Sudden increase in Nitrites

[Zer0]

I'm hoping to get some help regarding a sudden incident in my tank, which appears to possibly have caused a bacterial/algal bloom, which made the water slightly cloudy and caused an increase in nitrites. I have an AIO 10G cube, with a few coral frags, 2 peppermint shrimp, 3 dwarf hermit crabs, 2 trochus snails, and 1 tailspot blenny. I run a media rack in the first chamber that only has live rock rubble in a media bag and then filter floss up top by the overflow. In the 2nd chamber I have chaeto growing, and another small media bag of live rock rubble.

Right now my nitrites are testing at .25ppm, while ammonia is 0ppm, nitrates are 4.74ppm, and phosphates are .22ppm.

I believe things started progressing on Saturday, which was when I believe I overfed my tank by a large margin, but I'm not sure if that caused the problem, or just compounded it. The thing is, for a while my phosphates and nitrates were undetectable, so I had started playing around with providing less light to the chaeto in the back chamber, and then feeding heavier. I cut down the light to only 2 hours, and on top of feeding the tailspot blenny frozen spirulina, I spot fed all of the coral reef roids(only 3 times per week). On Saturday, it seemed like maybe I fed too much, because it just seemed like a lot and some of the coral started looking ticked off. Later in the day is when I started noticing that the water seemed a bit cloudy. I tested for ammonia/nitrites/nitrates/phosphates, and while ammonia/nitrites came back as 0, nitrates tested 4.73ppm and phosphates tested .22ppm. I thought that was a bit crazy because just a day or two ago, my phosphates were still reading 0.

Sunday comes along, and the water looks more cloudy, most coral is irritated at this point, with the exception of a couple frags looking unaffected. The snails, hermits, peppermint shrimp, and tailspot were all doing their normal thing, none of them seemed stressed. So I decided I could be proactive, and I swapped out all of the old filter floss for new pieces, and threw in a bag of activated carbon. I should also note that I had a mushroom that was hating life in the display migrate itself to the back chambers where there isn't any light(it squeezed itself through one of the two holes in the false wall designed to keep the water level even). It had made its way to the 2nd chamber, so I had to pull out all of the chaeto and the bag of rubble to get it out.

So I finish all of the maintenance, and leave the tank alone. Fast forward a few hours and I go to test ammonia/nitrite again at 8PM. This time, ammonia comes back as what looks to be 0, but nitrites definitely tested at .25ppm. In anger, I did a 40% water change and then left the tank alone for the night thinking everything would probably be back to normal in the morning. However it was not. I tested the water again around 8AM, and ammonia was 0, but nitrites still read at .25ppm. I thought maybe it was a false reading so I tested a fresh batch of saltwater I had put in to mix overnight and it tested as 0ppm, so obviously the test kit isn't giving false readings.

I'm trying to figure out if I did in fact overfeed and cause a bacterial bloom, but I don't really know much about blooms in general. This is the first time this has ever happened to me in my ~10 years of reefing, granted, this is my first go at a < 10Gallon system. I've always had systems with sumps prior to this aquarium.

I also don't really know how to combat this... Did I kill my nitrifying bacteria population by doing this? Or perhaps did this happen because removing all of that filter floss removed a significant portion of my nitrifying bacteria? Do I keep doing water changes until nitrites test 0, or do I just wait it out and let it all convert to nitrates, then do a water change?

I would also like to mention that this tank was fully cycled about a month ago, so it's about a month old, give or take a couple days.


I appreciate any and all help, and apologize for the wall of text. I just really would prefer not to lose any livestock or this. Thank you!

 

[brandon429]

never test for nitrites, we don't need to know the data in reefing at any stage including cycle



hope that helps.

this sounds too good to be true considering we've tested for it in the last 20 years religiously

but that's been updated here in this forum for various chemical reasons: nitrite is neutral in reefing it doesn't matter if you have some or not. There is nothing wrong w your tank, buy nothing, simply continue course

retire the test kit permanently and you'll enjoy reefing 3x more.

factors: we don't know if the reading is accurate or not. we don't have good nitrite testers in the hobby. and even if it was positive, that doesn't matter.

your tank has enough surface area to function or you'd be reporting animal losses not api test read issues.

we merely got lucky your ammonia reports zero. if it reports .5 everyone would think you aren't cycled, but you still would be, since you didn't report losses. in fact its amazing this kit shows zero on ammonia about fifty thousand will not, when it is in the safe zone.

 

[Zer0]

I see. I will take that information in to consideration. At this point, what was concerning me was the sudden change in water clarity, which seemed to coincide with most coral looking agitated. They just weren't/aren't as full and fluffy as they have been.

 

[brandon429]

agreed I like clean water too, that issue can be handled without any testing though since you have a nano reef.

Post a full tank shot of it Ill show you a cool trick to reinstate total clarity it takes 30 mins max.

 

[Saltyreef]

I see. I will take that information in to consideration. At this point, what was concerning me was the sudden change in water clarity, which seemed to coincide with most coral looking agitated. They just weren't/aren't as full and fluffy as they have been.

Cloudy water even after carbon could mean either the issue is coming from your source water (RODI) or the amount of carbon you are using isnt sufficent.

 

[Saltyreef]

All and all. I would listen to @brandon429 hes the arm and hammer around here

 

[Garf]

A photo would be good, but it’s either a bacterial or algal bloom as you suggested. Is this a dry rock start up?

 

[Zer0]

It is a dry rock startup, yes.

My ro/di water tests at 0tds.

I will try and get a picture.

 

[Saltyreef]

It is a dry rock startup, yes.

My ro/di water tests at 0tds.

I will try and get a picture.

Did you cure the rock or just cycle in tank?
Also, did you happen to rinse your sand prior to dumping into the tank?
Most clouding in new tanks comes from unrinsed sand.

 

[Zer0]

Not cured, cycled in tank. Oolite sugar sized sand, rinsed thoroughly with ro/di water before putting it in the tank.

I know it may not look like it’s cloudy, or perhaps it does, but it just doesn’t seem as clear as it was prior to Saturday/Sunday.

I also have to admit something that I purposefully didn’t include in the OP because I didn’t think it was important. I was in fact messing around with the intensity of the light since I rented a par meter, and since I discovered that I was almost certainly blasting my coral with too much light, I decreased it by a pretty significant percentage. But I don’t know if that would even cause the water to look more cloudy, but I do imagine it could possibly tick off any coral in my tank that was enjoying being blasted with light.

 

[Zer0]

Although the photo above was taken with my cell phone, I think you can probably tell the difference in water clarity. Here's a reference photo from 2 weeks ago on the 15th:

 

[Garf]

Although the photo above was taken with my cell phone, I think you can probably tell the difference in water clarity. Here's a reference photo from 2 weeks ago on the 15th:

That’s nothin you got diatoms coming, but that’s normal.

 

[brandon429]

well done, truly well done that is a really pro nano developing.

you caught the light intensity just right, nice intercept based on internal cues accepted. that's all reflective surfaces vs absorbing purples...it's a boost in that bottom shot.

you are allowed to do a full water change at any time matching temp and salinity, and it wont harm a thing. you will have to pour water lightly back in though, as sandbed silting cannot be ruled out here, most people will not pre rinsed their sand to cloudless state to allow the follow up work we need now.


you can fix this by a water change, its not harmful in the ramped-down light condition in a new tank, poured slowly over unrinsed sand to avoid kicking up waste or if you want to re-clean your sandbed to allow for no cloud access we can do that, before you begin cruise control. starting with a rinsed sandbed has marked, marked benefits compared to unrinsed ones. no this does not cause a bac instability, you have no missing bac.

if you want to just hold couse/sand rinsing is scary for 99% agreed then do some 50% water changes. feed your system/target feed the corals well just before/make use of the big change that small system can afford.

 

[Zer0]

I would agree with you if I hadn't already gone through the diatom phase. Everything got pretty ugly middle of last week, but by Saturday, everything started clearing up and the sand started going back to being white again. I get significantly less algae growth on the glass now as well.

 

[brandon429]

when the live rocks start to take on growths/invasions you will dislike this period greatly right when corals are growing into place/you wont want to be hands-on but might have to


that's one additional benefit of a pre rinsed cloudless sandbed, total access during the uglies phase without causing more clouding. Its an important design feature in nanos, the cloudless start sandbed do consider it if possible.

whats coming on the actual rocks is the real work, but you can still lift them out, burn the invader off in several ways, set the rock back carefully even if the sand remains unrinsed.

the quick intercept light intensity drop will help your uglies phase, those corals can take much less light than we're used to providing if they're fed well, and this grows less mess. all the water changing associating with feeding well upwells sand, if its not rinsed. one reason some dry rock starts choose this hands on method is because it circulates vs stagnates clean proteins/feed into the tank to make up for lack of a live rock benthic food network.

The tank is certainly not dirty as-is, no harm in cruise control now.

That clouding can also be new flocs developing, feel free to amp up the water changes now that we can see nitrite will never matter.

waste, from the sandbed, being kicked up mid-degredation certainly explains nitrite possibility. that's a fourth reason to have clean sand lol in a small nano. there's like eight more reasons we all try and avoid, at the start.

 

[Zer0]

So do you mean if I want to spot feed the coral, then it would be a good idea to perform a water change after feeding them? How long after feeding would be appropriate, and how large of a water change? 50%?

 

[brandon429]

its up to you to decide, but in focused pico reef studies using smaller systems we're certain that starting out hands on vs hands off is the best way. for example:

we do anticipatory water changes any time after a big targeted feed bc we know that this isn't harmful its like cpr or weightlifting but for reef tanks

we need the clean protein in, circulating, aimed at mouths if possible at times but we can't let it sink up either, we know the uglies are coming and capitalize on this buildup so the activity of changing water when you feel its best vs just letting it sit there is what counts. we aren't being reactive/there isn't much to react to in a new reef

we're being proactive, and driving literal mass onto corals and then removing rocks and cleaning off expected challenge growths occasionally vs letting them pile up.

all this is the hands on method, ideal for nano reef control. comes at the expense of a lot of water being used to cycle stuff in and out of the system but maintain coral cleanliness.

our way doesn't even test for phosphate and nitrates the life of the tank. we're too busy feeding and changing water at least a little weekly to drive up coral mass, its not in the testing params we know its also actionable if the reef is fed and changed well vs others who leave them stagnant and unchallenged. just like exercise.

just because we add feed doesn't mean the lps and crew will eat it, time the additions. I have to be up early to catch mine open/ready for feed. place a drop of concentrated reef feed into the water 20 mins before the actual feed, bring out the feeding response first.

this little change up: instead of adding feed to the topwater one day, the measured known amount for your tank you've arrived at, what if you waited till 4 am and injected all of it across the open mouth of a brain coral frag.


same degree of feed added, but a boost to that frag on this day.

rotate. see those little mass tricks lol you're in a body building gym for nano reefs and someone wants you to inject something into your tank.

 

[beginner_reefer]

never test for nitrites, we don't need to know the data in reefing at any stage including cycle



hope that helps.

this sounds too good to be true considering we've tested for it in the last 20 years religiously

but that's been updated here in this forum for various chemical reasons: nitrite is neutral in reefing it doesn't matter if you have some or not. There is nothing wrong w your tank, buy nothing, simply continue course

retire the test kit permanently and you'll enjoy reefing 3x more.

factors: we don't know if the reading is accurate or not. we don't have good nitrite testers in the hobby. and even if it was positive, that doesn't matter.

your tank has enough surface area to function or you'd be reporting animal losses not api test read issues.

we merely got lucky your ammonia reports zero. if it reports .5 everyone would think you aren't cycled, but you still would be, since you didn't report losses. in fact its amazing this kit shows zero on ammonia about fifty thousand will not, when it is in the safe zone.

This is interesting. So should we just focus on the amonia and nitrates then?

 

[Dan_P]

I'm hoping to get some help regarding a sudden incident in my tank, which appears to possibly have caused a bacterial/algal bloom, which made the water slightly cloudy and caused an increase in nitrites. I have an AIO 10G cube, with a few coral frags, 2 peppermint shrimp, 3 dwarf hermit crabs, 2 trochus snails, and 1 tailspot blenny. I run a media rack in the first chamber that only has live rock rubble in a media bag and then filter floss up top by the overflow. In the 2nd chamber I have chaeto growing, and another small media bag of live rock rubble.

Right now my nitrites are testing at .25ppm, while ammonia is 0ppm, nitrates are 4.74ppm, and phosphates are .22ppm.

I believe things started progressing on Saturday, which was when I believe I overfed my tank by a large margin, but I'm not sure if that caused the problem, or just compounded it. The thing is, for a while my phosphates and nitrates were undetectable, so I had started playing around with providing less light to the chaeto in the back chamber, and then feeding heavier. I cut down the light to only 2 hours, and on top of feeding the tailspot blenny frozen spirulina, I spot fed all of the coral reef roids(only 3 times per week). On Saturday, it seemed like maybe I fed too much, because it just seemed like a lot and some of the coral started looking ticked off. Later in the day is when I started noticing that the water seemed a bit cloudy. I tested for ammonia/nitrites/nitrates/phosphates, and while ammonia/nitrites came back as 0, nitrates tested 4.73ppm and phosphates tested .22ppm. I thought that was a bit crazy because just a day or two ago, my phosphates were still reading 0.

Sunday comes along, and the water looks more cloudy, most coral is irritated at this point, with the exception of a couple frags looking unaffected. The snails, hermits, peppermint shrimp, and tailspot were all doing their normal thing, none of them seemed stressed. So I decided I could be proactive, and I swapped out all of the old filter floss for new pieces, and threw in a bag of activated carbon. I should also note that I had a mushroom that was hating life in the display migrate itself to the back chambers where there isn't any light(it squeezed itself through one of the two holes in the false wall designed to keep the water level even). It had made its way to the 2nd chamber, so I had to pull out all of the chaeto and the bag of rubble to get it out.

So I finish all of the maintenance, and leave the tank alone. Fast forward a few hours and I go to test ammonia/nitrite again at 8PM. This time, ammonia comes back as what looks to be 0, but nitrites definitely tested at .25ppm. In anger, I did a 40% water change and then left the tank alone for the night thinking everything would probably be back to normal in the morning. However it was not. I tested the water again around 8AM, and ammonia was 0, but nitrites still read at .25ppm. I thought maybe it was a false reading so I tested a fresh batch of saltwater I had put in to mix overnight and it tested as 0ppm, so obviously the test kit isn't giving false readings.

I'm trying to figure out if I did in fact overfeed and cause a bacterial bloom, but I don't really know much about blooms in general. This is the first time this has ever happened to me in my ~10 years of reefing, granted, this is my first go at a < 10Gallon system. I've always had systems with sumps prior to this aquarium.

I also don't really know how to combat this... Did I kill my nitrifying bacteria population by doing this? Or perhaps did this happen because removing all of that filter floss removed a significant portion of my nitrifying bacteria? Do I keep doing water changes until nitrites test 0, or do I just wait it out and let it all convert to nitrates, then do a water change?

I would also like to mention that this tank was fully cycled about a month ago, so it's about a month old, give or take a couple days.


I appreciate any and all help, and apologize for the wall of text. I just really would prefer not to lose any livestock or this. Thank you!

One scenario to consider. A spike in nitrites means a spike in ammonia which your system took care of nicely. The presence of nitrite means the nitrite oxidizing bacteria could not keep up with the ammonia oxidizing bacteria. The cloudiness may or may not be related, though you might have had a bacteria bloom from the heavy feeding which in turn led to the ammonia spike when the bacteria began to consume the extra feed.

 

[fishhead1973]

I'm hoping to get some help regarding a sudden incident in my tank, which appears to possibly have caused a bacterial/algal bloom, which made the water slightly cloudy and caused an increase in nitrites. I have an AIO 10G cube, with a few coral frags, 2 peppermint shrimp, 3 dwarf hermit crabs, 2 trochus snails, and 1 tailspot blenny. I run a media rack in the first chamber that only has live rock rubble in a media bag and then filter floss up top by the overflow. In the 2nd chamber I have chaeto growing, and another small media bag of live rock rubble.

Right now my nitrites are testing at .25ppm, while ammonia is 0ppm, nitrates are 4.74ppm, and phosphates are .22ppm.

I believe things started progressing on Saturday, which was when I believe I overfed my tank by a large margin, but I'm not sure if that caused the problem, or just compounded it. The thing is, for a while my phosphates and nitrates were undetectable, so I had started playing around with providing less light to the chaeto in the back chamber, and then feeding heavier. I cut down the light to only 2 hours, and on top of feeding the tailspot blenny frozen spirulina, I spot fed all of the coral reef roids(only 3 times per week). On Saturday, it seemed like maybe I fed too much, because it just seemed like a lot and some of the coral started looking ticked off. Later in the day is when I started noticing that the water seemed a bit cloudy. I tested for ammonia/nitrites/nitrates/phosphates, and while ammonia/nitrites came back as 0, nitrates tested 4.73ppm and phosphates tested .22ppm. I thought that was a bit crazy because just a day or two ago, my phosphates were still reading 0.

Sunday comes along, and the water looks more cloudy, most coral is irritated at this point, with the exception of a couple frags looking unaffected. The snails, hermits, peppermint shrimp, and tailspot were all doing their normal thing, none of them seemed stressed. So I decided I could be proactive, and I swapped out all of the old filter floss for new pieces, and threw in a bag of activated carbon. I should also note that I had a mushroom that was hating life in the display migrate itself to the back chambers where there isn't any light(it squeezed itself through one of the two holes in the false wall designed to keep the water level even). It had made its way to the 2nd chamber, so I had to pull out all of the chaeto and the bag of rubble to get it out.

So I finish all of the maintenance, and leave the tank alone. Fast forward a few hours and I go to test ammonia/nitrite again at 8PM. This time, ammonia comes back as what looks to be 0, but nitrites definitely tested at .25ppm. In anger, I did a 40% water change and then left the tank alone for the night thinking everything would probably be back to normal in the morning. However it was not. I tested the water again around 8AM, and ammonia was 0, but nitrites still read at .25ppm. I thought maybe it was a false reading so I tested a fresh batch of saltwater I had put in to mix overnight and it tested as 0ppm, so obviously the test kit isn't giving false readings.

I'm trying to figure out if I did in fact overfeed and cause a bacterial bloom, but I don't really know much about blooms in general. This is the first time this has ever happened to me in my ~10 years of reefing, granted, this is my first go at a < 10Gallon system. I've always had systems with sumps prior to this aquarium.

I also don't really know how to combat this... Did I kill my nitrifying bacteria population by doing this? Or perhaps did this happen because removing all of that filter floss removed a significant portion of my nitrifying bacteria? Do I keep doing water changes until nitrites test 0, or do I just wait it out and let it all convert to nitrates, then do a water change?

I would also like to mention that this tank was fully cycled about a month ago, so it's about a month old, give or take a couple days.


I appreciate any and all help, and apologize for the wall of text. I just really would prefer not to lose any livestock or this. Thank you!