tank crashing......

[CJO]

That's good to hear. I'm guessing that you don't want to do any experimentation to see if it was the combination of the pellets and something else that caused your issues? ;)

CJ

 

[Troylee]

Well the only thing I have done is removed the
Pellets the dosing of everything continues...;)

 

[skinz78]

Good to hear Lee!

 

[sincityreefer]

water changes

Water changes are essential to maintaining a long term reef. But I guess that's not the goal when you try to replace these mehods that work with new unproven methods. I have a large reef that I do 10 percent water changes on weekly and I have never had any problems,my advise is to start back to the basics,less doing and more water changes

 

[Troylee]

Who is sincity???

 

[Troylee]

Fwiw there not essential... I know of a few tanks that haven't changed in 10yrs...;) luke33 is on yeAr7

 

[Troylee]

Speak now or for ever hold your peace!!!! Ahahahah

 

[redtop03]

I don't understand...we do water changes to lower nutrients and replenish trace elements,if the nutrients are low and you dose the lost elements,what is the good in changing water ?

if you change 10%; you've just replaced 10% of the lost elements,what about the other 90% that are gone ?

I don't see how just 10% is gonna be much benefit,now if you change 100%,you'll replace all thats lost but looks like to me that dosing would be easier and less stressful to the tank...

I've done 2 10% water changes on my tank in almost 2 years,the first was to help lower my nitrates when it was first set up,and it helped....the 2nd change was just because everybody says you gotta......I felt like a fool to pour out excellent water,I decided then that it didn't make sense to me to drain out water that tests perfect just to pour in new water that doesn't test any better....I dose when something is needed,I also add Kent essential elements often...

this is just my opinion though :D

 

[SaraB]

Who is sincity???

My new username ... look out ;)

 

[Troylee]

I figured I did a multiple ip check and checked the
Ip with my local club and there was no matches... Haha Sara. "B" ahahahahah

 

[CJO]

I don't understand...we do water changes to lower nutrients and replenish trace elements,if the nutrients are low and you dose the lost elements,what is the good in changing water ?

I'm still fairly new at this, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. It's hard to replenish all of the trace elements that are in a salt mix. It's near impossible to replace them at the correct levels, especially when there are no tests for many of them and fairly innaccurate tests for others (like iodide). Doing water changes replaces them in the proper relative amounts.

if you change 10%; you've just replaced 10% of the lost elements,what about the other 90% that are gone ?

That's assuming that they are all used up, which is unlikely if you do regular water changes.

CJ

 

[SPS Addict]

I don't see how just 10% is gonna be much benefit,now if you change 100%,you'll replace all thats lost but looks like to me that dosing would be easier and less stressful to the tank...

Dosing often times becomes stressful and harmful to the tank because we aren't adding the appropriate amounts and ratios. Often times we add too much. By doing a water change we are adding back those elements in natures perfect ratio. They don't get delepleted too fast so a small water change is enough to bring the levels back up and bring the ratios back to normal. Also the lower the nutrients in the tank the more the elements get stripped out of the water. One reason why you see the guys with ultra low nutrient systems always wanting to add things to the tank.

 

[Billgax]

I've done 2 10% water changes on my tank in almost 2 years,the first was to help lower my nitrates when it was first set up,and it helped....

If a 10% water change helps with nitrate issues... how can you then dismiss the value of it?! Wouldn't it then help with other potential contaminants and trace element shortages?
I personally think we have a ways to go in our understanding of reef chemistry's more subtle relevance to the health of our organisms. Most of us don't test a wide array of parameters in our aquariums on a regular basis... so how do we know our tanks wouldn't benefit from water changes periodically? Even better, "routinely...
Fish can be raised in water with outrageous nitrate levels... but IMHO, this doesn't mean it's right or responsible to do so. Same is true with other compounds that may be present in a reef system.
All we are left with here are anecdotal conclusions about what may or may not have caused these conditions to occur (biopellets or otherwise)... and I have never heard of regular water changes causing such things.... and it's impossible to demonstrate how many such events have been prevented by them.
I don't mean to come off critical of your methods Troy... just of some of the rhetoric I have read in this thread. Glad you have appeared to have arrested the problem! :)

Just sayin'...

 

[VegasRick]

If nitrates were the only reason to do water changes then you wouldn't need to do them. I mean there are other ways to control nitrates.
What I am saying is that there is a lot more going on in the chemistry of the tank than we can even begin to understand. Toxins released by corals for one, soft corals, mushrooms, zoas, lps and yes I would bet even acroporas release some type of toxins. Who knows what other type of pollution is building up in our tank. Carbon, ozone, skimming, gfo, even carbon dosing, these can only remove a small percentage each. What does the most efficient skimmer remove? 25 percent of DOCs? So water changes are just another way of removing a percentage. To quote Martin Moe "the solution to pollution is dilution"


In addition to that though, it brings other chemicals back into balance, some we can test for and many we don't and may not even be aware they are needed. Magnesium is a perfect example. Using a salt mix with high Mg such as TMpro and doing 10 percent water changes weekly I only had to add Mg every six months or so to keep it at NSW levels. Borate is another example.

For me, doing a weekly water change makes more sense than trying to guess how much of a dozen different supplements I need to add. And cheaper than buying all those suppliments

 

[Troylee]

Nah I will stick old water... It's easier...;)

 

[goody]

Sorry to hear about your situation Lee, but it sounds like things are starting to get better with no losses in the last 3 days. I just went through this entire thread and maybe I've forgotten, but did you ever mention how long you were running the pellets for? Did you ever add more to the reactor or declump/clean the ones in your reactor? I know you mentioned the brand, and how you slowly added them and were still running below recommended amount.

I've been running WM pellets since September 2010. I stopped GFO shortly thereafter. If I do take these offline, is there anything else I would need to do? I wasn't dosing vodka before this.

One last comment/questions. I'm pretty sure I read in a thread that you were not able to keep any zoas alive in your tank. Do you this is also due to the pellets, or could this be the cause of your sps problem?

 

[melev]

Just finished reading all 11 pages of posts, Lee. Sorry to hear about the crash event.

I too am running NP pellets (Vertex) in a NextReef reactor. The flow through the reactor is around 500gph, tumbling the media steadily. I don't use GFO, ever. I'll be testing my water parameters in the next day, to see where the numbers are.

My tank has been running for less than 2 months, so it's too early for me to make comparisons. These are some of the tips I've received from varied sources:

- Don't run high alkalinity with NP pellets, or some Acros will get burned tips. I saw a few burnt tips and lowered Alk from 10 dKH downward. It got a bit too low, so I had to bring it back up again. Stable alkalinity is very important to SPS, so I need to stay on top of that one to avoid losses.

- Dose bacteria - Microbacter 7 was the one suggested to me. Haven't got any yet.

- Keep the reactor running. If the reactor's feed pump can be hooked up to a UPS, that would be best. Even a 30 minute power outage could cause serious bacterial die-off in the reactor, which could hurt your tank. This is the same issue anyone running a De-nitrator has to contend with.

- Reactor output near the skimmer's intake pump(s). Mine is in the bubble tower prior to my skimmer.

My system is simple. Skimmer, refugium, calcium reactor, carbon in a Phosban Reactor, NP pellets. I top off with RO/DI water. I've only done a 55g water change since the tank was set up, but I've got 250g at the ready for any sized water change I'd like to do. I have two MP60s, 1 MP40, twin Penductors for flow. Grounding probe in the sump. Two external Dart pumps. The only pumps in the water are Eheims (Skimmer) and three Eheim Jager heaters. The light rack doesn't touch the tank and is far enough away that it can't carry any power to the tank. The fishroom has six circuits to divide things up.

I added about 25 frags to my tank, and 95% of them have done well. I have a 4" blue tort frag that lost its color in the past week, and the tip turned white overnight. It hadn't extended polyps in a week, something I was watching closely. Everything else in my tank seems to be doing well, growing slowly and opening up daily. That's SPS, LPS, Zoanthids, BTAs. All the fish are active, no signs of discomfort, no scratching nor looking thin. All the starfish, cucumbers, hermits and snails seem to be normal.

I'd prefer not to have to go back to vodka dosing if possible. If anything, I'd like to get to automated water changes instead. And I need to dose some bacteria, like MB7. That's something I need to deal with soon.

 

[nvfishman]

Well put Rick thats my belief as well and what I have read about. After almost 30 years of breeding cichlids whenever I kept the water quality up from water changes I would have new spawns shortly after.

Its lessoning anything built up in the water. Dont get me wrong carbon pulls out alot and ozone is great I uses both, but nothing does a better job then a good water change. I see somthing wrong in my tank I dont reach for the vodka I do a water change. For me this is not easy as every time I have to change its 50 gallons. Im sure Rick has to do large changes as well with that little tank he has ;)

lee didnt you do a water change a few days ago? Couldn't that be why the death in the tank stopped? Pull out the source of the toxin then dilute it with the new water you added. ;)

 

[Reef Pets]

A lot of replies, I didnt read over all of them so this may have been mentioned already. I would do a 25% water change every 2-3 days, run new carbon a run more carbon than normal, make sure that your skimmer is clean and run it wet and do a light out for 48 hours. On the 3 day run your lights for 5 hours then add an additional hour per day until you reach your typical light schedule.
If I ever notice problem I always turn out the lights. For the filter feeders and other coral that expand, without the light on most will not expand in darkness.

 

[RogerWilco357]

yeah I don't do that many water changes but when something like that happens and you cannot pinpoint the problem more water changes could help especially if there was something spilled into the water that you cannot test for how much water did you change out ? I hope more than just the 40 gallons..just incase something got into your water..