Tank Crashing?

[Cabinetman]

That phosphate media is no doubt the cause of your alk falling. I’d take it out and do a water change or add some alkalinity supliment

 

[SPR1968]

Water changes upsetting water parameters..? How so?

It’s probably worth doing a little research why the general guide is 10% at anyone time and the reason for that

Its not an absolute rule of course, some do a little more some less, but few do large water changes unless theres a good reason

But there are many ways to run a reef tank so....

 

[ThatsNoMoon]

If you have an alkalinity element to raise it, why don’t you just add some. Something like Red Sea Foundation B and bring the alkalinity up to 7-8 dKH or get something from the LFS

If your trying to keep it at 10 for whatever reason get it back up there over a day or so

As far as the ammonia is concerned just check the test and make sure nothings died to cause it

Doing large water changes is just going to upset the water parameters even more unless there is good reason to do them.

All you have to do to maintain a reef tank is keep the parameters stable and at the correct levels, thats it.

I don't have any alk element atm. I will prob try run down to the LFS to grab some if I can but in doing a water change it just brings up the calcium, mag and other trace elements back to the levels they should be instead of dosing a bunch of things (also removes anything that could be causing an issue)

I aim to keep it at 8 as that's what red sea blue bucket is at.

I added Fluval cycle to the tank so I'm not sure if the ammonia tests will accurately display anything but as far as the tank looks, the corals have opened up and the tank looks pretty decent. No missing fish that I can see

I never heard of water changes causing issues, I was always under the impression that if you're worried about the tank always throw it a water change

 

[brandon429]

In no way was the ammonia correct here, per Google results on api .25

that helps remove some of the concern at least. The way we title a post determines how forums call the ammonia portion, but search results for the test level in general are immune to that assessment bias. There isn’t a time .25 is correct in reef testing if that helps, none of them were accurate that is api‘s known safe baseline. Testing non reef water and getting zero doesn’t mean anything, there’s no oxidation to over report in distilled water.

we recently went eight pages on a false stuck cycle thread and all the bottle bac they kept adding made a soup driven by this factor above, knowing what it’s not allows you to hunt more accurately for what it could be

Always reduce your tanks lighting levels the next day after any insult, tuners trick of the millennia

 

[ThatsNoMoon]

That phosphate media is no doubt the cause of your alk falling. I’d take it out and do a water change or add some alkalinity supliment

yep the more I've read up on it the more I see that phosphate media can cause alk to drop. I've stopped running it and have done a water change. I'm going to leave the tank to settle for today and keep an eye on the levels. Slowly try bring it back up to where I wanted it

 

[ReefPig]

yep the more I've read up on it the more I see that phosphate media can cause alk to drop. I've stopped running it and have done a water change. I'm going to leave the tank to settle for today and keep an eye on the levels. Slowly try bring it back up to where I wanted it

Lots and lots of people run phosphate media fine, the issue comes when you use far too much or your phosphates are fairly high to start with.

Little and changed more often is better until you get a grasp of what it’s doing to your tank.

New reefers in particular see a reactor and try to fill it up, which causes many many issues, often results in either cyano or dinos, along with massive Alk drop.

What Shaun was saying was that doing massive changes to correct an element imbalance is often bad. Raising your Alk considerably, very fast, will nearly always cause issues for your corals. If you had sensitive SPS, they would likely RTN. I personally would never try to raise Alk more than 0.5dKH per day.

Remember that the number itself is less important than stability.
Some people run calcium at 380, others at 480, they get the same result, so long as it’s stable.

8dKH is a fairly common number to aim for and try to maintain around that value, if it drops, then up your dosing slightly until it’s corrected, do not dump in a load of extra on in go, this would be bad. Likewise, if it goes up quickly, do not just stop dosing, reduce the amount until it’s back where you want. Make corrections over multiple days.

 

[brandon429]

This thread is still a fascinating hunt as mass aerotaxis of snails isn’t a nightly thing, something did happen outside of normal flow


do you have anything that can stir the sandbed or dive down anytime, sandbed toxins aren’t unheard of and the snails / multiple doing that randomly are usually some sort of toxin

reefs with strong flow and high surface area dont just crash, the filter doesnt stop converting waste as long as the flow remains. Something has to over come it

check the tank a few more days very early in the morning and see if this happens due to low o2 at night, pretty rare for open top circulated systems.

Post a current full tank shot let’s check for more zonation of animals / open vs closed corals, gray vs clear water

Im not sure day/night o2 differences can be ruled out, check em at 4 am a few random times let’s see if they do it again.

If you suspect anything insulting happened don’t run full lights today. Moving light levels down preemptively is a wise technique during insult mitigation. At no time will a reef tank crash and keep the water clear, it will cloud every single time and the landscape won’t have pop it‘ll have yellow gray castings covering the whole tank, total wilting. So obvious no test kit is required to discern

 

[Jekyl]

Hello all I just woke up to find all my snails at the top of the tank if not above the water level.

The Coraline all over my tank is turning white around the edges. the fish seem ok but are all sleeping as the lights are off. This is all overnight

I did a quick water change to see if it helps the issue, I'm going to be doing a full blast of water tests now but does anyone know what could cause this overnight? No changes to the tank at all except I have been running phosbond in a reactor and have done a water change this week.

As the lights are off I'm not sure how the corals are but I don't have high hopes.

My snails are above the water line every day. In the wild they are accustomed to a high and low tide and being outside the water is normal for them.

 

[brandon429]

Nice. A migration unrelated to chemistry that’s a nice call. In my pico I used to keep two snails and no patterns can be learned from a max two he he

pics were going to shore up the crash concern, I bet they meet all factors for an ideal reef given no strange contaminations.