New 29g tank – Questions

Providing an update and have a question. The Cardinal did not make it and I have not added any new fish after the two clowns and probably won't until January. The clowns are doing well, I have added a Photon 24 and have had a few corals for about a month, frogspawn, hammer, acan lord and trumpet (small frags or small colonies).

They all seem to be doing well, coraline is everywhere.

I did and do have a small outbreak of dino's (could be wrong on which algae it is) I think but my hermit crabs and snails seem to be handling it and I'm cleaning everything else.

Now on to my question. I tested my water prior to adding corals and my parameters seemed good. I tested this weekend and prior to my WWC my kh was 5.7 and CA was 330, KH was 6.7 after the 15-20% WC.

I can't imagine that the handful of frags are using it up and I need to start dosing already.

Any ideas? I plan to test each week for a couple of weeks and make sure my readings and testing procedure is correct.

These are all new Salifert test kits.

Could it be the coraline? It started going gangbusters after I got the new light (max power I'm using is 30% and that is only for 2 hours, it ramps up and down from blue to blue and white and back to blue during the day.
 
I did not read the entire thread, but what salt mix are you using?

A decent reef salt should bring your levels up to where they should be. You don't have enough in the tank to be using trace elements like your posting.
 
Instant ocean and I recent bought a 200g box so that's what I'll be using for quite a while.

I agree I don't think the stocking I have would use up the Kh and Ca. I figured I'd be good with just doing 15% WC's weekly for quite a while and then eventually adding kalkwasser and so forth.
 
Regular IO or reef crystals? If its regular IO, thats why your levels are so low and not being pushed up with a WC. You can use regular IO, just need to dose it up to reach reef levels.
 
Please don't do margerita snails or hermits
The snails will die and the hermits will kill other snails for shells

Go with some cerinths, astreas, and a small brittle star that should be enough for your tank
 
Its regular instant ocean so I made need to add kalk. I added some Asterea Stars but I'm not sure they made it. My LFS was out of Nerites so I did pick up 3 Margerita's which seem to be doing fine. The hermits have been doing a number on my ceriths so I added a package of empty snail shells.

It does look like I have dino's, I'll be taking some pictures this weekend in white light so it can be seen better and I'll upload those. I also have some green fuzz which I'm assuming is a hair algae.

Pretty sure this is all coming from the new lights. I've dialed them back a bit.

From what I've read on dino's they are a PITA so at the moment I'm going to go with a lower lighting regimen, adding some mechanical filtration and manual removal with reduced water changes; just enough to siphon deitrus.

I'll be adding some copepods next week as from my understanding they may eat dinos.
 
I did a 3 day blackout and I have done two "water changes but not water changes" where I have sucked up detritus and had it filtered through a filter sock and then put that water back in. I'll do this for two more weeks.

It has seemed to work very well there is little to no trace of dinos so I'll see what happens when I start WC's again.

I don't have a sump so when everything was stirred up I put a clean filter sock in front of my large PH to collect as much detritus as possible.

I have also cut back on feedings and I think my skimmer was not working properly as I noticed something loose inside when I cleaned it. Afterwards it is extremely quiet and seem much more productive (it was very noisy before).

Corals all seem to be doing well as far as i can tell.

I picked up some green zoas a few weeks ago and they might be my favorite so far.
 
I have been feeding more sparingly and doing larger water changes in the hopes of getting my nutrients lower. I'm getting a number of spots with what I assume is GHA and as everyone says if you have algae you have nutrients.

The dinos appear to be in recession as they are almost gone. My frogspawn is not doing well and I'm continuing to see low Alkalinity with all my other parameters being good. I have ordered some sodium bicarbonate to adjust it and some Kalkwasser to maintain it. No idea if the low alk is the cause of the frogspawns decline or if it had to do with the dinos.

I did surprisingly lose my skunk cleaner shrimp no idea why, I made sure he got food and I don't think low Alk would be an issue. Everything else seems to be growing.

I'll need to pick up some 1g containers to store the mixed additives. I'll probably make a dripper for the Kalk.

If the GHA continues I'll need to get an emerald Crab or similar to control it until I can get the nutrients in check.
 
I'm going to test my "fresh" saltwater tonight to see if I'm putting anything into the tank. I am getting .004 TDS on my RO so I know I'll have to upgrade my RO system at some point.

I just don't think I feed enough to be having this much issue with algae, granted alot of it was due to a significant increase in lighting and my skimmer not working as well as I thought originally (fixed it I think). So I'm wondering if my water going in isn't as clean as i thought.
 
Its a stock 29g with a tunze in tank skimmer. I run an AC HOB with media and floss that is replaced every other day.

Got my bicarbonate last night so I'll mix that up and dose tomorrow.

Beginning to see a lot more GHA so I'll need to manually remove as much as possible over the holidays.

My scarlet and blue leg hermits, margarita and nassarius snails don't seem to touch it.

Question on lighting; should I do a shorter more intense photo period or a longer lower period? I reduced m lighting amount in hopes of sowing the dino and GHA.

I still don't get why my Phosphate shows 0.
 
Very low ALK can kill corals as well as fish.

The normal recommendation is 8 to 10 hours of lights. I run mine moonlights on at 6am, off at 7:30, the rest start a slow ramp up at 7am to 12:00, then stay at a set intensity until 4pm where they start a slow ramp down at 7pm. The moonlights come back on at 6pm and stay on until 10pm. From 10pm to 6am I have total darkness.

EDIT:
Your PO4 is showing 0 because the algae is using it up, if you truly had 0 PO4, you wouldn't have an algae issue. Have you tried some GFO in the HOB maybe, or a reactor works better? If you starve the algae,(removing nutrients) it will eventually die off.
 
Well that's very sneaky of the Algae. :( I haven't done any GFO or Carbon yet but I'll likely add some in the near future in the HoB. The HoB was mostly for the ceramic media and some additional flow. the media will be used for the QT tank when I add fish. just two small clowns as of now.

I mixed up my bicarbonate and dosed a small amount last night. I'll test tonight and then run BRS's calculator to see how much more I need. I'll make a dripper for Kalk over the holidays once I get the level where it is supposed to be.

I'll just keep manually removing the dino and GHA and do my 20% water changes weekly and see how things go. And I need to test my freshly made SW as I said before.

One thing I've done which may or may not be a good idea is after I do a WC (blasting the LR with a Turkey baster before) there is a lot of "stuff" suspended so I put a filter sock in the tank in front of my large power head until most everything cycles through and then clean the sock. Is that a bad idea? It seems to clear things up rather quickly.

I also noticed the tank was a degree or two warmer than I wanted so I adjusted the heater and I'm at a steady 78.0 now.
 
I got around to testing my "fresh" saltwater and phostphate is 0, Calcium is 390-400 but Alk is 11.2.

I'm making up another 20g so once I get that at the right salinity I'll check again. No idea why it would be that high. Assuming my reading is correct I can't imagine the few corals I have are lowering it down to 5.7 in the display.

I tested the display prior to the WC and it was up to 9dkh with my dosing of bicarbonate and I'll check it again tonight to see where it is.
 
After more research I don't think the algae i have is Dino's, it is a dark brown or reddish brown and can form very long and thing bubble free strands; anywhere from 3-6 inches long.

I tried two periods of 3-day blackouts and no water changes but it comes back very quickly and and now my green hair algae is growing quickly.

I picked up more snails and an Emerald crab, I and attempting to maintain my ALK at 8-9, seems to grow faster if it dips lower. I will be picking up some GFO and attempting to combat this like a traditional algae outbreak and see if that makes any headway.

Upping my PWC from 10-15%/w to 30%/w.
 
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