Good crap, Bad Crap & ?? Crap

[Jocko]

I have no emeral crabs. Are your nitrates really that high?? If you had 1/10 of that, people would still be telling you to get your trates down! That would certainly explain things.

How long has your tank been up? Is it still cycling? Also I hope you've since read that mandarins are not appropriate for small or new tanks unless you know for a fact that they will eat food you give them.

 

[flameangel88]

The tank's (aquapod 24g) been up since mid-march and went thru cycling and have about 40lbs of ls and 55lbs of lr. I having seen the mandarin since the 2 or 3 day it went into the tank and that's been 3 weeks now so I asume it's dead but body hasn't turned up yet. I feed once a day of mixed flakes and frozen stuff and been watching very carefully that they finish in 2-3 minutes.

As for filtering I've the AquaC HOB, 1 W/D and 1 cannister and replaced the stock pump with a MJ 900. All in all the flow is about 1,000 gph. I've started to vaccum part of the gravel bed each time I do wc (that's 2x per week of 10% each time) to keep the nitrate from going any higher. Only the mandarin is unaccounted for and the pistol shrimp (I hear snapping sound but can't see) everything elso is doing fine. The brain coral, leather coral, green star polyp are doing good.

Can it be the filters are causing the high nitrate level?

 

[figuerres]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7347776#post7347776 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by flameangel88
The tank's (aquapod 24g) been up since mid-march and went thru cycling and have about 40lbs of ls and 55lbs of lr. I having seen the mandarin since the 2 or 3 day it went into the tank and that's been 3 weeks now so I asume it's dead but body hasn't turned up yet. I feed once a day of mixed flakes and frozen stuff and been watching very carefully that they finish in 2-3 minutes.

As for filtering I've the AquaC HOB, 1 W/D and 1 cannister and replaced the stock pump with a MJ 900. All in all the flow is about 1,000 gph. I've started to vaccum part of the gravel bed each time I do wc (that's 2x per week of 10% each time) to keep the nitrate from going any higher. Only the mandarin is unaccounted for and the pistol shrimp (I hear snapping sound but can't see) everything elso is doing fine. The brain coral, leather coral, green star polyp are doing good.

Can it be the filters are causing the high nitrate level?

well a canister filter is a great way to trap gunk and breed bactriea.... but not a good way to elimintate nitrates.

a large sand bend or volume of porus live rock can eliminate nitrates but only slowly.

if your filters are canister type then clean them out and chnage the pads etc.....

your tank is a 24 G -- the sand is how deep??
how many fish??

if the amonia is reading zero and the nit is not then you have a few things to check for / do.
1) clean the filers out.
2) hold back food for a day or two
3) double check the amonia test with another test kit.
4) re-test ntirates and nitrites carefully.

40 *IS VERY HIGH*

if the tests keep showing the same after no food and cleaned filters then something is still cycling / dying etc... and needs to be found and fixed.

while checking that do water chnages as often as you can...
say every day do a 10% change possibly even 20% till you find the root cause.

amonia creates nit's that can only leave the tank two ways normaly:

1) water chnages
2) anearobic bacteria break it down to nitogen gas that passes out of the water naturaly.

if the amonia reading was wrong then the nit reading might be dead right.

if the amo is really zero then something is dead or craping and the anearoboic bacteria in your rock and sand can not keep up with the load they have.

with a 24 gallon tank you may have to "fine tune" things as that's not a lot of room for sand bed and rock to do the work...

see if any of that shows the problem...
bad test results
hidden gunk in filters
dead things
etc....

 

[flameangel88]

figuerres--thanks for taking the time to help here.

The sand bed range from 1.75"-2.5" and have 7 very small fish (overstocked) in the tank with 1 feeding a day for a duration of 1-2 min frozen brine shrimp and mysis and sometimes a pinch of flakes with filters off so the food doesn't blown all over the sand bed.

I don't think is the test kit because I tested the Q-tank with 1 fish and the ammonia, nitrite is 0 and nitrate is 10. I will test with another brand of test kit tomorrow to confirm. I'll clean out the filters and change the chemi-pure in the canister tomorrow. Looking for something dead will be a big challenge as I've stacked 55lbs of LRs in there. Will take your advice in doing more wcs.

Thanks again.

 

[figuerres]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7351446#post7351446 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by flameangel88
figuerres--thanks for taking the time to help here.

The sand bed range from 1.75"-2.5" and have 7 very small fish (overstocked) in the tank with 1 feeding a day for a duration of 1-2 min frozen brine shrimp and mysis and sometimes a pinch of flakes with filters off so the food doesn't blown all over the sand bed.

I don't think is the test kit because I tested the Q-tank with 1 fish and the ammonia, nitrite is 0 and nitrate is 10. I will test with another brand of test kit tomorrow to confirm. I'll clean out the filters and change the chemi-pure in the canister tomorrow. Looking for something dead will be a big challenge as I've stacked 55lbs of LRs in there. Will take your advice in doing more wcs.

Thanks again.

No problem....

I think Dr. Ron used to have on his posts:

"the solution to polution is diution"
as in -- keep changing that water till you figure out what the cause is.
and for sure if you did say 25% per day for 2-3 days then that level should drop way down ... to say 5 or 10.
(perhaps lower?)
but figure that it's a result of an imbalance somewhere in the system.
for every thing that goes in something happens.
if it's food then it will make waste somewhere...
with 7 fish in 25 galons you may just be pushing the limits of what you tank can process right now....
do you have a sump? a fuge?
all the bacteria that break down waste need a volume of space to work in / live in
for example take your tanks length x width x sandbed depth
in inches to get a total Cubic inches of volume.

then figure the same for the tank.

the anearobic bacteria can only live in the bottom of a sand bed or inthe core of porus rock.

If I recall Dr. Ron said that there was a minimum volume needed for the bactirea to be really effective in finishing the cycle.

with a 25 you may need to ither lower the load ( # of fish etc..)
or create a way to process the waste
or
be ready to keep chnaging water.

I have heard of .... but know little about ways of creating things like anearobic chambers in a sump or of adding a sump / fuge with a "mud bed" that can help but then I think your 25 would get a lot bigger

keep at it and let us know how it goes.... part of why I am going to a larger tank someday.... larger gives more room for biomass to work and less chance of sudden swings in water parameters.

 

[flameangel88]

Unfortunately I didn't have room to add a sump where the tank is situated but did put a wet/dry and canister in and bet the 2 it's almost another 4 gal of water.

Just got a 75 gal tank on Thursday and will setup after vacation in another 2 wks. I will transfer slowly to new tank and in the meantime I just have to perform wcs.

Budget will be tight on the new tank so I've to use whatever equipment tha are at my disposal.

I wonder if I should remove the Eheim media out of the canister filter and replace with LRs?

 

[figuerres]

try just dumping the media and running it clean for a few days...

I know this stuff can get $$$ I have a 55 and am thinking of a new tank -- one size i would like to get I think might cost me something like $3,000 just for the hardware.
not even a huge tank! but pumps, lights etc... all add up!

I think my 55 has cost me at least $1,500 in lights, pumps etc...

so I hear you on budgets !

with the 55 if you can go slow here is an idea:


get top-grade sand for a 4-5 inch deep sand bed -- not live sand just good small gain "reef" sand.

make up the water and get pumps going then each time you do a water chnage put that in the 75 for a few times...
then get a 1/2 order of live sand from TBS after that sand has cycled.

mix the TBS sand in with the tank sand and let that cycle thru...

that will still not be as rich as tbs sand but should get you a good bed going to then add more rocks and things onto.

the tank water will boost the new tanks bactiera and planckton levels....
a few scoops of your sand and a few live rocks after it's had some time will also help seed it.

then a good batch of TBS sand -- mixed with the other -- and given time to cycle should get a decent base for the tank to start with....

hope that idea helps .....

 

[Jocko]

I don't think is the test kit because I tested the Q-tank with 1 fish and the ammonia, nitrite is 0 and nitrate is 10. I will test with another brand of test kit tomorrow to confirm. I'll clean out the filters and change the chemi-pure in the canister tomorrow. Looking for something dead will be a big challenge as I've stacked 55lbs of LRs in there. Will take your advice in doing more wcs.

10?!? That's really high too! What's in your QT?? Maybe the test is wrong. I don't think everything else in your tank would be doing OK if your nitrates were really 40.

The mandarin probably starved to death (they're usually starved and skinny at the LFS before you even buy them) and your cleanup crew probably took care of the body very quickly.

 

[flameangel88]

The only fish in the QT is a tiny Chalk Basslet about 1 1/4" with 10lbs of Fiji rocks I got from MD (they call it Live but when I got it it was so dry and now newspaper wrapping and the only 'Live" part was a couple of black bugs crawl out from the box) I was curing (about a month now). I'll re-test tonight with a different test kit just to double check the readings.

The Mandarin never came out after the third day and I couldn't target feed. You're probably right that the clean up crew got it right now.

I cleaned the canister filter last night and also replaced the Chemi-Pure and there were a lot of sand in the filter pad and I done a gravel vacuum (partial and not the whole gravel bed) with a 20% water change last night.

 

[figuerres]

ok so now what are the params??
amo
nit
sg
etc....

after all that + 24 hours to settle in the levels should have went down a mesuarable amount.

let us know how it looks :thumbsup:

 

[flameangel88]

Tested again and here are the parameters:

PH--------8.2
Ammonia--0
Nitrite------0
Nitrate---40

Tested with Seachem and
Nitrite-----0
Nitrate--over 30

Most likely the problem is in the gravel bed. I've to figure out how to take the rocks out and I was hoping not having to do this until I have the 75g setup first.

 

[figuerres]

if the first two values are right and a 20% water chnage did not bring the last number down then I tend to think the tests are wrong....

do another 20% water change and test again....

with 40% water change there is no way you can still get 40!

I do not think you need to / want to keep at the sand bed unless you have alge on it.

does the sand bed get red cyano on it during the day??

with the numbers you get I would expect to have a "red carpet"
as that's what it feeds on.

for amo to stay at zero and first stage nit to stay zero and the thrid stage to stay pegged at 40 after a w/c is just freaky :eek2:

ither the source water has it.... or something is making it fast...

try testing your source water.

what does it show?

also is it ro-di water ? tap water?
well water ??

something is missing from the picture.... this seems odd.

 

[flameangel88]

The sand looks pretty clean and white and I still have almost the whole cleaning crew intact with the exception of hermits and have no idea where they are but I can see all the snails attached to the glass and rocks.

I use aq. Ph. Tap Water Filter--filtered water for wcs and the same water goes to the Q-Tank. I tested the water from the 75gal tank and the Nitrate is zero so I really don't think its the test kit.

I'm heating up the 75gal tank water now and will transfer the rocks in and check the gravel bed to see if anything dead to cause this problem. But like I said the only fish missing is the Mandarin over 3 weeks ago and I got the Mantis out last week so there shouldn't be any dead critters. Very fustrating at this point but I will get to the bottom of this.

I greatly appreciate all the help you have given me.

 

[flameangel88]

Here are some pictures and hope it helps:

 

[flameangel88]

More pictures:

As you can see from the last picture that the 75g tank wasn't in the plan and good thing my g/f is understanding.

 

[figuerres]

Yeah that is a clean tank!

my thoughts are that the canister filter and the age of the system are leading to the high readings.

you may need to just keep chnaging water till you have the 75 cycled and with a good sand bed that is ready.

I think you may also want to check with folks in the "nano" tank group on how stocked that tank is....

I *think* it should have very few fish etc... for the 24 gallons of volume... But I really am not totaly sure what the nano guys do --
my tank is a 55 with a 20 sump so I run with a lot more room for sand, water change etc...

also I would think that the fish and the corals would be reacting to the level @ 40 -- that also makes it odd.

normally when the tank has bad values then corals and fish will show that they are stressed.... your tank does not look like that.

confused

 

[flameangel88]

The water in the 75g reached 76 degree this morning and I was able to transfer all the rocks from the 24g so I can see what's at the bottom. Nothing dead it was a bit dirty but nothing out of the ordinary and I'm totally confussed now. I vacuum the gravel bed and replaced about 3g of water then had most of the rocks back in. I never had corals before so not sure how they would react other than dying off to small mass but looking at all the fish in the tank they swim and eat fine.

I think I'm stressed out after seeing the high nitrate reading day in and day out the last 2 weeks and need to take a break and when I get back I will get a package from TBS. I'll be in Tampa next Fri or Sat and will see if I can stop by to visit Richard.

I still have the wet/dry to clean out tonight then it will strickly be wcs till the 75g is up.

 

[flameangel88]

I've changed water the last two nights 15% and 12% but nitrate hasn't decressed one bit. The problem may be the Eheim filter media and I've 6 stacks between the wet/dry and canister filters. I'll remove one stack from each to see if the nitrate level come down then proceed with additional media removal. I even have less fish in there now after I moved some LRs to the 75g and one fish was hidden in the rock. Funny thing is the hitchhikers were fine in the high nitrate tank but died after moving to the 75g with good water parameters.

 

[figuerres]

Shock of some kind -- what kind of things died?? different critters are sensitve to different changes...

I bet this is driving you nuts... I know how I feel when I cant come up with a good answer to a problem.

I hope it all shakes out soon and is solved.

 

[flameangel88]

The dead ones are both hitchhikers and one of them is a stone crap. The snails and hermits are all doing fine and even the green nudibranch is doing fine.

Yes, this is really killing me and just have to go back to basics and doing a process of elimination till I can figure out.