Battling High NO3, PO4

[Bailey2]

My 90G FOWLR has been set up since July 2005 (specs & inhabitants are below).

Problem I have now is I am constantly battling high Nitrate & Phosphate levels, causing a brown algae bloom.

I tried to remedy by running Seachem Purigen & Phosban in a reactor. Also, I cut down on the feeding & lighting period.

How much/how often should I be doing a water change? I DO use RO/DI water when I do watet changes.

Any other suggestions?

 

[stevebydac]

You don't have inhabitants that need much light, so cut your lights down to about 7 hours per day( 6 full hours). Have one on for an hour (your "dawn"), then have the other come on. Five hours later, shut the first one off ("dusk"), and leave the 2nd one for one more hour.

Also, change your bulbs after 6 months. The spectrum changes and makes it more comfortable for bad algae formation.

I would change water every week. The simple answer is, change as much water as it takes to get your levels down to a healthier level. I usually would do 10%, but would do 20-25% if I saw levels creeping up.

I was not a reactor user, so I don't want to give you bad advice on that. However, I assume (?) that like most media used for filtration, you need to change it out after a certain period of time. Make sure you are following those directions, whatever they are. If media is kept for too long, it can leak back unwanted compounds into the tank.

Try running your Euroreef wetter. When I used mine and aimed to just get the bubbles barely overflowing into the collection cup, I found that I wasn't really improving my water quality. Not enough was coming out. When I forced more flow up the column and got more liquid into the cup, I pulled more crap out of the tank. To me (just my opinion) more yellow/brown liquid > a smaller amount of dark brown/black liquid.

Also, you probably don't have much life in your sand, thanks to the trigger and puffer. If so, vacuum the sand when you do a water change. And use a turkey baster to blast any detritus off your rocks when you are changing water.

Expect to get algae blooms. They happen from time to time. But if you keep up all of the methods described, plus what you are doing now, you'll weather the bad blooms more easily and be nearly algae free the rest of the time.

 

[LisaD]

what is your substrate? crushed coral can hold onto decaying detritus.

how often do you do water changes?

how big are your fish?

is your skimmer running efficiently?

do you have a mechanical filter that you are regularly cleaning out?

I get great results in my highly stocked 55 using a HOT refugium in addition to skimming. the macro removes nutrients, and I prune it out regularly.

 

[Bailey2]

Thanks for the detailed reply, stevebydac! I will try your suggestions. Also, would you recommend UV or ozone?

LisaD -

The substrate is Southdown. And as stevebydac put it, my Picasso makes a mess of it!

I shamefully admit that I do 10 percenty change one a month.

The S&S Puffer is 5-6", the Picasso is 6", ans the Hawk is 3"

I think my skimmer is running efficiently, I clean the brown gunk out every other day.

No, I do not use a mechanical filter.

I do have an area for a refugium in my sump. I had it set up in the past with Chaeto, but it didn't seem to help much

 

[stevebydac]

I am not a big UV or ozone guy. Not to say that they don't work, just that I've never used ozone and didn't see much difference with UV when I used it.

Given what you said in your last post, your key is water changes. If you have those types of fish in your tank, no matter what you do, you need to do bigger and/or more frequent changes. Once a month 10% is no good.

Keep up with the skimmer, that's great!

A refugium would be good. Light it 24/7 and it should help.

Best of luck!

 

[Petstorejunkie]

i hate to be therr bearer of bad news, but the only thing that is going to help your algae and nitrates is a heaping helping of taking responsability. i must say i am prooud of you for being brave enough to say that you only do a 10% water change once a month, but you already know that isnt even enough to make a dent in you issues. massive water changes oncce a week until you get your nitrats down are in order. (i would say at least 40%) once you have your nitrates under 10ppm then i would reduce to about 15 % weekly. and see how that goes. the cheato refugium will help prevent this type of situation from reccurring, but youve got to deliver some clean water to your fish.
think of this analogy:
someone has put you in a 10ft by 10ft air tight cube, wher eyou must smoke several cigarettes a day. no fresh air is coming in.
it is going to get pretty gross in there isnt it...
if someon opens a vent and exchanges 10-15% of the air weekly, is that just as good as 40%monthly? you tell me, i think not
same analogy applies to your tank. your fish are stuck in there at the mercy of your water changes, they cant help but eat and poop and create their own pollution. the more often you can offer them some relief the better. remember your fish came from perfect water provided by mother nature, and are not build to live in that kind of pollution. it takes me 30minutes a week to do a 15% water change over 5 tanks that total well over 200 gallons. come one, what is less than 30 minutes once a week?!
as for the algae problem, if you do your massive waterchanges using ro water that will help with the over abundance of phosphates. before you go spending all of the money though i would have your tap water tested, to see if it is indeed phosphates causeing the algae and not the nitrates. i use tap water in all of my tanks and have very little algae to scrub.

 

[mcox33]

I had high Nitrates, no matter how much water I changed, I ran nitrate sponge. Still I had high Nitrate. Then I got a couple of Mangrove plants, let them leaf out in a glass of water at 0.017 salinity. When they got the first two leaves on them I took an old broken hang on overflow and drilled small holes starting about 2 inches up from the bottom to the top. I then put sand in the bottom (taken from my tank) and planted the mangroves in the sand. I set this in my sump where the water would flow through it. My Nitrates are now undetectible.