question about new reef setup

[xboxhacker]

I have a 55 gallon that was fish only for about 3 years. I now have 90 lbs of live rock. I had 30 lbs for about 6 months. I just added 60 more lbs of rock. I have a 4 inch dsb, tons on snails and crabs for stirring and algae. I have 7 fish: 1 yellow tang, 1 neon are eye hawkfish, 1 convict goby , 1 true perc clown, 3 green chromis. I have added 2 types of chaeto and some red grape macroalgae. All my fish with the exeption of the chromis have been with me from the beggining.

This is my mech filtratrion:
1 aquaclear 500 (2) foam (1) act carbon insert
1 magnum 350 filled with ceramic media
3 maxi jet 1200 2 on either end and 1 in middle on a wave timer
seaclone 100 protein skimmer new version but modded anyway yanking lots of brown gunk about 1/4 every other day.

Lights are an current sateliite: 48inch double actinics and double daylight 4x65 watt bulbs.

Ive been dosing calicum, iodine, tech m stronium and molybdeuna
all from kent marine. My parameters are all good ammonia nitrite undetectable but my nitrates were quite high hence the macroalgae.

Im having a difficult time growing corraline and i cant figure out why. Also i was contemplating a sump and taking off the magnum 350.

I was wondering if this sounds like an ok setup is there something i should change?

I was thinking about keeping some sps and zoos once my nitrates go down a liitle more. 25% water change every other week.

Any and all opinions are welcome.

 

[Billy1234]

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As for the coraline.. can you be more specific about your parameters? Are you checking your calcium and strontium levels? You shouldn't dose anything you don't check. With 7 fish and only 13 gallons every other week, are you sure your water quality is ok?

You also might want to get some more flow in there.. right now you only have about 885 gph if I am correct. You might want to bring it up to almost double that (1650gph).. which would be 30x turnover, which is considered a high flow rate. You may also consider getting a different skimmer, maybe a Remora or a BakPak, both are good skimmers.

Hope that helps,

- BiLLy

 

[TekCat]

Since you have lots of LR you can get rid of your bio-media, it is probably one of the reasons you have nitrates, I bet you have high phosphate levels too. Aside from Calcium levels phosphate inhibits calcification in coralline algae and in corals.

So, as Billy suggested, get good protein skimmer, lose ceramic media, lose foam pad (unless you clean it regurlarly). Increase flow rate. And do something about your fish load, it is quite high. Do not overfeed. All food (eaten or not) contributes to nitrate/phosphate problem.

Another thing, sump (w/fuge where macroalgae would be lit 24/7) is a HUGE help in battling nitrates.

Good luck.

 

[xboxhacker]

Laguna PowerJet 7000 WG Pond Pump 2150 gph

Can I use this pump or something smaller, i would use it with a 30 gallon sump im building.

 

[mg426]

Sounds like a lot of stuff going in the tank to me. Like stated above dont add anything you cant test for. With just fish in your setup you might not even need all of the additives. i read a post on here once that said calcium+alk = coraline algae. nothing could be better put. If it were my tank i think I would do a few water changes without all of the additives, get my calcium up to around 400 my alk around 10 or so and maintain that for a couple of months and I would bet you start to see coraline growing pretty darn good.