Not giving up..but what then?

[KonradTO]

Hi all,
Long story short:
Started a 32g tank 8 months ago, since then:
Added macros in the dt
Added some fish
Got dino and cyano outbreak
Added more fish for nutrients
Added frags
Got GHA outbreak
Few frags died
Did some blackout witb UV on
GHA gone, more frags died, gha back on
Connected a 15g sump to the system with more macros to outcompete gha
Most of frags died, 2 clowns died of bacterial infection, most of snails disappear within few days
what the heck AM I SUPPOSED TO DO

When I remove manually gha they come back within a week. I have nitrates between 0 and 5 ppm, phosphates near 0 but hard to tell with my tests.
I also added a phosphate reactor with GFO and carbon mixed.
Some more details:
Viparspectra light at minimum (1:20)
No skimmer
All parameters in normal range but I start to not trust them, I will get an icp test to doublecheck. Any suggestion on how to proceed? I am at the point where I am considering starting from scratch getting rid of all rocks

 

[KonradTO]

Also it is quite frustrating because I have little money available for the hobby but everything I tried to deal with this ended up wasted:
Snail died, sump seems to not make much difference, every frag aside from ricordea and lepta died! Including very easy frags like plate corals, candy cane and monti

 

[Dbichler]

This hobby is not easy and that’s why they say to wait for a tank to mature and get used to tank parameters before adding corals. If snails died with algae present then your parameters are still fluctuating also meaning hard for corals to survive. Honestly your best bet is to keep one fish and your soft corals until everything settles in. Check to see where your phosphates are coming from and adjust. Starting over with new rock won’t change anything and you will end up in the same place.

 

[KonradTO]

This hobby is not easy and that’s why they say to wait for a tank to mature and get used to tank parameters before adding corals. If snails died with algae present then your parameters are still fluctuating also meaning hard for corals to survive. Honestly your best bet is to keep one fish and your soft corals until everything settles in. Check to see where your phosphates are coming from and adjust. Starting over with new rock won’t change anything and you will end up in the same place.

When I started I was suggested to start right away with easy corals and fish once cycling was complete. Some corals lasted for a while (torch coral for 3 months then lost the heads in one day suddenly, now the heads are still alive but detached).
What parameter fluctuations could cause snails to die? I have 1 hermit which survives since day one but every turbo snail died. Ceriths and nassa are still alive

 

[elysics]

"When I remove manually gha they come back within a week" Yeah that's normal, that's your weekly task until the tank settles in. Half the issues probably stem from doing extreme measures trying to avoid that.

What does "phosphate near 0" mean in numbers? How near? Should probably take that GFO reactor offline until you know the real number over the course of multiple days, did you add the reactor before or after the frags died? Phosphate going to actual 0 can cause that, which can easily happen with GFO+algae outbreak+a whole bunch of macros.

Snails dying is a separate issue though, probably the dinos, are they gone now?

 

[elysics]

Also, if the hermit survives so far, get a bunch more, they'll help with the algae and keep the nutrients in the water instead of in the algae

 

[BrianAnthony]

I'm guessing you started your tank with dry rock. Most of us do now. Starting with dry rock slows things way way down and no matter what you do, you will have these issues. One suggestion would be to try to grab a rock from an established aquarium (over a year old) and incorporate it into your system.

For the gha.. the best thing is to try to get rid of most of it by hand and then make it part of your maint schedule to remove what you see. I'm also guessing that you don't have Coraline algae yet. It is a very very slow process. Hang in there.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

my personal 2 cents is, a skimmer helps tremendously if you want to keep corals. Without a skimmer, its an uphill challenge (especially for beginners), unless you are doing very frequent water changes.

I see your comment, 'added "some" fish', IMO, fish should be added one at a time in a small tank, wait a few weeks, then add one more. I also have a 32 gallon tank, never lost any new fish.

I say just leave the tank alone for 2-3 months, let the bacteria's and water parameters regulate by itself, stop trying to force your tank to do what you want.

 

[LeftyReefer]

A skimmer and a couple urchins would have that tank cleaned up in no time.

 

[Subonidio]

Hi all,
Long story short:
Started a 32g tank 8 months ago, since then:
Added macros in the dt
Added some fish
Got dino and cyano outbreak
Added more fish for nutrients
Added frags
Got GHA outbreak
Few frags died
Did some blackout witb UV on
GHA gone, more frags died, gha back on
Connected a 15g sump to the system with more macros to outcompete gha
Most of frags died, 2 clowns died of bacterial infection, most of snails disappear within few days
what the heck AM I SUPPOSED TO DO

When I remove manually gha they come back within a week. I have nitrates between 0 and 5 ppm, phosphates near 0 but hard to tell with my tests.
I also added a phosphate reactor with GFO and carbon mixed.
Some more details:
Viparspectra light at minimum (1:20)
No skimmer
All parameters in normal range but I start to not trust them, I will get an icp test to doublecheck. Any suggestion on how to proceed? I am at the point where I am considering starting from scratch getting rid of all rocks

In my experience you have a unbalanced of good beneficial bacteria we need different strains of it to out compete the bad . I keep
Nitrates at 20- 40
phosphates go from 0.09 to 0.23

I don't chase numbers anymore

After I listened Dr Tim's talking to Mr Saltwater at reefapalooza Chicago (was by chance they were having the conversation I just stood there)

Was very enlightening to listen to a well known figure in the hobby talk about bacterial variates and why we get all those nasty outbreaks of the bad cyanobacteria,Dyno,etc

 

[Subonidio]

In my experience you have a unbalanced of good beneficial bacteria we need different strains of it to out compete the bad . I keep
Nitrates at 20- 40
phosphates go from 0.09 to 0.23

I don't chase numbers anymore

After I listened Dr Tim's talking to Mr Saltwater at reefapalooza Chicago (was by chance they were having the conversation I just stood there)

Was very enlightening to listen to a well known figure in the hobby talk about bacterial variates and why we get all those nasty outbreaks of the bad cyanobacteria,Dyno,etc

Hopefully you get all figured out with out breaking the Tank

 

[KonradTO]

"When I remove manually gha they come back within a week" Yeah that's normal, that's your weekly task until the tank settles in. Half the issues probably stem from doing extreme measures trying to avoid that.

What does "phosphate near 0" mean in numbers? How near? Should probably take that GFO reactor offline until you know the real number over the course of multiple days, did you add the reactor before or after the frags died? Phosphate going to actual 0 can cause that, which can easily happen with GFO+algae outbreak+a whole bunch of macros.

Snails dying is a separate issue though, probably the dinos, are they gone now?

I am cleaning rocks from gha every week in general. The changes I am doing are for avoiding them to come back at some point (now I had gha for 4 months). Doing blackouts works pretty well but obviously they regrow after a while.
For phosphates near 0 i mean that I have colorimetric tests (Salifert) and the definition is not great below 0.5 ppm. I am aware of the Hanna Checker test kit but I was hoping to solve the problem without spending $$$ for every single bit.
Low phos is not definitely the cause behind coral deaths because I have been through different phases with high PO4 to low PO4 but never had a frag growing since the beginning. I was hoping to control nutrients with macros (as many do apparently) without checking params every 24hrs.
My impression from other comments in the forum is that is hardly possible to deplete all the PO4 with feeding and fish pooping in the tank, so the lowest the better. I also started dosing some NO3 (it bottomed up last week) because I get GHA growing on my macros, as if they were outcompeting them.


I have mainly GHA, it could be that some dinos are there as well but its mainly GHA. The snails are usually fine for 24h then start to slow down and finally die out. As I said it happened mainly with the turbo snails, no problem with crabs, tubeworms and such.
Also I noticed that my pod population is heavily reduced compared to the beginning, but that could be because of the fish hunting all of them.

 

[KonradTO]

I'm guessing you started your tank with dry rock. Most of us do now. Starting with dry rock slows things way way down and no matter what you do, you will have these issues. One suggestion would be to try to grab a rock from an established aquarium (over a year old) and incorporate it into your system.

For the gha.. the best thing is to try to get rid of most of it by hand and then make it part of your maint schedule to remove what you see. I'm also guessing that you don't have Coraline algae yet. It is a very very slow process. Hang in there.

I started with 2:10 proportion of LRry rock. Maybe I could add more LR but first I want to be sure that there is not something completely wrong with the tank that will kill all the bugs in the LR. Also I have actually quite a lot of coraline growing around in small patches, on that side I cannot complain. The tank consumes a LOT of Alk for whatever reason, but not so much Ca. Maybe it's the coraline or I just get precipitation..

 

[KonradTO]

my personal 2 cents is, a skimmer helps tremendously if you want to keep corals. Without a skimmer, its an uphill challenge (especially for beginners), unless you are doing very frequent water changes.

I see your comment, 'added "some" fish', IMO, fish should be added one at a time in a small tank, wait a few weeks, then add one more. I also have a 32 gallon tank, never lost any new fish.

I say just leave the tank alone for 2-3 months, let the bacteria's and water parameters regulate by itself, stop trying to force your tank to do what you want.

Sure, I was just summing up 8 months quickly. I actually added a YWG first, then a bicolor blenny and a sixline. Finally a chromis and 2 clowns. Every time I waited 3-4 weeks between adding more. By now only the clowns died, apparently it was a very contagious bacterial infection and unfortunately once I treated them it was too late.

Until now I tried to save some $ on the skimmer since many people told me that for such a small tank 10% weekly WC was enough.
The problem is that if I get everything people suggest I should buy now:
Emerald crabs (40-60$)
urchins (40-60$)
Hanna checker for PO4 (60$)
Skimmer ($$$)
etc.

Convinced by someone thread on this forum I decided that was possible to start a reef tank without spending thousands of $. It turns out that, yes, you can START with little money but the tanks STINKS unless you get most of the expensive things. Therefore I need to prioritize now. The tank looks awful because of the GHA and also GHA is growing on the frags killing them. Bit by bit I will get there, I just need to know what should come first.

 

[BrianAnthony]

I started with 2:10 proportion of LRry rock. Maybe I could add more LR but first I want to be sure that there is not something completely wrong with the tank that will kill all the bugs in the LR. Also I have actually quite a lot of coraline growing around in small patches, on that side I cannot complain. The tank consumes a LOT of Alk for whatever reason, but not so much Ca. Maybe it's the coraline or I just get precipitation..

Oh... Well dang.. I would have thought your results would be better. Your idea of ICP is a good one. Not sure of your current testing kits now. I wouldn't get rid of your rocks until you see the results of ICP.

 

[Subonidio]

Sure, I was just summing up 8 months quickly. I actually added a YWG first, then a bicolor blenny and a sixline. Finally a chromis and 2 clowns. Every time I waited 3-4 weeks between adding more. By now only the clowns died, apparently it was a very contagious bacterial infection and unfortunately once I treated them it was too late.

Until now I tried to save some $ on the skimmer since many people told me that for such a small tank 10% weekly WC was enough.
The problem is that if I get everything people suggest I should buy now:
Emerald crabs (40-60$)
urchins (40-60$)
Hanna checker for PO4 (60$)
Skimmer ($$$)
etc.

Convinced by someone thread on this forum I decided that was possible to start a reef tank without spending thousands of $. It turns out that, yes, you can START with little money but the tanks STINKS unless you get most of the expensive things. Therefore I need to prioritize now. The tank looks awful because of the GHA and also GHA is growing on the frags killing them. Bit by bit I will get there, I just need to know what should come first.

Not true I have across ,I don't have crazy$$$$$ gear !!!! I even bought a trident and apex pro with all s and whistles and it's sitting there at my room never install them .....base Rock not. Live rock band my tank it's thriving......I really mostly in bacterial colonies ....my Tank was running for the longest time with out skimmer until I got a good deal for a aqua exel $50.... my point it's you can do it just be patient

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Sure, I was just summing up 8 months quickly. I actually added a YWG first, then a bicolor blenny and a sixline. Finally a chromis and 2 clowns. Every time I waited 3-4 weeks between adding more. By now only the clowns died, apparently it was a very contagious bacterial infection and unfortunately once I treated them it was too late.

Until now I tried to save some $ on the skimmer since many people told me that for such a small tank 10% weekly WC was enough.
The problem is that if I get everything people suggest I should buy now:
Emerald crabs (40-60$)
urchins (40-60$)
Hanna checker for PO4 (60$)
Skimmer ($$$)
etc.

Convinced by someone thread on this forum I decided that was possible to start a reef tank without spending thousands of $. It turns out that, yes, you can START with little money but the tanks STINKS unless you get most of the expensive things. Therefore I need to prioritize now. The tank looks awful because of the GHA and also GHA is growing on the frags killing them. Bit by bit I will get there, I just need to know what should come first.

In that case, a lawnmower Blenny should come first... Watch that sucker clear the Entire tank of gha in a few weeks..

 

[Subonidio]

Not true I have across ,I don't have crazy$$$$$ gear !!!! I even bought a trident and apex pro with all s and whistles and it's sitting there at my room never install them .....base Rock not. Live rock band my tank it's thriving......I really mostly in bacterial colonies ....my Tank was running for the longest time with out skimmer until I got a good deal for a aqua exel $50.... my point it's you can do it just be patient

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

In that case, a lawnmower Blenny should come first... Watch that sucker clear the Entire tank of gha in a few weeks..

When its wants to eat the gha. I never had luck with them, they are pigs but only to everything I'd drop in.

 

[KonradTO]

This is the situation rn

As you can see it grows everywhere, on macros on sand on the walls on the rocks. And what you see here is just 7-10 days of growth.
I also get them in the sump on the macros: