North Dakota Mini-Ocean

So I did some much overdo water quality testing and found out some serious concerns...

I have nitrates that are off the charts...best guess is over 50ppm.

The phoshates are around .1 on the hanna meter

The dKH is around 8.0 to 8.3

Calcium is between 415-425

Magnesium is around 1410 to 1440

Ammonia is zero

The RO/DI water has 5ppm nitrates and .06 phosphates. What also is weird is my TDS meter is reading 430ppm on the output and 410 on the input. I just changed every filter and had 100 gallons made on those filters showing 0ppm just 2 days ago. Now its 400+. It might be faulty TDS meter, but I switched input and output testers and get same result. So it could be the whole meter is bad.

But I know I have a problem with water quality. No hair or red algae as of yet, but I can see some corals. Are not happy.

I'm gonna run carbon and Rowaphos and see if that helps the tank...the RO/DI unit, I'm not sure.

Any suggestions?
 
I have a handheld TDS meter you could use to check out the readings on your meter.

If I had enough DI resin I'd say I could help replace the DI filters for you but if I remember correctly you have the two large blue ones right? I don't think I'd have enough DI to fill 25% of one of them things.

Let me know if there is anything I can help you with... My tank isn't going so hot either but if you need a hand or need to borrow some equipment just let me know.

Curtis
 
happened to me a couple times too...I had placed the DI resin cartridges in upside down. There are arrows on them.
 
I can stop by quick right after work, but I can't stick around long. I have to be somewhere at 6:00 then heading out of town. I'll drop off the TDS meter and just let me know how it works for you.

I'll be back in town Sunday evening after more family stuff. Busy weekend... If you need anything else after I head out tomorrow give me a call and I'll see if Angei can get anything for you.

Curtis
 
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I did find some some answers last night...My RO/DI water in the holding tank was around 640ppm!! WOW...The output was arounf 400ppm. So i drained the holding tank last night and gave it a nice bleach bath and rinse. Then I did a flush of the RO membrane for 24 hours and noticed today its back to 0. So i will start filling the holding tank again and test a few times along the way.

Also, I am doing some rearranging in the tank room so its not so crowded and so i can get everything organized again. I should have it done by the weekend. pictures to follow soon.
 
Reefaquariumnut said:
I did find some some answers last night...My RO/DI water in the holding tank was around 640ppm!! WOW...The output was arounf 400ppm. So i drained the holding tank last night and gave it a nice bleach bath and rinse. Then I did a flush of the RO membrane for 24 hours and noticed today its back to 0. So i will start filling the holding tank again and test a few times along the way.

Also, I am doing some rearranging in the tank room so its not so crowded and so i can get everything organized again. I should have it done by the weekend. pictures to follow soon.
Click to expand...

Wow, what do you think caused the high TDS? Accumulation of crud from water storage? Do you circulate your stored water?

Merry Christmas.

LL
 
TDS creep I was told...new term for me. I guess its the culmination of contaminants over time that never leave because I never get 100% of my water out of holding tank. But know that I know I cam watch it. Also, I will circulate the water more often so it doesn't get stagnant. I think this is 90% of reason that some of the corals have suffered.
 
I highly doubt TDS creep got you to that high of a level. That really makes no sense to me. I circulated my SW holding tank 4 x per day for 15 minutes, plus a full day when I had a new batch. I never circulated my RO/DI holding tank. No real need to IMO, but I did go through the water fairly quickly.

It seems to me there is still something missing in this puzzle. Remember when Chuck was having issues and after much research, he found that a brass/bronze fitting in his water filtration system was actually adding measurable amounts of copper?

I always recommend starting at the wall and looking closely at every element in the water delivery system. One guy locally was having a heck of a time with algal outbreaks, couldn't figure out what was going wrong, and when myself and Sherman went to visit, we found that his filtration system was improperly hooked up, AND his water supply company was ADDING ammonia to the water. You just never know until you isolate evry element and test its effluent.
 
what is your incoming tds usually? And does you rodi, have an auto flush valve on it? I know the filter guys out of duluth sell them. I was wondering because if i forget to flush my membrane when I first start it the tds is really high for just a min or so. that could essentially cause it to rise over time.
 
Hi Dave,

Glad it is back to normal. Hope everything is fine there with the weather. Keep a close eye on the RO and flush more often and it should be fine again. Talk to you sunday.
 
Water is not yet back to normal. Still reading around 24ppm on the output. I haven't tested the nitrates again. I'm hoping to get to that today.
 
looks like u got the tank scraped w/o me (aka ur slave haha) As far as the RO goes, remind me to talk to you about it it may be that the holding tanks are actually leaking nitrates. None of the tanks like that are actually made to store water for animals that are so touchy. Most are only made to remain safe to humans. Here's an article on MD forums that eric and others talked about, very interesting. Here's the first page, there are 6 http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic101230-9-1.aspx
 
depends on the particular one. The green ones I used were not leaching anything, at least not testable. All plastics have some oil content, including our favorite, acrylic. But based on David's description of the problem, I would doubt that was the cause, or certainly not the majority of the cause.
 
I've never flushed my RO membrane before or cleaned my holding tank or even 100% drained the holding tank. So I'm sure that had a big part of my problem. So I'm going step by step and eliminating as many variables as possible. Honestly, I think it has been pure luck that my tank is doing this well. I'm waiting on my RO membrane to come and that should fix the problem.
 
Phosphates have dropped to 0.07 from 0.10 in the 3 days since I changed the rowa and stopped the RO topoff. So I'm going to keep making small changes to the tank and slowly add back all the equipment. Tomorrow I will add the ozone back and clean the uv sleeves.
 
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