Red Sea NO3/PO4

C

CrayolaViolence

New member
I Used this product a little over a week ago on a tank that I was cleaning and prepping for use after removing all the coral and fish and cleaning the substrate with a mechanical filter. The first day nothing looked odd. But by morning it was cloudy, evening it looked like milk, next day same thing but by day 3 it had cleared.

Well yesterday after I put in a container where I had Chaeto and other macro algae with a culture of amphipods the water turned cloudy by evening and has remained very cloudy for over 36 hours now with no sign of clearing up. I knew the water with the amphipods wasn't perfect and expected it to run through the skimmer with the larger volume of water in the tank (80 gallons). I dumped in the water to begin with because I didn't want to risk losing any amphipods in the transfer.

Anyhow. I was wondering if anyone has had this happen. I know the first cloudy reaction is normal, yet this second one is surprising and does it mean the water was and is unfit for something to live in and should I be concerned about using this tank in the future and just plan to empty the entire thing now and replace the water, which is frustrating because I was culturing both amphipods and copods in the substrate.

If anyone has any ideas that could keep me from having to sacrifice my farmed mandarin food.
Thanks.
 
excessive carbon dosing can lead to a bacterial bloom that will/can cloud the water for a few days..

Are you following the dosing instructions?
 
Mcgyvr is right on. You are most likely having a bacterial bloom from the extra carbon you are adding (nopox) Your tank will clear up eventually if you stop dosing but that defeats the purpose of starting. Let's try to troubleshoot why the bacteria went wild. The only thing you should keep an eye on is pH. Bacteria tends to use it quickly and can make the tank drop pH if the bloom gets out of hand.
How often are you adding it?
What dose are you at?
How is the pH?
What are your current nitrate and phosphate levels?
How is your skimmer handling it? Are you following the directions to the letter?
 
Well, what I added was about ten days ago and cleared on its own in a couple of days. It was the first time I ever used it and only used it when the tank was empty because I did not have a red sea test and had to eyeball it off a different phosphate test. This new cloudiness was totally different. Although I think I figured out the issue. Apparently the return pipe had come loose so the only water being circulated was in the overflow and what little was going out of the over flow. I've got it back in place now, so I'll give it a day to see what happens.

The PH was normal after the first time I used the Red seas stuff. I did not test it today as I figured everything would be out of whack considering the water conditions.


Hopefully getting the return pipe back into place will fix the issue.
 
Still no change in the conditions of the tank. I pulled out a bucket of water (about 5-6 gallons) and it's definitely "brown" in color, not white like it was after the Red Sea phosphate reducer.

So I decided to run the big main three-- PH, Ammonia, and Nitrates.

My PH came out between 8.0-8.2 My Phosphates were so few it was practically clear just a tint of yellow. And the Ammonia? Zip. Nadda. Big fat 0. So I have this tank that I know isn't right cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell is going on. Whatever is clouding the water is particulate so I put up the mechanical filter to see if it can help clear it out, did a 10% water change, if I skim it any leaner it's just gonna suck out my water I swear. The ghost shrimp in the bottom seem fine although all my greenery seemed to have been deteriorating so I pulled it out and put it back into a separate tank. So much for my amphipod culture as no there don't seem to be any left in the chaeto. Although there seems to be plenty of copepods on the glass. I'll assume the abandoned the greenery for the substrate which is fine with me.
Anyhow....I'll run the mechanical filter for a while and see if that helps. The thing is WHAT THE EFFF'N caused this. The only thing I've done is take the fish and coral out of the tank. I even left behind some live rock. The only out of the ordinary thing I did was add a small plastic milk crate to cover the wave maker so it wouldn't get clogged with the greenery. I took it out as well. Even with an almost 10% water change I can't tell any difference. And all the stirring and vacuuming I did two weeks ago is like it never happened. The "grime" that accumulates on substrate is even worse and there was nothing in the tank to put it there.

Except, for like I said, the greenery, which is now out. Although I'm not sure why it would be having an issue and breaking down if the main parameters are normal.

I'll do a KH but I think it's unnecessary since my PH was pretty much spot on....

Any ideas?
 
You did not say how much you dosed. From what you have described you overdosed the tank. So we are curious how much you used. I had to stop using it on my tank because if I added even .5ml to my 75 gallon system the bacteria would bloom out of control. The bacteria were so happy in fact they would bloom just from feeding the fish.
 
Bl4ckDr4g0n said:
You did not say how much you dosed. From what you have described you overdosed the tank. So we are curious how much you used. I had to stop using it on my tank because if I added even .5ml to my 75 gallon system the bacteria would bloom out of control. The bacteria were so happy in fact they would bloom just from feeding the fish.
Click to expand...


I don't have a red sea test, which is why I never used the stuff before. I'm sure i did over dose a bit. I add 5ml to about 80 gallons+ a 30 gallon sump. And, like I said, that was (now) about 2 weeks ago. It clouded. Then cleared, it was fine until I returned about 1/2 gallon of water to the tank that I had a culture of amphipods growing in. Then it went cloudy again and hasn't shown any improvement. If it's a bacterial bloom I'd think I'd be getting weird water parameters. Even when I have had high nitrates I have never had water turn murky. The skimmer is running, and it's not pulling much out at all. I've skinned it down so much that when it does pull out "gunk" it's clear.
If it's bacteria I don't see how it's surviving and what it's surviving on, since I have less for it to eat in the tank now than I did when it was stocked. I've never even had a tank where I was curing rock turn this color. I've had them turn yellow (a curing vat) from the ammonia, but never cloudy brownish, whitish, fog like. This isn't on the glass, just the water and of course the substrate or whatever is being left behind by the cause of the cloud is on the substrate.

So I guess the question is this. If it's bacteria, how do i kill it? and can it be killed without doing detrimental harm to the good bacteria in the tank. I don't see how it could. I've had algae blooms, but they've never ever turned the water this murky. I've had my water turn green once, in a tank in front of a window that got direct sunlight. Pulled the shade, and the green went away. If I'd had stuff in the tank to eat the phytoplankton it probably wouldn't have happened but it only had a few shrimp and hermit crabs in it. Even then, it was clear.
 
Hesitant to add anything because I'm new to this hobby, but here goes. I think you might get a calcium carbonate precip if your Mag levels are low. Could this be the case? You would have to have some test kits to check Ca, Mg, Alk see if those numbers are in the normal ranges.
 
The bacteria will just help lower nitrate and phosphate. You have a good protein skimmer running wet? Like I said when I overdosed my tank just feeding the fish caused the bacteria to bloom, the available carbon source in the pod soup likely just fed them again. You do not want to kill your filtration, however as available nutrients decline it will naturally decline in population
 
Bl4ckDr4g0n said:
The bacteria will just help lower nitrate and phosphate. You have a good protein skimmer running wet? Like I said when I overdosed my tank just feeding the fish caused the bacteria to bloom, the available carbon source in the pod soup likely just fed them again. You do not want to kill your filtration, however as available nutrients decline it will naturally decline in population
Click to expand...


I have a good protein skimmer, running that's for sure. Not sure what you mean by wet, unless you mean I'm keeping the bubbles in the column as long as possible without cutting off the water flow, then yes. I sure hope so. I really need this tank but am unwilling to put anything in it, no matter what the tests say, until the water clears.
 
tazdvl said:
Hesitant to add anything because I'm new to this hobby, but here goes. I think you might get a calcium carbonate precip if your Mag levels are low. Could this be the case? You would have to have some test kits to check Ca, Mg, Alk see if those numbers are in the normal ranges.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't expect calcium carbonate to turn the water brown. I do test all those by the way. I haven't since this issue, because I really think it's bacterial since the water has a brown tint to it.
I did a calcium, alk, and mg test right before it happened and they were all normal.
 
ps. Had a brain fart. Alkalinity would be the PH test, so I did re-do it. Calcium carbonate I have not redone, but did right before this weird issue. But thank you for the suggestion Tazdvl :)


BL4KDr4gn: You're probably right about the copepod soup putting in the nutrients. I sure wish it would clear though, ugly sight it is.

:P
 
Still no change in this tank. If anything I think it's even worse. I do not see how this stuff isn't getting skimmed out. I've never even had a rock curing tank get this ugly with fresh nasty stinky rock. The water is so brown you can't see past the glass. Any ideas (other than bleaching the damn thing) as to getting it to clear up. So far...it's definitely not making any kind of headway.
Except perhaps down hill.
 
So let me understand. You had a ref tank that you removed all livestock from, and then did something to clean the sand bed which was how thick? And then decided to carbon dose the tank because...? And now the water has gone from being cloudy to turning brown after deciding to add copepods to the tank? Am I tracking correctly? If I have all of this right, can you please explain why you did all of these things and what the goal is for this tank? Do you have any idea what ammonia nitrite and nitrate are? How are you testing these things? A series of large water changes seems like an appropriate remedy but it would be good to know what your levels are like now so you can tell other than the water is clearer if you are getting somewhere.
 
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