*LONG READ* Water parameters all over the place (9month old tank, first aquarium)

[JarahFroski]

Hello everybody, usually I'm just a forum creeper, but lately I've had issues that I just don't understand and could use insight from the veteran reefers.. Quick background and setup info;

55G tank w/ 20 long for a sump. (sump is kind of 2 sections, seperated via egg crate. No sand in sump, 3/4's is live rock with some chaeto that grows well, and I've got the last 1/4 egg crated off with a porous sponge before the egg crate and houses a mag-drive 9.5 return pump that also runs a BRS GFO & GAC reactors. Media changed monthly. Also has a mag-drive 12 pump for my lifereef VSV3-36" tall skimmer, had a coralife 65G skimmer that was crap, still have it for a QT. but big skimmer will go on 210G near future setup, just wanted to see if a more efficient skimmer would help stabilize my issues. It's rated for 450 gallons and I know it's overkill for a 65g total volume system, but with the Mazzei Venturi upgrade this thing just pulls and pulls black chunky skimmate.

Filled tank with 80% dry rock, 20% live rock, started with a total of 75lbs of rock.1/2"-1" course sand bed for aesthetics only, and water(brand new RODI unit with TDS meter & Red Sea coral pro salt mixed at 1.025, measured with calibrated refractometer) on January 4th of this year. Performed fish less cycle with pure ammonia, added fritzyme(mistake now I know) and tank cycled in a week. Readings at time were;
Ammo-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate-20ppm
Performed 50% W/C and added a pair of Clarkii's. within a few days I was seeing ammonia & Nitrite soar. Ammo hit 5PPM+ same with nitrite. Took about 8 long days before they started dropping. Thought fish were toast for sure, by day 7 they weren't eating and breathing heavily, hiding in rock work..luckily, they made it through and are doing great to this day. Here's where things get wierd...

I assume that spike was my real cycle.. I was testing daily at this time and keeping a journal of records... So ammonia and nitrite were falling fast, but never hit 0. Ammonia would always hover around .25-.5PPM. Nitrite hovered around .1-.2PPM. Fish were acting fine so I thought it was my test kit, so I called Red Sea, and they sent me a brand new full kit... Awesome customer service. But the new kit showed same results.... Fast forward 7 months and I'm still getting low readings, zoas and some LPS corals I accumulated were growing and doing just fine. Purchased a RBT anemone around 6 month mark, and the fish fell in love. Everything looked great, but the low level readings persisted. So stupidly I bought another bottle of fritzyme and dosed accordingly. 3 days after that dose, the tank starts crashing. I had quite a collection by this time, zoas, acans, other LPS that didn't mind dirty water all thrived until the crash, got home from work and everything looked terrible. Luckily the owner of a LFS that I've grown to trust, let me keep ALL my livestock in her 300 gallon personal system at her house.

Within 3 weeks everything had dropped back to normal. She gave me 6 sample bottles of smart-start complete. I slowly added some acans back, they did fine and tests were still, ammonia .25, nitrite .1-.2. We discussed a few things and she told me to add 6 ounces, 3 sample bottles, of the smart start bacteria. 6 OZ on the label was considered a "problem tank" dose.

Kept testing and things improved but I still could not get the allusive 0PPM readings I sooooo badly wanted for my livestock. 1 week after first dose, she gave me a big black sponge from her sump, and told me to hit it with another 6oz smart start complete. The idea behind this was to hit it hard with the good bacteria, so if the fritzyme was a bad strain, the good stuff had a chance to out-compete it.... That was the idea anyway.

I dosed the last 3 sample bottles, and replaced my sponge with hers, trimmed it to fit,and put what was left in the DT between some rock. Within 72 hours I had my first ammonia and nitrite readings of 0PPM!! Now wether it was the sponge or snake oil or both, I didn't know, but was ecstatic regardless. Only took 8 months ;(

I slowly moved my livestock back into the tank, while monitoring daily again for a few weeks until I was confident they were to stay at zero. I left my Clarkii's in her tank as they started spawning while in her tank, and the female liked the extra space and was way less aggressive. So the bio load did decrease some, and the only other fish I have is Bleonard, the lawnmower blenny and a six line wrasse.

Stometella snails were spawning, LPS were fully extended,zoas growing fast, most of the rock had turned a nice purpleish pink. and all seemed well for the next month.

My wife missed having clowns, but this time she wanted some "pretty" ones, and decided we needed a pair of juvenile da vinci's... Added them about 2 weeks ago, feed frozen and pellet(alternate) lightly every other day. I target feed the corals as to not have a lot of wasted food decaying. All was good until a few days ago. I'm showing low level signs of ammonia and nitrite again... UGH ***?!?! My RBT, zoas, and hairy mushrooms all still look great, but I can tell some of the euphyllia isn't extending fully again. All 4 fish seem unaffected and roam the tank and eat well. Does anyone have any thoughts as to why my parameters won't stabilize? I don't want to and haven't added any more chemicals into the tank, even the smart start complete. I do manually dose cal, alk, and mag from BRS & Red Sea's reef energy and coral colors program(latter on hiatus till issue is corrected. As of today 8/29 results are;
Ammonia - .2PPM
nitrite - .2PPM (yesterday it hit .5PPM)
Nitrate - 20PPM (up from its usual 5-10PPM)
PH - 8.1 day / 7.8 night (light sump and DT same time)
Alkalinity - 8 dKH
Calcium - 480
Magnesium - 1440
All tests are Red Sea except alk & mag which are salifert.

No nuisance algae anymore at all. That went away around the 5-6 month mark when corraline really started spreading.

I'm just stumped.. I'm the type of guy that likes to know why things work and what makes them tick, probably why i ended up an auto technician, so it's really getting to me now. If I can't get this 55G right,how wil I get the 210 I bought a few months ago right? The 210 will have all the bells n whistles, apex gold sitting on my shelf, better higher flow single reactors, an actual sump even though its a trigger systems 36", with another external 29G fuge on a stand to flow back into the sumps small fuge area, and possibly a 30 or 40 display fuge built into 2nd story of canopy framed in, and will gravity feed into DT, plus the knowledge from this first SW reef tank, hell it's my first aquarium I've ever owned. The challenge is fun, but I want my challenge to be an SPS tank, not cycling a tank...

Thanks in advance,
Jared F.

 

[acabgd]

How is your flow? Do you use filter socks? You say you feed lightly, but how much do you feed quantity wise?

 

[JarahFroski]

No filter socks, or other mechanical filtration besides the seeded sponge that sits in front of the pumps, would it make much difference if my skimmer pump was actually in the LR area of the sump before the sponge? That way the sponge can't block anything from hitting the skimmer pump? Flow is about 30X in DT, provided by 2, 550GPH & 1, 425GPH powerheads. All 3 on constant during the day, and the 550's start to alternate at lights out. Mag 9.5 is probably loosing a lot thru the reactors and plumbing, lots of 90 degree turns before I knew better, but probably flows 7-8X thru the sump.

Think I could've restocked and added the clowns too quickly? Everything's looking good today thought, had some small recession on a few of my chalices, but that's seemed to stop. Anemone looks fantastic which I find odd. Tips all bubbled and stretched way out. The new ocellaris clowns, I can tell, don't naturally host the BTA in the wild, but do sometimes in an aquarium. Mine have a thing for my yellow goniopora, esp. when extended, but at night will go check out the edges of the nem... Getting closer and closer every night. Hopefully these 2 will eventually host the nem, and leave the goni alone. Don't think it likes it much ha! But they look neat glowing in the goni, their white really starts to go fluorescent yellow like a highlighter.

 

[JarahFroski]

Oh, and feed fish just what they can eat, bit by bit. As soon as one hits the sand or they seem uninterested I stop. Sometimes it gets a little messy when spot feeding my lps, but I figured the nassarius snails would take care of the leftovers. I spot feed 2X a week, is that too often??

 

[Sk8r]

There's an article in the GETTING STARTED entitled Dirt-simple Chemistry. That might help. I'm reading things that make me nervous: the word 'sponge', which if you mean filter instead of living, growing sponge is always a risk around corals; and dosing 'bacteria', which I do in freshwater, but not so in marine, since die-off of the new bacteria, if it happens, can produce nastiness too---
But principally I note your alk is .3 down, while your cal and mg are ok. A little buffer might help a wee bit.
And I'm questioning that sponge. I'd phase it out gradually and entirely, for a reef, and fill that sponge chamber with live rock rubble, chunks, in other words. And just let it alone. Anytime you have filter medium with a reef, it produces nitrate boom and bust, and a tank just won't settle.
I'm not calling for total change on anything except that sponge, which rings all sorts of alarm bells; But a careful look and a caution re the bacteria dose and that low alk: IME you're always better off letting nature do it, total rock/sand no filters, no special bacteria, just time.

 

[JarahFroski]

Makes sense why it took a few weeks to start to turn. My newbie brain thought of it as seeding. I've never entirely ran without some sort of mechanical filter. Will get it out now and see how things react. Thanks for the advice.
I see people that have filter socks in place for what seems like 6 months. Is there a difference between a sock or a sponge? I throw a sock on after i kick the pumps back on after i spot feed, but take it off a few hours after.

Question though. The sump I bought for the 210 I want to setup sometime soon has 2 sock holders on the main drains. Should I skip the filter socks? I was thinking of getting enough to where I could rotate clean socks in weekly and not be a PITA. Or just run no socks at all? I contemplated that for awhile.

 

[Sk8r]

DON't REMOVE IT ALL AT ONCE. You may have to cut it in pieces, but phase it out at the rate of a bit every 3 days. let your sandbed and rock take over at an easy pace: right now they're underpowered with the sponge doing its thing. Personally I don't even use a sock, because I run lps corals and they like the nutrient. SPS is more appreciative of a sock.

 

[JarahFroski]

I took about a fifth off. Was full of nasties. Definitely see how that thing could collect decaying detritus and keep it from the skimmer. Glad an LPS keeper chimed in. My wife likes the zoas, but my weakness is chalices and acans of all types. Hopefully phasing out the sponge out does the trick. Would be much less stressful, and hate to see healthy corals and fish have to suffer through my learning curve. Without internet forums, I'd definitely be lost. Learned so much here.

 

[mcgyvr]

This is what happens when you rush a cycle and just start reacting too fast by dumping more crap into the tank thinking it will fix it..

Next time slow down (no less than 4 weeks for a cycle)..

Doing it right takes time/patience..

 

[Sk8r]

One thing useful to know: cycling just gets the 'skin' of the rocks prosperous with bacteria: this loads the water, and the surface of the sand grains. But as your tank matures, you will see that bacterial colony (or would see it if you sliced the rock and had a real powerful microscope!) spread inward, so that deep in the microscopic pores of the rock there are bacteria working away---even clear to the heart of the rock and the sand grains: there are tiny, tiny gaps in there, and the processing goes on way deep.
This is WHY old tanks are stable under bad circumstances, and why new tanks can get overwhelmed by a sudden crisis. Pouring bacteria into a tank just helps the skin set up, but only time and proper conditions can help them set up way inside.

This is why it's best to follow your cycle with 4 weeks of just-inverts, while you quarantine your first fish. And 4 weeks more with just one fish, while you quarantine the second.

This is also how, if the worst happens, and the mature tank should crash due to a power-out, you pump out the water, put new in, and after a VERY brief cycle, you're good to go.

It's why, if you have a crisis looming, you yank your living specimens out to quarantine or buckets, toss the casualties, do a massive water change and keep the system going: mature rock has the ability to pull a tank back from the edge real fast if unburdened by further deaths and polluted water.

That's what's important to know about rock and sand.