I've been trying to get my nitrates down for months. I have a terrible time reading these colormetric test kits but I'd guess I'm someplace between 25-50 now. I attached a picture, please chime in.
I have an aggravating sleeper goby named Chernobyl that continues to bomb my tank with sand.
I started getting this red slime bubbly snot about two months ago. I hit it with chemiclean immediately.... did water changes.... it pulled back for a couple weeks then BOOM.
I dosed with chemiclean again then started scrubbing rocks and corals. In the midst of this Chernobyl collapsed my entire aquascape. Giant pile of rock.... huge mess.
Last week, I took all of the rockwork out, one by one... scrubbed them each off with a toothbrush in the sink and rebuilt by rockwork. During this time, I netted out everything I could from the water column and let the filter socks do the rest. When that was done, I dosed Ultraslime.
Now, I have a daily battle with the toothbrush, knocking this crap off of my corals and rocks. It's not "sticky", it will come right off. (Except my kenyan tree...it loves that one. It is also hard to scrub zoas without damaging them.) I'm doing water changes every 4-5 days, changing socks twice a week. I've also been dosing NoPox 15 ml daily for 3-4 weeks. Nitrates are still high and this junk is just invasive as heck. Tank is a 90 gallon DT with a 30 gallon sump.
It is just a stringy, yucky mess. I'm starting to think that my diagnosis of cyanobacteria has been wrong all along. Maybe this is dinos? I always thought that dinos were brown... but aquarium lighting could be playing with me here. I could not even take pictures with the blue lights on. Even without them, the pictures do not do this snot justice.
Parameters are a bit out of wack... working on that as I got so distracted with the yuck that I wasn't on top of my testing. I just assumed all of the water changes were keeping the good stuff where it needed to be.... smack me later.
Ammonia 0
PH 8.3
Phosphate 0
Nitrite 0
Mag is high 1500
Calcium is low 300 - raised it from 230 since yesterday... will continue to gradually add. Next water change should help with the also.
ALK is low 6 same approach as calcium...
Any feedback is welcome. I have just run out of ideas.
I have an aggravating sleeper goby named Chernobyl that continues to bomb my tank with sand.
I started getting this red slime bubbly snot about two months ago. I hit it with chemiclean immediately.... did water changes.... it pulled back for a couple weeks then BOOM.
I dosed with chemiclean again then started scrubbing rocks and corals. In the midst of this Chernobyl collapsed my entire aquascape. Giant pile of rock.... huge mess.
Last week, I took all of the rockwork out, one by one... scrubbed them each off with a toothbrush in the sink and rebuilt by rockwork. During this time, I netted out everything I could from the water column and let the filter socks do the rest. When that was done, I dosed Ultraslime.
Now, I have a daily battle with the toothbrush, knocking this crap off of my corals and rocks. It's not "sticky", it will come right off. (Except my kenyan tree...it loves that one. It is also hard to scrub zoas without damaging them.) I'm doing water changes every 4-5 days, changing socks twice a week. I've also been dosing NoPox 15 ml daily for 3-4 weeks. Nitrates are still high and this junk is just invasive as heck. Tank is a 90 gallon DT with a 30 gallon sump.
It is just a stringy, yucky mess. I'm starting to think that my diagnosis of cyanobacteria has been wrong all along. Maybe this is dinos? I always thought that dinos were brown... but aquarium lighting could be playing with me here. I could not even take pictures with the blue lights on. Even without them, the pictures do not do this snot justice.
Parameters are a bit out of wack... working on that as I got so distracted with the yuck that I wasn't on top of my testing. I just assumed all of the water changes were keeping the good stuff where it needed to be.... smack me later.
Ammonia 0
PH 8.3
Phosphate 0
Nitrite 0
Mag is high 1500
Calcium is low 300 - raised it from 230 since yesterday... will continue to gradually add. Next water change should help with the also.
ALK is low 6 same approach as calcium...
Any feedback is welcome. I have just run out of ideas.