New Tank Parameters question. pH on the rise, Ammonia on the rise, only CUC?

[LanM]

Hello fellas,
I'm trying to get a handle on reef chemistry in this 8 gallon system, 7.5lbs of live rock, only half of hwich had considerable coralline algae.

I was past the point where ammonia was up, nirtrites were up, then nitrates rose, then 3 days ago everything was testing beautifully.

No fish in the tank. I added 2 small hermits, and 2 small snails 3 days ago. As of yesterday, I had not gotten diatom bloom yet. I had not been running my white light, only the blue and hyperviolet. The CUC has

Today I checked the tank about a half hour ago, and there are small gree growths on the glass, which I've yet looked to identify. I tested the water, and these are the results:

pH: 8.4+ very deep purple.
Ammonia: 0.25, chartreuse on the api scale.
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates:0

I'm not sure if that is cause for alarm? Should I take the hermits and snails out?
I've included a pic of what started growing today.

Thanks very much for any help. I'm reading up on pH, but mostly getting the description of its effects and to add baking soda or vinegar. I figured I'd ask in the event it necessitated a trip to the LFS, I wanted them to still be open.

Thanks again in advance,
Lan

 

[jsker]

I would suggest another test kit for you Nitrates and Phosphates.

The tank is moving into the ugly stage of the cycling. Patients

 

[LanM]

Thanks Jsker. Is there a test kit that is much better regarded for those?

Should I remove the CUC?

I guess I'm a bit overly concerned as I have to leave for 2-3 days and the only assistance I will have is a friend to top off. I belive running tests will be beyond the scope of her abilities.

 

[JoshH]

1+ on a couple more accurate test kits, but other than that your cycle is doing it's thing and your tank is going through the usual ugly stage everyone has to deal with. Red Sea, elos or salifert test kits are all excellent and relatively easy. If you are really concerned you can always do a large water change before you leave but not entirely necessary and might stall your cycle. No real need to remove the CUC unless ammonia is getting high

 

[LanM]

Thanks Josh,
I'd rather not stall the cycle. I had read the cycling a new tank thread, and just hadn't put the chemical changes into perspective in the interim. I saw the tank doing what it should, and then saw the pH increasing so high I didn't know if disaster was looming.

Jsker, I don't have a phosphate test kit as of yet. Did you mean pH, or should I have a phosphate test kit now?

 

[LanM]

Just ordered Salifert phosphate, nitrate, and kh/alk test kits.

 

[jsker]

Just ordered Salifert phosphate, nitrate, and kh/alk test kits.

Those are good kits, you get a more accurate reading. You will need a Ca and Mg kit also for the future. Go entrer in the ELOS test kit contest and see if you can win them. Those are good kits along with Salifert, Aquaforest and Hanna

 

[brandon429]

the .25 is a neat misread continuance here, from the brief pics posted that's a zero ammonia setup. You can tell by just that caption because the time it takes for that algae to transfer to, adhere, then replicate off the glass is longer than a cycling time for ammonia compliance and it also signifies hitchhiking from live rock (stated) which is also full of bacteria, which would eat that .25 right up if it weren't for api. I can see the stated coralline in the backround, that's ammonia hungry rock for sure.

the ammonia should be increasing, compounding daily if that system isn't able to keep up. the classic holding .25 indicates a misread for that param at least, in my opinion.

of all things posted, the .25 is the neatest to trace out and it doesn't line up with the snippet pic posted given all animals are accounted for and not rotting in the rocks.


you can rip clean this tank right now without delay and be much better off. post a full tank shot

in an 8 gallon system, a nearly complete water change and sandbed rinsing is the most powerful fountain of youth you could employ. weekly water changes of about half or close to that would streamline all dosing, eliminate it in fact, and you could grow any coral you wanted in there. nanos are so simple


tweaking with just the water is certainly fun to some, opposite of the take control mode. don't think that's the only way though... a nano gives you the chance to not even need to measure any of the params posted, solely because what a weekly water change regimen can do. you have the option to guide that algae out by a cleaning, not try and starve it out slowly, can choose your mode either way. both have benefits.

if water testing and param adjustment is not the way you want to reef, you can instantly not do it that way if you like. only a nano offers this flexibility but its at the cost of weekly water change work whereas water tweaking can help you avoid that.


don't farm algae, keep it wiped out until tank matures.


You have a skip cycle reef. The rocks were fully loaded

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

FWIW, pH will never get too high without dosing high pH additives.

 

[LanM]

I just tested the water again, not that the API kit is very accurate as I’ve been told. I read earlier that it is not uncommon for pH to be higher during the day due to the light cycle.

My pH has come down to about 8,
ammonia still reading .25 (now understood to be wholly unreliable),
nitrites are 0, nitrates 0.

Jsker, thanks for the tip on the elos contest, I’ll have to look up how to enter…not that I have a record of being very lucky, ha.
Randy, thanks for the info. I assumed as much, but its been quite some time since I've taken a bio or chemistry class...even though I was a chem major for a year....time fades everything.
Brandon,

Today is day 14, first day of diatom bloom. I have not changed the water yet. I did intentionally buy the seasoned live rock in hopes of marshalling the cycle along faster than a snail’s pace. Nothing dead in the tank yet.

Thank you for the reply and the info. When you said:

“you can rip clean this tank right now without delay and be much better off. post a full tank shot”;

Does that mean you suggest to empty the tank, or just scrub the glass? I picked up a glass magnet a few hours ago, and ran it on the front glass. I’ll do the sides shortly, I stopped to reply to the thread, snap a tank shot, and test my water again.

By suggesting to change out half or more of my water now, does that mean that I’ll start the cycle over? I’ve been told to leave it alone by other members. I know there’s certainly more than one way to skin a cat, and a 4 gallon water change is nothing hard if it were the right thing to do.

I’d actually like to understand the differences in each philosophy, pros and cons if you don’t mind elaborating. I do understand that a water change effectively removes everything, and that method doesn’t require an equilibrium as the contents are being exchanged more frequently than byproducts can accumulate. Is that always so, or can conditions exist that swing the parameters well in advance of a weekly water change? Even if I choose to go the au natural way, knowing your position and the potential benefits are interesting. Larger water changes are cheaper than new fish, especially when I picked up a rodi system and salt this week. I do want to manage a tank properly as I’ll be transitioning to the 29 gallon biocube I bought this week. Not sure how fast the transition will be as I’m going to take my time with a rock wall and aquascaping, as well as equipment selection.

I’m attaching a couple pics of the tank just taken.

 

[brandon429]

Want to link you something I’ve worked hard to build as deep clean examples

This will save your nano one day
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445


*It's confusing bc your tank is new, but your live rock portions are not, and they are the backbone of your nitrification system so far. So that thread is about working with sand, and aged rock, to make them clean and not lose bac, that's why it applies here in my opinion.

The live rock component you have is enough to run the whole nano. The dry is incidental. When it catches up in two weeks, that's redundant and good. I hope that frames why I would recommend such action on your early tank. the engine is a hundred years old but the body all nice shiny ha

My recent rip clean is last page, from this weekend.

Right now your tank looks as it should. I get the same algae after twelve yrs running you have once I let the system go without cleaning much as I travel lots. I know I can catch it up later

After getting back home and rip cleaning back to zero, tank lives clean-endlessly. It will make your nano live forever, large tankers would not have 90% of the enduring tank invasions they post if they had the same ability to access the tank. They must do work in increments, via testing and reactions...It’s just a physicality aspect you can exploit so that parameter testing never causes problems, if needed.

The rip clean can be ran as a fixative, or as preventative on a perfectly normal reef. We dissect and show repeatably how to control a cycle, and we show that work in others tanks online which would really reveal weaknesses in the practice if there were any. we would be losing tanks, not restoring. Detritus and waste is the sole risk of causing problems. I usually don’t even submerge my corals and rocks in water during my chnages, they’ll go half an hour in the cold air on most runs while I work on the tank, like when tides recede...a lil nature training.

The downside to nano rip cleaning is it’s a cheat, and it’s work heavy. I’m ok w that

Being able to run a reef without this cleaning, using natural arrangements to handle filtration and balance, is the ideal. If someone can master that, they’ll never need to part out a nano

Sometimes it’s fun to practice a skip cycle cleaning before your tank is packed with corals too, good time to try. Mine is packed to the hilt and I still run them occasionally.

A rip clean will not affect your specific type of cycle, it would in a total dry rock system during the early phases. Your bac is set and locked.
its fully true these reefs go through stages, all we do is show how to opt out of them if you want. They go through stages in the -hands off- mode, not in the hands on mode. We garden these reefs into decades old coral machines with the locus of control right in our hands, central, never an outside anything or a param to determine the course of the tank.


I just wish large tankers had it so easy. That looks like caribsea wet pack live sand special grade...if so that’s even more bac to the mix/all good

 

[brandon429]

one other detail

With that perspective pic, your live rock portions are of the highest diversity mr yellow sponge and those are hungry rocks...they’re ready for some water changes, some glass scrubbing, all so you can begin light reefing with a couple cheap frags so that feeding gets into the mix and sustenance results for it all. That is ready hungry live rock with feeding animals a waitin’

That’s a skip cycle setup. It’s totally ok to have it sit an arbitrary number of days but in truth it wants some feed now, and with feed comes cleaning and guiding and gardening and activity, not any type of waiting.

*its ok if you do wait in the traditional sense

I’m only pointing out the actions matched to the animals you have brought into that tank. It’s to free you for action if you want to make some trial cleaning runs.

Though your sandbed is new and doesn’t need cleaned, the big water change and glass wiping to remove the algae is fully indicated here. Buy some cheap zoanthid frags and start her up. The presence of a frag and some light feed and water changes will cycle your dry rock portions much faster anyway. the powerful bright lighting is bringing about algae not due to a param issue or being in a stage, but because parrotfish and turtles and raspers have to be supported on a reef and the algae belongs there. We are just guiding it out since we don’t have grazer balance yet in a new tank


When vendors set up insta reefs at MACNA they get a tank, move over live rocks and corals and fish, and go. If they weren’t already doing skip cycles we would look like rogue criminals doing rip cleanings but my reef would still get them anyway- nobody is taking away my fountain of youth!

That was true what you said, many ways to success

The traditional ways work for a nano but they allow outlier actions to take place since they're all water-only adjustments. They're a waiting game, always.


When parameter adjustment reefing works, the keeper doesn't have to expend effort like water changes and that's an ideal always agreed. If this reef is destined to be purely a top shelf $$ sps only setup, I can see how less changes and more ion supports might apply. That does not apply to 90% of corals in our hobby, including many sps, they're fine with weekly drift and return which simply is an easier way to reef if avail.

My method stems only from one event: loss of a three year nano in about 2004 due to invasion after realizing I had used zero internal locus of control to make it otherwise. If I was truly fed up, done, 36 mos lost, what would have to change to never go through that again? Found it.

 

[LanM]

Brandon, thank you very much for the info.
I'm going to read your links, and failiarize myself with the cleaning method you suggested.

By scrubbing the tank, do you mean with just a cloth, or chemically cleaning the glass?

 

[brandon429]

I use a wet paper towel of peroxide to upwipe mine after water is drained down. any spot of algae on the rocks are exposed, they might get a drop of peroxide on site, or a knife tip scrape just depending. micro gardening in any way one sees fit.

your sandbed really isn't bad now, that big changer might be better suited to your first cyano challenge or dino infestation going off todays known headaches...a simple total drain down to bottom leaves the glass exposed for wet towel wiping. ive used tap water paper towel too its nbd. that guiding out/gone is so important so the expected new algae does not seed nor anchor into the system.

after refill the tank proceeds as norm but algae free. I find that if we stay busy up front, it guides off in time as purple coralline and coral covers everything and excludes algae. my own personal workload is nonexistent...once a year I rip clean, maybe twice in a year if im bad neglectful depending.

also, this system doesn't exclude any other approach its just a reset button. the new ways emerging that people like to battle invasions are less work heavy and water wasting. they're more about tuning through nutrient adjustments, increasings in some cases, and about using pods and alternate bacterial strains to battle invasions naturally, that's our evolution in place up from this cavemanwoman technique of rip cleaning.
I like to see nano tanks as having the best of both worlds, do the new stuff in hopes of earning a hands off tank, and old school guide/reset when needed should the new not balance out so well.

this cleaning time is also critical learning time in my opinion. I learned over the years that each time I drained my tank the coralline never had the algae, it was always on the glass or the interstices or the coral skeletons, where it was allowed it grew, even when params were fine, which explained a lot of the confusion Id been reading in algae challenge threads of the day.

I also never saw anyone present a brain coral with algae directly on the flesh in the center. around the septal edges where tissue withdrew, yes, but never on the actual mouth as an anchor point. zoanthids don't count; they have substrate inclusions in their mats and we see algae and zos together all the time due to that. Living sps in my reef never gets algae on the polyp, nor hydnophora, nor bubble corals etc etc. coral flesh is the best bio excluder for algae Ive ever seen, coralline is second.

even that amazing Netflix story about loss of the coral reefs showed this important facet. as they time-lapsed the reef loss, the algae showed up NOT due to nutrient changes but simply loss of sps flesh where temps killed them and left the open skeleton as new real estate, without coralline or coral there to do the work. bioexclusion was all over that show, I soaked it up and will apply it to my tank. in my opinion, this first wiping/guiding is the start of that road to internal locus of control.

that clue led me to packing coral into my nano and leaving literally no where but the glass for the natural algae to grow, so easy to guide out there in my opinion. nice to meet you!
B

 

[LanM]

Nice to meet you as well Brandon.

Funny thing, is after using a simple magnetic scrubber last night then thoroughly washing the filter floss and bag of purigen, today I see no further growth.

Would you still suggest a water change at this point?
I'm itching to get fish into the tank, but at the same time it cannot support my current purchases of an orchid dottyback, phantom clown, and a davinci clown.

 

[brandon429]

for fish I like to follow humblefish's fallow method. that 76 days is critical on a few fronts: guaranteed cycle completion date, for all surfaces, and its ich prevention and its also good discipline habits. In my opinion any fish that meet the fallow period and are suited to your tank's volume/feed etc are good to go, I don't work with fish too much as my tanks are way to small for em.

The cleaning you did distributed the algae away from the glass and then some was caught in the filter and exported, nothing wrong with that at all. There's not much you could do wrong as you choose your practice modes at this phase, these extra options are just nice tools to have as things grow and mature and evolve, we can access it at anytime without consequence. I didn't see any real big challenges anyway from the macro pics, only the closeups had the invader so you aren't being massed in any critical way that's for sure. a nice sharp reef in the making here, well done.

 

[LanM]

I'm going to also do a partial water change if it won't set me back, and as you seem to be extremely informed on the subject, coupled with the fact that a water change and glass cleaning on this system takes less than 10 minutes it isn't much effort.

Should I scrub the live rock that doesn't have coralline algae? The vertical piece closest to the powerhead appears to have a worm of some sort on the backside, and a small glob of an unknown critter attached to the front.

 

[Bullnose]

That looks like some great live rock you got, and I like your rockscape. Hopefully those yellow sponges stick around. The water change will not set you back, if you're worried about it somehow stalling your cycle. There's no reason to put baking soda or any additive in your tank right now when you can just do a water change.

 

[brandon429]

yes in my opinion not any testing is required for a long time here beyond salinity and temp. literally that much of a cut. this is borderline offensive thing to post in a chem forum aware but truly just offering a total reduction to basics as a pure headache cure.

Those individual params are well-worked in the powerful sps aquarium of high demand. any type of mixed coral nano is fine on maybe half the water changed weekly for a while as a real minimal effort, and the params will follow in line because thousands of nanos already run that way and are posted.
we have a three year example of it right now at nano-reef.com, picos forum, only sticky in the forum. el fab's 50% weekly change out, huge sps growth per gallon.


learning how to control and boost/lower individual params is very beneficial I just thought it would be handy to frame that as turbo mode... but not basic production mode. its far easier to get the corals to grow just with heavy feeding and water change work as the basic start.

Yes I personally would kill off the algae as it grows lightly on the rocks, its a guiding process in my opinion. id peroxide dropper it outside of water occasionally just as needed, or dig up tufts with a knife a bit roughly as this reef matures, guiding by gentle force. nothing can take over your tank in that mode, though you're working a bit more as insurance

certainly not saying to throw out kits, but truly id offer to just run them and not make course changes. watch how their readings don't really alter the known outcome for a nano reef that is simply water changed, corals target fed, and work replaces detail param setting.
such a basic palette to work up from... I noticed the pH detailing etc seemed to always require some type of a rebound action- usually a buffer addition, then a counter correction to that, and was trying to curb that initial chasing approach.


I stayed out of reefing and into planted tanks a long time because I thought the param chasing had to be done

The truth is I never bought any other testers than those two as my tank isn't exclusively top shelf sps its a mix.

its true a water change cannot hurt your system because biofilm encasement already houses your working biofilter, those primo rocks. algae guiding out and good exchange practice is why a full or partial water change habit early on is ideal in my opinion, you'll see the reef shine and sparkle after them

 

[LanM]

Brandon, thanks for the reply.

Apologies for posting with such an elementary concern in the chem forum. Through my initial readings, the feeling of imminent doom resonated throughout my thought process given the parameter based methods I was reading about. It left me with the feeling that there is a minute margin for error.

I performed a water change just now, swapping out 5 gallons. Peroxide wiped the glass, rinsed the live rock liberally before putting it back in the tank.

When I first put the 2 purple pieces in the tank, they had no smell. Today was a bit fishy.

I guess I can get into the habit of a 5 gallon weekly water change as cheap insurance. Kicks up a heck of a sandstorm in that little tank. I was also reminded of the volume that my rather large arm displaces while placing the rock back in via a gentle waterfall of 78 degree saltwater on the feet.