NMETCALF
New member
I have had my tank up for 3 month. The cycle was done and everything looked great, water quality was great. I was out of town for 1 weekend and when I got back my procollipora coral seemed to have died. I removed it from the water and all the other corals seemed fine for a week. This last weekend I was gone again, and when I got back there was this dreadful slimy light brown stringy algae all over everything, and all my zoanthids seem to have closed up. So I pulled out a bunch of the rocks and rinsed them in a freshwater dip to remove some of the slimy stuff and I siphoned off a buch and used a turkey baster to clean off the corals. Also a small anemone died, which I removed. The next day more of that slimy algae had developed, so yesterday I added some dr Tim's waste away and left the lights off except for about 1 hour. Now this morning I wake up an the water is very cloudy. What can I do?
Here's my setup:
200 gal dt
40 gallon sump/ fuge with wet dry system that I have running with some bio balls a little filter media, and few big clumps if chaeto, and some lr
I run a reactor with dr Tim's bio pellets, a protein skimmer that I run a bit wet and remove about a liter of brown murky water every other day, I also have a small 2 gallon refugium with various macro algae and lr and time tube worm colonies. Lots of pods growing in there.
I have an EVO quad 72" light on the dt that seems to be a fantastic light, I also use a 250w metal halide to add a but more lighting. Lights are all in timers. With the blue lights coming in about 30 mins before the white lights an everything is in 10 min steps.
I run a turf algae scrubber in one of the overflows that seems to be doing quite well, lots if brown green and red algae growing on it, and I scrape off half of the algae from it every other week.
Temp is 79 - 80 during the day, and 77 at night.
Water tests show:
Less than 1ppm ammonia
Ph at 8.3
KH 140ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 10ppm
Phosphates at 0
Calcium at 560
Only other thing that may be relevant is that last week after seeing some of my coral polyps closing I decided to start doing with vitamin C. About 2500mg twice a day. I use nutrition biotic sodium ascorbate which seems to be the recommended kind. Perhaps the vitamin c isn't working well with something? I don't know, but at this point I'm pretty sure something is wrong. I use RO/DI water for top offs and water changes. I don't do a lot if water changes, although I did about 10% a couple days ago.
I do replace the water I skim off so that's like a liter every other day.
Please let me know any ideas of what I can do, or what I'm doing wrong.
Thanks!!
Here's my setup:
200 gal dt
40 gallon sump/ fuge with wet dry system that I have running with some bio balls a little filter media, and few big clumps if chaeto, and some lr
I run a reactor with dr Tim's bio pellets, a protein skimmer that I run a bit wet and remove about a liter of brown murky water every other day, I also have a small 2 gallon refugium with various macro algae and lr and time tube worm colonies. Lots of pods growing in there.
I have an EVO quad 72" light on the dt that seems to be a fantastic light, I also use a 250w metal halide to add a but more lighting. Lights are all in timers. With the blue lights coming in about 30 mins before the white lights an everything is in 10 min steps.
I run a turf algae scrubber in one of the overflows that seems to be doing quite well, lots if brown green and red algae growing on it, and I scrape off half of the algae from it every other week.
Temp is 79 - 80 during the day, and 77 at night.
Water tests show:
Less than 1ppm ammonia
Ph at 8.3
KH 140ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 10ppm
Phosphates at 0
Calcium at 560
Only other thing that may be relevant is that last week after seeing some of my coral polyps closing I decided to start doing with vitamin C. About 2500mg twice a day. I use nutrition biotic sodium ascorbate which seems to be the recommended kind. Perhaps the vitamin c isn't working well with something? I don't know, but at this point I'm pretty sure something is wrong. I use RO/DI water for top offs and water changes. I don't do a lot if water changes, although I did about 10% a couple days ago.
I do replace the water I skim off so that's like a liter every other day.
Please let me know any ideas of what I can do, or what I'm doing wrong.
Thanks!!