stuhope123
New member
Hi All
Im new to this forum and the marine species so go easy on me :spin2:
So around 3 months ago i started up my mini 70 litre marine tank.
I filled with RO water mixed with salt - and added around 6kg of live rock, The tank is running a pump, heater, and a fluval powerhead, and 4 x t5 bulbs (2 x White, 1 x Blue, 1 x red, Lights are currently on for 7 hours a day 4pm-11pm) there isn't really room for skimmer however will be doing weekly 10% water changes.
After around a month or so i believed my tank to be cycled so bought a clean up crew and a damsel,
1 x Yellow tail blue damsel
2 x Ceirith snails
2 x Nassarius snails
4 x Scarlett hermit crabs
2 x Turbo snails
After a couple of weeks everything seemed fine so i proceeded to purchase a cleaner shrimp,
Another 2/3 weeks passed and everything still fine.
I then purchased 2 clowns, For about 2 weeks they seemed fine, The damsel wasn't really bothering them and they where just swimming happily, i then noticed 1 morning 1 was dead, I did a 30% water change and the next day another was dead. Everything else still fine.
2 weeks later i tried again, purchased 2 clowns Low and behold another couple of weeks same thing again and they have both died again
I have noticed quite a lot of brown algae on my sand which i keep moving for it to go white again, Also on my glass and on my rock, it seems to be brown on the sand and green on the rock, This is also annoying.
My water params are as below
Salinity - 1.027
Temp - 26-30 Degrees
Ammonia - 0 (hard to tell on my api test but pretty confident its 0)
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10ppm
Phosphate - 0.5ppm
Water changes have been every week at 1 10 litre bucket.
So my questions and problems are:
1. Why so much algae even with a CUC, is there anything i can do or buy to get this lower and to stop my sand and glass looking horrible really quickly?
2. Why do the clowns keep dying but everything else seems okay in the tank with no signs at all of suffering?
3. Is there anything i am doing wrong? I know it is heavily stocked for the size however my friend had this tank before me and kept more than this just fine, along as i keep up on the water changes.
4. I know my nitrate and Phosphate are fairly high, What can i do to lower these apart from water changes, I don't have a qt tank unfortunately.
Any help is extremely appreciated, I am new to the marine life however try and do as much research as i can before i dive into things.
Thanks All.
Stu
Im new to this forum and the marine species so go easy on me :spin2:
So around 3 months ago i started up my mini 70 litre marine tank.
I filled with RO water mixed with salt - and added around 6kg of live rock, The tank is running a pump, heater, and a fluval powerhead, and 4 x t5 bulbs (2 x White, 1 x Blue, 1 x red, Lights are currently on for 7 hours a day 4pm-11pm) there isn't really room for skimmer however will be doing weekly 10% water changes.
After around a month or so i believed my tank to be cycled so bought a clean up crew and a damsel,
1 x Yellow tail blue damsel
2 x Ceirith snails
2 x Nassarius snails
4 x Scarlett hermit crabs
2 x Turbo snails
After a couple of weeks everything seemed fine so i proceeded to purchase a cleaner shrimp,
Another 2/3 weeks passed and everything still fine.
I then purchased 2 clowns, For about 2 weeks they seemed fine, The damsel wasn't really bothering them and they where just swimming happily, i then noticed 1 morning 1 was dead, I did a 30% water change and the next day another was dead. Everything else still fine.
2 weeks later i tried again, purchased 2 clowns Low and behold another couple of weeks same thing again and they have both died again
I have noticed quite a lot of brown algae on my sand which i keep moving for it to go white again, Also on my glass and on my rock, it seems to be brown on the sand and green on the rock, This is also annoying.
My water params are as below
Salinity - 1.027
Temp - 26-30 Degrees
Ammonia - 0 (hard to tell on my api test but pretty confident its 0)
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10ppm
Phosphate - 0.5ppm
Water changes have been every week at 1 10 litre bucket.
So my questions and problems are:
1. Why so much algae even with a CUC, is there anything i can do or buy to get this lower and to stop my sand and glass looking horrible really quickly?
2. Why do the clowns keep dying but everything else seems okay in the tank with no signs at all of suffering?
3. Is there anything i am doing wrong? I know it is heavily stocked for the size however my friend had this tank before me and kept more than this just fine, along as i keep up on the water changes.
4. I know my nitrate and Phosphate are fairly high, What can i do to lower these apart from water changes, I don't have a qt tank unfortunately.
Any help is extremely appreciated, I am new to the marine life however try and do as much research as i can before i dive into things.
Thanks All.
Stu
