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jhendu

jhendu

Premium Member
Hey everyone. Just thought that I would introduce myself as I am new to the forum. Big thanks to ZOAKEEPER for pointing me in this direction. I've got a 110 tall that I've had setup in its current config for about 1.5-2 yrs. Had 2 other salt tanks for a total of about 3 yrs before this and have had tons of freshwater experience. I look forward to gaining from the sage knowledge available here and also with getting out to one of these frag swaps I keep hearing about.
 
WELCOME

WELCOME

Welcome to R/C and the Southern Arizona forum. Also check out the Phoenix FRAG thread. Alot of people and information. Enjoy!!!!!!! :dance: (I love this dancin guy!)
 
Cool, I have a 110 tall also, when I get it back into shape you will have to come by and check it out.
 
No pictures right now. I had to come home from work early today because out of nowhere stuff started turning brown. I'm in the middle of a water change right now. NOt sure what happened, there are no missing fish and water parameters seem pretty good. Only thing that I can't find is my large sand sifting star. I have about 3-4 inches of sand throughout though so there are lots of hiding spots. I'll get pics in a few days once things look normal again.
 
It's brown algae AGAIN. It seems that every once in awhile it happens to me. The Tank has been up for almost 2 years now and it's happened a few times. The rock, sand and glass started to get covered but the corals looked fine for the most part. I changed out about 27 Gallons of water last night. We'll see how things are looking a little later. The onlt thing that I did that was different was I added a half gallon of kalkwasser mix each of the previous 2 nights. I used distilled water for the mix so it wasn't a tap water issue.
 
If you don't have a digital phosphate kit you might want to think about getting one. Most poeple use the liquid phosphate tests, which don't seem to be very good at determining phosphate levels when the concentrations are low. Unfortunately even low levels of phosphate can cause SPS to STN, so running PhosBAN might not be the worst idea. Just remember that algae can't grow when phosphates aren't present.
 
I tested some things with what I had handy (or ran to the store to get). Phosphate color wasn't even on the chart that cam with the API test. Looked more yellow so I would say very low if any at all. Calcium was about 420ppm, nitrate between 40-80 color range, sg was 1.022 via hydrometer and alkalinity via dip was 300. I'm working on getting the nitrates down although I have yet to get them below 40 with this tank. I am considering a sulfur denitrifier to take care of that. Rumor has it that that piece of equipment would also help keep the calcium levels up where they belong. Regarding the alkalinity, I also tested it via a liquid test and got a different reading than the dip, it was 9dkh which according to their chart equals around 161ppm. Kind of a wide berth between the two tests. I'm going to redo the liquid test here in a little bit. My color vision is certifiably substandard so maybe what I thought was yellow in the test tube just wasn't the yellow that they were looking for. I tried to find a digital phosphate tester and the only one I saw was about $180. Kinda pricey.
 
Email Cerreta, he has found one that I think is around $80. Nitrates between 40-80ppm are gong to cause coral death and contribute to algae problems. There is an interesting article on DSB's in buckets by Anthony Calfo. I use a DSB in my refuge and it really helps to keep nitrates under control. I would also ditch the dip strips for testing your alkalinity and rely on the liquid tests. Salifert makes very reliable test kits for everything but low level phosphates which seem very hard for any liquid test. There is supposed to be one liquid test for low level phosphates by Merck that is good, but at $80 I would just look for a digital one. Having test kits that you can rely on is always good and well worth the money. Try setting up a two little fishes reactor with rowacarbon for 3 days followed by rowaphos for 4 weeks. This should help improve water quality and will definitely help reduce your algae problem.
 
I've got about 4 inches of live sand throughout the tank so I never thought that I would have an issue with this.
 
DSB's have to be undisturbed to have anaerobic bacteria and reduce nitrates. Sand sifting stars, nassarius snails and any burrowing fish will disturb the sand. But as long as the sand isn't disturbed the 4" sand bed should be deep enough to have anaerobic bacteria.
 
Even though your phosphate is testing at 0, it only takes 6 seconds for phosphates in the water column to be taken up by organisms. Which means that if you are reading a 0, the algae is consuming phosphates as quickly as they are being produced. You can have a huge phosphate problem and always get a 0 reading on tests. That's why IMO phosphate tests are pretty much worthless. If you have algae, you have phosphates. Running phosphate removal media will probably help. And those nitrates are definitely contributing. You probably either have too high of a bioload for the tank to handle, are overfeeding, are using bad water, or something died without you realizing it to have nitrates that high.
 
I can believe that the bioload may be to high. I have two clowns, a yellow tang, a damsel, a hippo tang and achalk basslet for fish. Two sand sifting stars, a arrow crab, a coral banded shrimp, a handful of snails and hermits, three serpent stars, a bunch of zoos, and a few other frags. I know its not overfeeding, we thought that first and seriously cut back. We only feed about every other day right now. All my water comes from one of those 25 cent a gallon RO/UV filtered machines that is outside our shoppette here on base. I think that I am going to order the sulfer denitrifier tomorrow to alleviate that issue.
 
No, that's nothing as far as bioload for a 110. Before I upgraded tanks, I kept 13 fish in my 55 gallon for a year and a half, including a tang! All were healthy, no deaths. Yeah it was pushing it. But I was greedy :).
 
I think the problem with the nitrates lies in the sand sifting stars, they are going to sift through the sand and disturb the anaerobic bacteria. If you can't pull the stars out than you may want to take a 20H and put 5-6" of sand in it (this should help the nitrate problem) and setup a refuge to grow macros which will help with DOC's and phosphates. Sulfur denitrifiers can be tricky and many don't do anything, a natural solution would probably be less expensive and more efficient.
 
Who would of thought? I bought those to keep the sand looking pretty due to the browning of the surface of it. I would love to setup a fuge but my stand has very narrow doors underneath it so I'm not sure what can fit and I really don't want to try to move it, that would require a whole days worth of work and I'm afraid that I would lose some stuff. I don't think that I can slide it forward without emptying it. I'm a weakling and so are most of my friends. The tank is located on crappy government issues over a concrete slab so I ugess I could try it though. Is there anywhere locally to get a good deal on an overflow etc. that I nedd to set it up? Can I run any filters on a fuge or should I leave it just with the sand and chaeto? I would like to get some stuff off the back of the tank.
 
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