Hi everyone,
My name is Tanya, and I'm from Moscow (Russia).
I'm here because we have a tank and we have problems.
We got ourselves a nice marine aqua about 6 weeks ago: The guys in the office where my hubby works were about to send the entire thing down the drain, and we just couldn't stand it thought we didn't plan to have a marine tank anytime soon.
We are ABSOLUTELY new to the hobby, and though we read a lot now, we still have everything mixed up in our heads.
This is the album
http://photobucket.com/lynnka_tank where you can see a couple of pics taken yesterday.
Here are the basic parameters (sorry if I use the wrong words - I'm a newbie): a 55gal reef tank (Elos 70 with sump and NS500 (guess so) skimmer that doesn't seem to work properly), about 20 lbs - maybe more - of rock (including LR), DSB about 3 inches deep (I wish I knew what kind of sand we have), two Eheim 1250 pumps (for return and for skimmer), two Tunze flow pumps (6045 and 6055). I will take pics of the sump and the entire tank today to make things clearer.
Tank inhabitants include: one Royal Blue Tang, one Zebrasoma flavescenes, two Clowns, one Fringelip blenny, two Chrysipteras, 5 Lysmata wurdermanni (bought a couple of weeks ago to fight Aiptasia), two shrimps we got with original tank setup, one Cypraea, a couple of crabs, a couple of snails, huge Sinularia sp., one more soft coral, one Clavaularia viridis, one Parazoanthus axinellia, lots of Corallimorpharia varia. We also have a lot of stuff regularly coming out of the sand, like little sticks. Worms?
Water parameters: we used to use tap water for refill and water change but switched to RO a couple of weeks ago because of the horrible nitrate levels we are registering (can't even give you the number 'cause the test color is off the color scale). We do a 10 to 20% water change every week using Red Sea salt. Current levels are: p 7,85-8,12, PO4 practically undetectable, NO2 practically undetectable, NO3 - AWFUL (!!!!), Ca 400, kH 6, alkalinity 2,5, ammonia none, salinity 1.022 (adding 1.025).
The problem with the tank is that we have too many Aiptasia, a lot of grey stuff on our live rocks, brownish stains on the DSB (getting darker by the end of the day) and an extremely high level of nitrate. The inhabitants and the corals don't seem to suffer but it still bothers me a lot.
We use ELOS and Seachem tests (hard to find decent ones here). We have Chetamorpha in the sump + some anti-phos and a carbon bag.
Water T is 25 degrees C. Daylight is 8 hours (10 am - 6 pm) with MH lamp (Megachrome coral 150W/7500 Lumen/14500 K by Giesemann), plus two T-5 Actinic lamps (24W), two T-5 Blue plus lamps (24W).
This is for a start. Tell me if I should repost this somewhere else (sorry if it's in the wrong place).
I will be grateful for any advice.
One more thing: The tank will be 3 yo this October, but it's been neglected for some 5 weeks before we got it so we are trying hard now to get it up and running again. We had a guy from a marine aquaria service company to come and do the job for 6 weeks, but it didn't seem to get us far.
Thanks.