Getting discouraged

[kaspm]

So tank has been up since mid December. Parameters have been good up. This past week I noticed the salinity was up to 1.03, usually when water would evaporate I would top off with 1.025-6 water. So the last few days I've been adding rodi water a couple of gallons at a time and it's not coming down.

Just finished a brown diatoms outbreak and it went in to a Cyanobacteria outbreak. Spent the last 3 days with the lights off and tried to clean sand bed best as possible.

Today I noticed my bicolor angel was dead not sure how long.

Trying to adjust skimmer to skim wetter now I have lots of microbubbles coming in the tank.

My green star polyp is growing along with one other coral. My zoo frag hasn't grown at all.

Ph has been stable between 8.2-8.4
No ammonia
Trace of nitrates I assume bc of cyano outbreak
No nitrites

Just looking for any advice to get things going in the right direction

 

[gone fishin]

First thing that jumped out is do not top off with saltwater for evaporation.

The tank is still in the early stages so I would expect the various algae to be showing up. I would not venture a guess as to why the fish died with the nfo given.

Can you give more details of the setup. Tank size, flow, sump, lighting type and schedule, dosing anything.

Initially I would pull a bit of water everyday and add RO/DI to the tank to lower the salinity back down to 1.026.

 

[JMorris271]

0

first thing that jumped out is do not top off with saltwater for evaporation.

The tank is still in the early stages so i would expect the various algae to be showing up. I would not venture a guess as to why the fish died with the nfo given.

Can you give more details of the setup. Tank size, flow, sump, lighting type and schedule, dosing anything.

Initially i would pull a bit of water everyday and add ro/di to the tank to lower the salinity back down to 1.026.

ibid^^^

 

[kaspm]

120g, skimz 201, fluval sp4 return, Reefbreeder photon: lights start at 9am and slowly ramp up to 35%. I don't dose anything.

 

[gone fishin]

Any power heads for circulation. If not then low flow or dead spots is not helping with the cyano. Other than the salinity nothing really jumps out. I would suspect your in the young tank algae phase.

 

[leviburns89]

Also, you should really be keeping an eye on alk, and mag levels.

And especially keep an eye on phosphate levels.

As the first response said, never top off with salt water. Salt does not evaporate, so topping off with sw is only raising your salinity.

Be adamant about 10% wc weekly. Just set aside 10 minutes on a Saturday or whatev, and always do it, this can dramatically improve water quality, and chemical imbalances.

 

[leviburns89]

Any progress on this?