What's wrong with my tank??

[Lowlandreef]

The title doesn't give much information so let me explain.
I keep having low nutrient issues and I don't understand why and what to do about it. Since I started my tank, the only time had nitrates and phosphates was during and after the cycle. After that I had pretty bad GHA and since then (for over a year now) I never been able to detect nutrients. I tried multiple different test kits and no difference. The only way for me to know nutrients are rising, is when algae is growing in the tank.

Due to low nutrients I had dino's. By stopping water changes and a few other things I managed to get it under control. Later when algae was growing a lot, I tried a refugium. This was around march 2020. This went well for a few months, but it stripped the water again so the chaeto died. I decided to go for a new approach in august, so I stopped water changes completely. When the algae was coming back I rebooted my refugium and it went very well until now.
There still is a little bit of algae in the display and my chaeto is growing fine, but since a little over 2 weeks I see cyano popping up. I tried manually removing it a bit, but since last Wednesday my tank is very cloudy. I figured it could be a bacterial bloom but if it was, it would have cleared up by now.

I ordered Coral Snow, ZEObak and Cyano Clean and will start with it tomorrow. I hope I get everything under control before things go bad. I just don't understand the chemistry of my tank anymore and that makes things really hard.


Under here I will list some other things that might be relevant:

- A way of raising nutrients was overfeeding for me. Worked well but caused vermetid snail population to explode. So since a few months I feed a lot less and I manually removed a lot of vermetid snails which are pretty much under control now.

- Exactly a month ago my bangai cardinal died, found him when there was almost nothing left of him, so that would probably have an impact on the water parameters.

- Today I did a 20% waterchange for the first time since august to get some cyano out and hoped to clear the water a bit. Didn't make much difference on the cloudiness.

- My ornate leopard wrasse is missing since yesterday, was eating like a pig and very healthy. Might be nothing, but I'm worried about it.

- One of my RBTA's is closed since yesterday, the other RTBA and corals are doing fine.

- Water parameters: Alk 10.2 Mag 1340 Calcium 430 Temp 77 F Salinity 1.025

 

[DivingTheWorld]

What size is the tank, what do you have for fish, and how often do you feed them? If you have 0 readings for Nitrate/Phosphate I wouldn't suggest things like refugeriums or chaeto. And algae is not always a sign of high nutrients. It may be just new tank syndrome and the usual algae cycles.

 

[William Mumford]

Do you run any carbon or gfo in your system? What kind of water to you use?

 

[Lowlandreef]

What size is the tank, what do you have for fish, and how often do you feed them? If you have 0 readings for Nitrate/Phosphate I wouldn't suggest things like refugeriums or chaeto. And algae is not always a sign of high nutrients. It may be just new tank syndrome and the usual algae cycles.

I have a Red Sea Reefer 170, display 34g with 9g sump. For fish I have 2 clownfish, 1 bicolor blenny, 1 chromis and 1 ornate leopard wrasse. I feed them once a day.
I know my tank isn't old, but 1.5 years is over the typical new tank syndrome mark right? The ugly phases were mostly the first few months but after that only one time dino's.

 

[Lowlandreef]

Do you run any carbon or gfo in your system? What kind of water to you use?

I use RODI water and run chemi pure blue in my system.

 

[RC Corals]

Cut back on your refugium time turned on. Find a balance.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

I’d recommend adding fish. That seems a bit slim if you’re having trouble keeping up Nitrate/Phosphate.

 

[John08007]

Idk anything about these redsea tanks. What are you using for biological filtration? Refugium?

 

[Lowlandreef]

Cut back on your refugium time turned on. Find a balance.

That was indeed my plan, but it's very hard when you never know the nutrient values. I have more algae than a few weeks back, but now cyano is popping up. So I don't understand if my values are to low or too high...

I’d recommend adding fish. That seems a bit slim if you’re having trouble keeping up Nitrate/Phosphate.

I was thinking about that as well, maybe I should just to make sure my nutrients get higher to adjust from that point.

It's just frustrating to never know your values especially as a beginner. I hope someone recognizes this problem and knows how to fix it.

 

[Lowlandreef]

Idk anything about these redsea tanks. What are you using for biological filtration? Refugium?

For biological filtration I have 20 lbs of sand, 37.5 lbs of real reef rock and some marine pure bioballs in my sump.
For mechanical filtration I use filter floss, a skimmer and I have a filter sponge.
For chemical filtration I use chemi pure blue.
I'm not sure where a refugium fits in (I think chemical), but that's all my filtration in the tank.

 

[John08007]

For biological filtration I have 20 lbs of sand, 37.5 lbs of real reef rock and some marine pure bioballs in my sump.
For mechanical filtration I use filter floss, a skimmer and I have a filter sponge.
For chemical filtration I use chemi pure blue.
I'm not sure where a refugium fits in (I think chemical), but that's all my filtration in the tank.

A refugium would be biological filtration, you're growing algae(chaeto) in the refugium. It uses nitrate to grow, as it grows you throw some out-removing nitrates from the tank.

I've never used chemi pure blue, looking it up it appears to be a activated charcoal blend. It does mention that it removes phosphates also, are your phosphates zero also?

Personally, I think your problem may be too much biological filtration, all the live rock, deep sand and bio blocks are breaking down too much. Maybe try removing some bio balls. Getting a good clean up crew of emerald crabs and see what happens.

 

[Lowlandreef]

A refugium would be biological filtration, you're growing algae(chaeto) in the refugium. It uses nitrate to grow, as it grows you throw some out-removing nitrates from the tank.

I've never used chemi pure blue, looking it up it appears to be a activated charcoal blend. It does mention that it removes phosphates also, are your phosphates zero also?

Personally, I think your problem may be too much biological filtration, all the live rock, deep sand and bio blocks are breaking down too much. Maybe try removing some bio balls. Getting a good clean up crew of emerald crabs and see what happens.

Well that's probably the issue here, I know they aren't zero but they always read zero when I test them. It could be phosphates are too low, but I have no idea of the ratio nitrate/phosphate.

I wanted to open up my scape in the tank for a while, so I'll try to remove some rocks. Will also go buy some new fish as @DivingTheWorld suggested to try to raise nutrients.

My clean up crew is doing well. I have breeding trochus snails which also indicates there's plenty of algae for them to eat.

For me it's still a mystery what my actual values are...

 

[Lowlandreef]

My tank is still very cloudy, does anyone know if that's caused by cyano or is it something else? And what can I do to clear up?

My ornate leopard wrasse showed up again, so that's a relief. Also started the cyanoclean + zeobak & coralsnow dose today. No visual signs of improvement yet, but will keep you posted.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

It's just frustrating to never know your values especially as a beginner. I hope someone recognizes this problem and knows how to fix it.

A good place to start is with good test kits. I like Hanna ULR Phosporus for Phosphate and NYOS for Nitrate. Once you know your baseline, start making slow changes, one at a time in the direction you want.

If you start getting algae, just buy more snails. I like turbos and trochus. Algae is in general a good sign. It means you also have what can grow coral.

IMO Cyano problems is a combination of low nutrients and lack of flow. Once I brought up my Nitrate/Phosphate and increased flow it went away.

You’re getting there. A reef tank is a journey, not a race.

 

[Lowlandreef]

A good place to start is with good test kits. I like Hanna ULR Phosporus for Phosphate and NYOS for Nitrate. Once you know your baseline, start making slow changes, one at a time in the direction you want.

If you start getting algae, just buy more snails. I like turbos and trochus. Algae is in general a good sign. It means you also have what can grow coral.

IMO Cyano problems is a combination of low nutrients and lack of flow. Once I brought up my Nitrate/Phosphate and increased flow it went away.

You’re getting there. A reef tank is a journey, not a race.

Definitely agree, I take things very slowly and it was going well so far. It's just frustrating when you put a lot of time and effort in your tank but can't know some of your parameters. I've tried the best test kits available here and they worked fine during the cylce of the tank. Maybe an ICP test can give me more clear information on what's going on.

Like I said before I do have algae growing that's why I'm pretty certain I'm not at zero nutrients. The cyano implies other way, so that's confusing to me. I do have plenty of flow, so that's not an issue I think. That might be also one of the reasons why there's very few cyano.

 

[John08007]

Cloudy water shouldn't be from cyano. Cyano is a red slime that covers your rock and corals.

I think you're throwing too many things at the tank at once. I would leave the rock, remove some bioballs. If you have cyano then use the chemi clean.

I battled an algae prob for what seemed like years. I used chemiclean to kill cyano. Then I used vibrant for a few months. Added a lot of emerald crabs, snails, hermit crabs and a refugium. I needed to dose nitrate and phosphate because my nutrients were so low.

 

[Lowlandreef]

Small update:
- The cyano treatment is going well
- Tank cleared up after almost 2 weeks
- Wrasse disappeared again...
- RBTA still retracted

My skimmer pulled out a lot of thick white milky kinda substance. No clue what it was, but seems to have been the problem. Still a lot of mystery but I'm happy things are going better now. Will try to raise nutrients over time to stabilize the system.