Getting discouraged

P0LECAT

New member
Ok so I'm going on almost two months with my 75 gallon.

30 gallon refugium with 10 lbs live rock, 3 inches of sand and macro algae
Eshopps 100 protein skimmer
tank has about 40 lbs of live rock that was added to cycle in tank (uncured)
One carbon reactor
One gfo reactor
Aqua wave 4x54 t5s
One deep sea 1x54 t5 actinic "sunrise/sunset
0 nitrites
0 nitrates
0 phosphates
7.5 ph
9 dkh
480 cal
79 temp

So that being said I,m experiencing a second diatom bloom( on sand mostly and fighting cuc on rock and glass) and cloudy water. The first time it happened I got a sand conch 10 snails 10 hermits and they cleaned it up and the tank was awesome ..... But not anymore and it is discouraging.

Water changes made it good for one day then back to ugly.

What do I do...... Need a sanity check
 
Relax... What is your current light schedule? Why not just turn off the lights for 24 hours and see if the bloom decreases.

Any tank aquasculpting?

Do you still have all the CUC??

Where the diatoms are... is their any flow?
 
It is just part of the challenge..

Your tank will go through a lot of mini cycles. The nitrogen cycle you hear about is just part of it. It balances out pretty well after about a year, but I still have random hair algae outbreaks after five.

IMO your cuc is way to large. I would have a few narrsarius snails, and a couple cerths and turbos and be done. When the snails eat algae where does it go? Back into the water column to feed the next algae.

Keep up with your water changes, blow rocks off with a turkey baster daily, and make sure all your equipment is working right and it will clear up eventually..
 
Most of the diatoms are on the sand, I have two 750 power heads circulating the water.

Still have the cuc - two snails

I have about 40 lbs of live rock forming a wall across tank. Rock is centered in tank with room on all sides.
 
Going to leave the lights off for a day and see what happens...

At what point can I start adding coral?
 
It is just part of the challenge..

Your tank will go through a lot of mini cycles. The nitrogen cycle you hear about is just part of it. It balances out pretty well after about a year, but I still have random hair algae outbreaks after five.

IMO your cuc is way to large. I would have a few narrsarius snails, and a couple cerths and turbos and be done. When the snails eat algae where does it go? Back into the water column to feed the next algae.

Keep up with your water changes, blow rocks off with a turkey baster daily, and make sure all your equipment is working right and it will clear up eventually..
Well put.

A diatom bloom is not something you have to react to. Usually it will be self limiting. I would guess that's what happened when it went away before. It's frustrating, but your tank is just too young for you to be bothered that everything isn't perfect yet.

Do you have plenty of pods and worms? These are the kinds of creatures that will help you get to where you want to be in terms of getting your tank "established". You don't need any hermits and it would be a shame if you had some that were interfering with your pod or worm populations.
 
This could be a flow issue also. You have 2 x 750 powerheads which gives you a circulation rate of 20x per hour. This is not terrible, but is on the low end. In my 75G I have a Mag7 return which does about 450-500gph with the head loss, plus 2 x Hydor Evolution 1400's giving me about a 44x turnover rate. After I added the second 1400 gph powerhead, I noticed my sand bed started getting stirred, and I had to adjust placement. I can tell you that with my current setup and powerhead placement, nothing settles on my sand bed.

All your testing provides good numbers, but your PH at 7.5 is a little low. Im not sure if this is contributing. I keep my PH at 8.2 - 8.3

Time and flow should help out with your diatoms. As for cleanup crew, I have 40 snails and 40 blue leg hermits (the very small guys, .5 inch and under). I have only lost one tiny hermit since I added them 4 months ago, and have little algae. Every day it grows on the glass, the snails eat what they can, and I clean it off every other night with a mag float. My sandbed, rock, and corals all have no algae.
 
I'm using ro/di water from the start. I've seen some tiny white little creatures on the glass along with tiny looking brittle stars on the glass. Don't think I have a worm population of any type.

My rocks a fairly clean, but the sand bed and glass are not....but it looks like it is starting to clear up like last time. I may try and add a third power head or increase the size of the current ones.

What's more concerning is the cloudy water it's a white milky cloudiness.

Guess I will have to wait and see.

Thanks for all the input, it helps keep you sane when you know others have had the same experience. I've been documenting my setup in hopes to end with a healthy setup
 
I wouldnt worry about diatom blooms those go away on there on and really are not particularly harmful. The milky water im not sure about are you mixing your salt and stuff real good before adding it? Extra flow always seems to help everything. Hang in there you will get there and honestly your problems really are not problems just a cycle that everyone goes through.
 
I don't know what the cloudiness could indicate. The only time I ever had cloudy water was once when i mixed the water wrong, but it cleared up the next day. If you want more input on that particular issue, it couldn't hurt to post a thread with that in the title if you don't get any more answers about it here.

I assume you're not dosing sugar, right?
 
Tincture of time: your tank is right on track. Relax and this too shall pass. Beer works. Agree that you can begin to slowly add some easier corals.
 
White cloudy is typically bacterial blooms. Considering cycles can easily take a solid two months, and your at almost two months, Steve is correct about "tincture of time" being the solution. The tank is still in the process of stabilizing ;)
 
diatoms are mostly related to silica levels in sand. as they consume it all out (in few days) diatoms will go away as well. keep up with normal water changes and up-keep of ur tank and maybe keep a good flow throughout the tank.
 
First you say 40 lbs uncured rock. I hope its cured by now , and is under the 1 lb per gallon. Your LR can be one of your best bio filters.

Also you say maybe add a third powerhead. What size PH's do you have now. Good water flow is important.
Water movement helps bring in oxygen and release nitrogen.It basicly breaths at the surface.

Also good flow reduces fish waste and uneatin food from collocting and make it harder for unwanted algea from growing ( though it will always grow in some way).

Also with low to no stock i would turn the skimmer off. All it does is remove ammonia and you should not have much. A hang on back bio filter would be best for removing unwanted debris from water.

Minimum water flow and LR and SB with HOB filter you should be good for months.
 
I agree with hollister. You are a little light on live rock. For example, my 90g has about 125 lbs between fuge and dt. While a tank may cycle in a month, it takes a much longer time to stabilize. Readying a tank for fish and coral by monitoring levels and such is great, but the behind the scenes stuff - the algae blooms, cyano and other bacteria proliferation (good and bad), sand bed development - take months if not years to develop and mature. Consider this - my 90g seeded with all that good stuff from my 29g is just about stabilized. My 29 g was up for about a year before I x-ferred it to my 90 last November.

You've got a while to go.
 
I currently have 50 lbs of lr total 10 lbs of it is in the sump, I,ve been thinking about adding more to the sump, just don't want anymore in the display as it is already taking up 2/3rds of the display volume.

I think keeping up with my husbandry and some time is rx needed.


Do I need to add critters to the sanded?
 
Update not so discouraged

Update not so discouraged

So I stopped messy with the tank and my second diatom bloom cleared up and so did the water, just like most of you said it would. Thanks again, this site really helps you keep sane. I,m going to put the evolution of my newbie tank up so others in the same boat don't get discouraged, patience really pays off in this hobby
 
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