New BTA's have been hiding for 2 weeks

[JustAClownFish]

I got the clowns from a LFS I don't go to anymore. When I first started my tank i didn't really know anything. I'd never go back to that store and buy fish. The guy who sold me the fish gave me the two clowns and one tang including a bottle of bacteria. He said dump it in the tank and it'll cycle instantly. Three days later the tang was dead and the clowns were dwelling on the bottom gasping. I brought the clowns back so they could recover while I was looking for the problem. The guy from the LFS said it wasn't ammonia it was something else. He wanted me to believe that I poisoned my fish by using some kind of chemical in the same room (air fresheners or whatever, even though we don't use that stuff). He looked at the dead tang with a magnifying glass and said 'Look the fins are damaged, that's a sign of poisoning!!!'. This guy sold me unhealthy fish and screwed me over with that bottled bacteria crap. In a new uncycled 40g tank, three fish, that was too much. The issue was ammonia. I somehow get the feeling that my problem is coming from the rocks I put in the tank. I bought it from the same store. I still have diatoms even though I use RO/DI water. I can't get my phosphates to go down. I bet they're leeching from the rocks. My nitrates have only dropped to 40ppm. I can't get them to drop more. I added some of that NoPox stuff and now I have super cloudy water. Probably a bacterial bloom. I don't know man this tank is a pain. I think once my nano is up I'm going to shut this sucker down.

 

[Kinetic]

I got the clowns from a LFS I don't go to anymore. When I first started my tank i didn't really know anything. I'd never go back to that store and buy fish. The guy who sold me the fish gave me the two clowns and one tang including a bottle of bacteria. He said dump it in the tank and it'll cycle instantly. Three days later the tang was dead and the clowns were dwelling on the bottom gasping. I brought the clowns back so they could recover while I was looking for the problem. The guy from the LFS said it wasn't ammonia it was something else. He wanted me to believe that I poisoned my fish by using some kind of chemical in the same room (air fresheners or whatever, even though we don't use that stuff). He looked at the dead tang with a magnifying glass and said 'Look the fins are damaged, that's a sign of poisoning!!!'. This guy sold me unhealthy fish and screwed me over with that bottled bacteria crap. In a new uncycled 40g tank, three fish, that was too much. The issue was ammonia. I somehow get the feeling that my problem is coming from the rocks I put in the tank. I bought it from the same store. I still have diatoms even though I use RO/DI water. I can't get my phosphates to go down. I bet they're leeching from the rocks. My nitrates have only dropped to 40ppm. I can't get them to drop more. I added some of that NoPox stuff and now I have super cloudy water. Probably a bacterial bloom. I don't know man this tank is a pain. I think once my nano is up I'm going to shut this sucker down.

Bummer! I'd say don't give up, sometimes you're just around the corner from getting on the right track. Though with rock leeching phosphates etc., that's going to be a tough one.

Also, bacteria bloom is most likely from No3Po4-x. Make sure your skimmer is going full blast and you have plenty of surface agitation. Bacteria blooms can deplete water of dissolved oxygen pretty quick, but having a skimmer etc. to put more oxygen in would save it.

You should probably stop dosing, maybe try running a cheap UV sterilizer (I just battled back a bacteria bloom too). Green Killing Machine works well!

Start dosing again after things clear up. I'd start with a very small dose, and increase over a few weeks until your levels are set.

If you run GFO, chaeto, and use No3Po4-x you'll eventually finish leeching your rock of all the junk. You could even use lanthanum chloride to quickly bind phosphates (be careful, read a lot about it before using).

Another option is yes, shut it down. Though you can do a restart the right way. It might be better in the long run. What I've seen work:

1. Take rock out and put it in a mild bleach bath (read more about it)
2. Give it a muratic acid bath (read about it)
3. Take a strong brush and rinse all the dead junk off the rocks
4. Let all the rock dry for at least a week (make sure it doesn't get rained on)
5. Put the rock in a tub of some sort with RO/DI water and a pump. Dose lanthanum chloride to bind to all phosphates that leeches out. This keeps it from being reabsorbed into the rock. Do this until you can stop dosing lanthanum and the phosphates levels don't rise anymore.
6. Rinse the rock out in RO/DI, let it dry for a few days, and then start up your display tank again
7. Cycle by dosing ammonium chloride to 2ppm, and use BIO SPIRA or Dr. Tim's One and Only to build up your bacteria. Once your ammonia and nitrites fall to 0, dose 2ppm ammonia again, and repeat until you can get your ammonia/nitrite down to 0ppm within 12 hours of dosing 2ppm.

That should do it.

 

[JustAClownFish]

The bacteria bloom went away. I keep dosing 1ml every day. Nitrates are down to 20-40ppm. I'm aiming for 5ppm. Once I reach my goal, do I have to keep dosing it, e.g. maintenance dose? I still can't get my head around the fact that I have had such high nitrates probably for a very long time. I skimp on food and the tank is not overstocked. 5 fish in a 40g tank shouldn't be too much for the biofilter. And the rocks, well, I thought about switching them out. I started working at a reef store and today I found a huge container with dry Tonga and Fiji rock. Super white, probably bleached. I think I'm going to grab some tomorrow and then start cooking them at home. Once they're done I'll replace the fake rocks with the freshly cycled ones. I'll also grab some GFO from the store tomorrow. Well, at least I don't need to pay for all those things now. I can also get that phosphate binder.

 

[LX20000]

I just found out that I've been doing the API nitrate test wrong all this time. I did it the way people here say on the forum you should do it. My nitrates are beyond 160ppm. No wonder the anemones are doing bad. The little one actually did and nuked one of my Kenya tree frags that was a couple inches next to it. The werid thing is that all fish are doing fine. That explains why some of my corals aren't as colorful. It's simply too much.

I got the Red Sea stuff. I heard that people overdosed and ended up with more problems. Do I have to keep dosing it until the nitrates are down and then stop?

I use the instructions on the bottles... what alternate (and apparently incorrect) instructions are widely used here on the forum??

 

[Jokekash]

I have a Chinese led light and one of my recently added rbta’s has being hiding for the past three days. The other one is out and right in the middle of the tank. I guess every anemone is different when it comes to lighting preferences, however, in your particular case, your issue might be the high nitrates.

 

[catcaniac]

I got my rbta about 3 weeks ago. I am running leds and turned the blues down to about 30% and the whites down to about 20% for the first week. The anemone came out right away and has been out ever since. Week 2, I slowly began upping the lighting back to regular settings and all seems good.

 

[Insane_Realmz]

I don't really feed heavily. I feed 2x times a day (mysis shrimp, brine, sometimes dry food). I turn off the pumps and add a little bit at a time with a syringe. if they eat everything within a couple seconds I'll add more. Usually they eat all of it. I started feeding BRS Reef Flakes to get better coloration which worked for the mushroom (turned a nice light blue with some turquoise in it and before it was just pale). My skimmer is pulling out a lot of yellow gunk. I keep emptying it at least once a day. You need to know that I don't have a sump. It's a really odd tank from the Phillippines. It's covered in bamboo and the stand doesn't have enough space for a sump. Instead, I run a canister filter with filter pads and a little bit of carbon and I have the skimmer in the tank. The skimmer is slightly undersized (35g, my tank is 40g). I have at least 50 lbs of rock and a lot of aragonite. There should be plenty of surface for bacteria. I haven't seen my nassarius snails in a long time. Maybe they died and are now decomposing?! I'll stop feeding for a week and do a couple water changes.

Any update on this? I used to use canister filters. They're super efficient, but in my experience, tend to be nitrate factories. This could explain your high nitrate levels. Do you have a bio ball chamber in your canister filter? If you do, preserve it best you can when you service the filter. Otherwise, clean the filter bi-weekly if you can. Your aerobic bacteria will survive will thank you.

 

[Jokekash]

I got my rbta about 3 weeks ago. I am running leds and turned the blues down to about 30% and the whites down to about 20% for the first week. The anemone came out right away and has been out ever since. Week 2, I slowly began upping the lighting back to regular settings and all seems good.

Catcaniac, what light are you using?

 

[JustAClownFish]

Any update on this? I used to use canister filters. They're super efficient, but in my experience, tend to be nitrate factories. This could explain your high nitrate levels. Do you have a bio ball chamber in your canister filter? If you do, preserve it best you can when you service the filter. Otherwise, clean the filter bi-weekly if you can. Your aerobic bacteria will survive will thank you.

It's not the canister filter. There is never any food in the filter when I clean it (I clean it every week). I got the nitrates to drop to 2-5ppm but when I started feeding the corals again with BRS Reef Flakes and KZ Coral Vitalizer it went up to 20 - 50ppm again. That tells me that my nutrient export is inefficient meaning I do not have a very strong bacteria population. I started vodka dosing now to counter this. This is the only way to control nutrients with a sumpless setup. I thought about getting a bigger skimmer but there aren't that many I can use. My aquarium is covered in bamboo and has a wooden rim. I cannot use any hang-on equipment. I'd need to build something so I can hang the skimmer inside the aquarium. I also switched to T5 lighting and that was one of the best decisions I've made so far. The anemone is doing way better and it moved to a spot where I can see it. It seems like it hates medium-high flow as it moved when I changed the flow pattern. It got blown around quite a bit and I think that made it move.