frogspawn help
- Thread starter Cruella
- Start date
- Status
Get Salifert tests for calcium and alkalinity if you're keeping corals. Mg. too if you have the funds.
Your readings should be: temp around 80
salinity: 1.024-6
calcium 400
alkalinity 8.3-10 (midrange is best.)
magnesium 1200 (3xcalcium reading)
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 0.
hoping you have a skimmer: this helps a lot. That nitrate reading may come from fishfood: it's not awful, but could be lower.
Light medium, flow chaotic.
Your readings should be: temp around 80
salinity: 1.024-6
calcium 400
alkalinity 8.3-10 (midrange is best.)
magnesium 1200 (3xcalcium reading)
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 0.
hoping you have a skimmer: this helps a lot. That nitrate reading may come from fishfood: it's not awful, but could be lower.
Light medium, flow chaotic.
ok the calcium was at 245. eddies said that was good. and yes it is down to the white bone. temp is 82. ph is 8,2,my nitrate has always been between 5-10. I do have a protien skimmer on. all my other corals look great. and the rest of the frogspawn looks fine. I do put in iodine once a week. I am feeding my coral this stuff calledChromaplex by kent marine it is a phytoplankton with amino and fatty acids. I do 10% water changes every two weeks.
reefD
New member
levels are not perfect if you have any detectable levels. you say your 'trates are at .5 or whatever? right? perfect levels mean nothing detectable. in any case your levels are not bad but not perfect. perfect levels are zero in all nutrients. you have a reading of 'trates so its not perfect. and possible cause for your problems. i kid you not ,aged reef tanks have no detectable levels....AT ALL. thats perfect readings...yours are not perfect and detectable levels can be .......for any reef......... bad news! perfect water has no levels readings at all. before you indulge into the cause, blame your levels...until they are completely ALLL zero you should not rule out that being the issue. when all is truely perfect then you can indulge into a cause. rule out the simple issue first it will save you money ...once levels are sound youll have no worries with corals like frogspawn. very easy simple coral to care for but if water quality is not on youll never have success with even a yellow polyp.
reefD
New member
your trates is the issue. first consider getting a better skimmer. next consider getting a bigger tank or reducing stock/feedings. if you cant get that reading down youll always have issues. nitrates are the last stage of a cycle and can only be reduced by water change or plants/macro. trates are a finished part of ammonia 'trites conversion. so if they are high you can reduce them by. 1- feed less...2- consider stock load and filtration. sometimes we need a large skimmer to fit our want's with large fish in a tank.
in any case what im trying to tell you is that you have a very very big issue here. if you want corals this trates issue is big. you say water changes dont reduce them(weekly changes should be enough). so now consider filtration and increasing water volume. in any case test the 'trates daily ...keep doing water ever will lower them...and if the are still present the worst thing you could do is add stock(fish ,live rock, or coral, and inverts are all stock.) be diligent and reduce those levels. if you cant upgrade to a larger tank.
tackle this and youll get rewarded! for sure! no exceptions.
in any case what im trying to tell you is that you have a very very big issue here. if you want corals this trates issue is big. you say water changes dont reduce them(weekly changes should be enough). so now consider filtration and increasing water volume. in any case test the 'trates daily ...keep doing water ever will lower them...and if the are still present the worst thing you could do is add stock(fish ,live rock, or coral, and inverts are all stock.) be diligent and reduce those levels. if you cant upgrade to a larger tank.
tackle this and youll get rewarded! for sure! no exceptions.
reefD
New member
i cant even cosider all your issues at once!
and i qoute"in my sump I have metal hose clamps. what can i use instead?? any one know if they make plastic ones and where i can find them??
bad! and another possible problem that is why your having issues.
search what leaching is cause thats what the metal in your tank is doing constantly. not slowly but steadily
and i qoute"in my sump I have metal hose clamps. what can i use instead?? any one know if they make plastic ones and where i can find them??
bad! and another possible problem that is why your having issues.
search what leaching is cause thats what the metal in your tank is doing constantly. not slowly but steadily
If the 'trates are a continuing presence rather than a passing phenomenon, yes, absolutely, this is a bad thing. You need a better skimmer, perhaps, or less feeding.
Your calcium is way low for corals: it should not dip below 400. If it is that low, your alkalinity is very probably low, too: those two readings go in lock step. That combination could, by itself, account for the frogspawn problem. WHen you said nitrate 5, that's one thing, not good, but survivable: but 10---that's way not good for a coral. I don't recall what fish you have, but you may have to cut way back on feeding until you can get the nitrate under control; and if that's soaring, phosphates may not be far behind---a phosphate rise and algae bloom often attends a little extra fishfood in the system. You might talk to Randy in Reef Chemistry about that nitrate and calcium level situation. You're getting good advice: water changes help a lot: they are helping, or things might be worse.
Your calcium is way low for corals: it should not dip below 400. If it is that low, your alkalinity is very probably low, too: those two readings go in lock step. That combination could, by itself, account for the frogspawn problem. WHen you said nitrate 5, that's one thing, not good, but survivable: but 10---that's way not good for a coral. I don't recall what fish you have, but you may have to cut way back on feeding until you can get the nitrate under control; and if that's soaring, phosphates may not be far behind---a phosphate rise and algae bloom often attends a little extra fishfood in the system. You might talk to Randy in Reef Chemistry about that nitrate and calcium level situation. You're getting good advice: water changes help a lot: they are helping, or things might be worse.
I have a coral life skimmer for a 120 gallon fish tank. my nitrates were at ten once. I only feed my fish once a day. I can not get a bigger fish tank. right now i have a 75 gal with a maroon clown, a tang, bi-color and a dotty back manderine goby( not a huge fish load 4 fish). 250lbs of live rock. in my main tank, 50 lbs in sump my tank has been up and running for 3 months. two weeks ago I got rid of all my bio-beads that i transfered from my other tank that has been up for two years.the phosphates I think are from my deer park h2o that I use. sorry I haven't got an ro/di system I have no where to put the thing right now. I have not added any fish or live stock. the frogspawn was the first thing that I have added since the tank has been up and running.by the way this is the first time i am dealing with corals. my calcium was over 400 last month and everyone told me to stop adding calcium buffer b/c I didn't needed anymore. the metal hose clamp are stainless steel. they have not rusted and I had just order plastic ones. why does everyone on this site become so psychotic. you make it sound like I am having so many issues. I am just asking a question. my friend had frogspawn that died b/c of a brown slime sickness that they can get from shipping. oh yeah in my sump I have been growing so much plant **** from tony's swamp bottom(i think it is called cheeto" that I need to cut it back weekly.
MMMmmm. Complex situation. Metal in the tank: get that out---you can find plastic c-clamps in the hardware store but not with plumbing: with the lawn sprinker system stuff, of all things.
Dosing iodine regularly. Back off on that and other special additives until this chemistry problem are ironed out: I personally make a rule not to add what I haven't got a test for, because the chemistry can be tricky once it's complicated by other additives. Some of the Kent stuff, for instance, has extra magnesium in it and it's real easy to overload.
Some concrete steps to sort this out:
1. get the metal fasters out (c-clamps, I'm betting)
2. run a little polyfilter in your sump to get rid of any metal that may have leached out.
3. test alkalinity. If below 8.3, use buffer to bring that up. Do not add more than the max daily dose given in the instructions. This may take several days. Never add buffer and calcium together: the result will be a snowstorm.
4. start bringing that calcium level up to 400; again, it may take days. If it absolutely won't stay up, you'll need to get a magnesium test kit and run that test. The magnesium level should be 3x the calcium level for the system to be stable.
5. Your other parameters are good...except for those pesky nitrates. I'm betting the cause is either too many fish, or overfeeding. If too many fish, you're going to need either to thin out the population or get a mega-skimmer, a real workhorse that can take care of the fish-poo. A lot of live rock and a lot of bristleworms can help this problem, too. Basically you've got too much not-broken-down-poo in the system, whether it comes from leftover fishfood or from fish poo. That's what makes the nitrates, in the sum of things. And it needs to be gotten out either by worms breaking it down, or if it's too much for the worms to take care of, by a skimmer that will strip it out of the water. It's not going to be an overnight fix, but it is fixable.
I hope that at least gives you something to go on.
Dosing iodine regularly. Back off on that and other special additives until this chemistry problem are ironed out: I personally make a rule not to add what I haven't got a test for, because the chemistry can be tricky once it's complicated by other additives. Some of the Kent stuff, for instance, has extra magnesium in it and it's real easy to overload.
Some concrete steps to sort this out:
1. get the metal fasters out (c-clamps, I'm betting)
2. run a little polyfilter in your sump to get rid of any metal that may have leached out.
3. test alkalinity. If below 8.3, use buffer to bring that up. Do not add more than the max daily dose given in the instructions. This may take several days. Never add buffer and calcium together: the result will be a snowstorm.
4. start bringing that calcium level up to 400; again, it may take days. If it absolutely won't stay up, you'll need to get a magnesium test kit and run that test. The magnesium level should be 3x the calcium level for the system to be stable.
5. Your other parameters are good...except for those pesky nitrates. I'm betting the cause is either too many fish, or overfeeding. If too many fish, you're going to need either to thin out the population or get a mega-skimmer, a real workhorse that can take care of the fish-poo. A lot of live rock and a lot of bristleworms can help this problem, too. Basically you've got too much not-broken-down-poo in the system, whether it comes from leftover fishfood or from fish poo. That's what makes the nitrates, in the sum of things. And it needs to be gotten out either by worms breaking it down, or if it's too much for the worms to take care of, by a skimmer that will strip it out of the water. It's not going to be an overnight fix, but it is fixable.
I hope that at least gives you something to go on.
You're ok in the fish department, then, and the crabs. I'll bet your nitrate problem is related to the biobeads you mention, and you say that is now taken care of---so your system is still adjusting a bit to the withdrawal of the biobeads, and that is only to be expected, so that's not such a concern. It will iron itself out, and 5 isn't, IMHO, enough to do the damage on its own.
What remains is that calcium level, and the alkalinity. Whoever said the calcium should be in the 200's wasn't thinking about the corals. That needs to come up to 400. Your other additives will do fine as soon as that's taken care of. If it was at 400 a couple of weeks ago, then it's not dire: you just need to get it back up, and watch the alkalinity: frogspawns are sensitive to that. 8.3-9 alk with a calcium of 400 would be spot-on. Beyond all that, hopefully you won't lose the other parts of the coral and it will start budding out from the head---they do that. You may eventually want to take a garden shears and snip the dead branch, but do that only after it's been stable for some time.
What remains is that calcium level, and the alkalinity. Whoever said the calcium should be in the 200's wasn't thinking about the corals. That needs to come up to 400. Your other additives will do fine as soon as that's taken care of. If it was at 400 a couple of weeks ago, then it's not dire: you just need to get it back up, and watch the alkalinity: frogspawns are sensitive to that. 8.3-9 alk with a calcium of 400 would be spot-on. Beyond all that, hopefully you won't lose the other parts of the coral and it will start budding out from the head---they do that. You may eventually want to take a garden shears and snip the dead branch, but do that only after it's been stable for some time.
You have good info on the biobeads. What's going on is this: they are indeed nitrate/trite factories, and they only get worse with age. But they do the same work the sandbed and rock do, and they've been carrying part of the waste-disposal load for the tank. So when you began pulling the biobeads out, the sandbed and rock bacteria began multiplying, since THEY were getting more food, but they weren't multiplying quite fast enough to keep up with the change, and a little waste/food got past them.
Hence the slight but not catastrophic rise in nitrate. The system is adjusting, just like a bridge adjusting to a heavy truck, bacteria are multiplying hand over fist right now, and the tank is getting more stable.
Your water change will help move that nitrate out of the system, which will help. I'd hold it at that change, however, and just let it perk along a bit, doing your tests, getting those water parameters immaculate and steady. What I read when I first came online was alarming---because when corals do that, it can be a cascading mess. Now that I see what's actually going on I'm not alarmed---I think that you're real close to having the stable tank you've been working for.
Hence the slight but not catastrophic rise in nitrate. The system is adjusting, just like a bridge adjusting to a heavy truck, bacteria are multiplying hand over fist right now, and the tank is getting more stable.
Your water change will help move that nitrate out of the system, which will help. I'd hold it at that change, however, and just let it perk along a bit, doing your tests, getting those water parameters immaculate and steady. What I read when I first came online was alarming---because when corals do that, it can be a cascading mess. Now that I see what's actually going on I'm not alarmed---I think that you're real close to having the stable tank you've been working for.
what I did start using was I put this blue fiter media in my baffels to catch any crap that floats by. I also have carbon by the pump. how much water should I change?? about 20 gallons? I did 10 gallon water change on monday. thanks by the way for not ripping my head of. this is my first coral that has gotten sick . last week i found 6 baby zoo's and 4 baby mushrooms. so my tank can't be that bad.
- Status
