or its possibly uptaking the ammonia faster than the bio filter can, maybe the same for nitrates?
Where should i go from here? im stumped, TIA.